Culture Diary w/c 13-11-2023
Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events…
Monday – Long Life, Low Energy: Designing for a Circular Economy @ Tate Liverpool – FREE
An ongoing impact of the pandemic in Liverpool means many galleries and museums only opening from Tuesdays onwards. If you find yourself on a blustery waterfront today, however, rest assured that the RIBA building on Mann Island – as part of a new partnership with Tate Liverpool – is open all week. Many will be grateful of the cosy café and shop on the ground floor. Upstairs, repurposed RIBA exhibition, Long Life, Low Energy: Designing for a Circular Economy, considers how we can think differently about buildings, to achieve a crucial reduction in our carbon emissions.
Tuesday – Klimt and The Kiss 1pm @ FACT Liverpool – £17.50/£15/£10
A look at the decadence and glamour of the Vienna Secession movement through the lens of Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss – one of the world’s most recognised and reproduced paintings.
Wednesday – Stereolab doors 7pm @ Content, Liverpool – £27
Critically acclaimed and much loved Anglo-French band Stereolab were first thrust to my attention when the title track of their 1996 album Emperor Tomato Ketchup came free with a magazine compilation. Now, for me, they always seem to have been there. Sometimes hovering in the background, other times front and centre; the following year’s Dots and Loops is synonymous with my two best mates’ move to London, and years later with soundtracking my partner’s time spent playing Mario Kart while bunking off university. I saw them support Pavement in 1999, and have enthusiastically gobbled up the various recent reissues on vinyl. This week they return to Liverpool for the first time this century; I can hardly wait.
Thursday – Of Time And The City 12.45pm @ FACT Liverpool – £10.40/£9.40/£6.90
Fascinating archive footage is combined with personal commentary from Terrence Davies to produce a complex love letter to/City Symphony for Liverpool. Already weighty with his own recollections and pop culture quotations, the film has yet more poignance given the great director’s recent passing.
Essential Reading: Laura Brown on Terence Davies – Liverpool’s Greatest Son
Friday – David Hoyle: Ten Commandments 8pm @ Unity Theatre – £12/£10
Queer icon and survivor of a religious upbringing, for one night only, performance artist David Hoyle brings their Ten Commandments show to the Unity Theatre as part of Homotopia Festival (which got underway this past weekend).
Saturday – Bernice Mulenga: Exhibition and Artist Talk 2pm @ Open Eye Gallery – FREE
Exploring themes which include identity, sexuality, grief, darkness and family, hear British-Congolese photographer Bernice Mulenga expand on their eponymous exhibition (on display from Friday) in Open Eye Gallery’s atrium space.
Sunday – Haunted: The Innocents 5.30pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8/£5
Director Jack Clayton takes on Henry James’ spine tingling novella in what is considered by many – us included – as the best adaptation of The Turn of the Screw. Dripping with cloyingly sinister Gothic panache, a distressed governess of two young children is faced with the terrifying and malevolent spectres (real or imagined?) that continue to reside within the isolating grounds and walls of a country mansion.
Mike Pinnington
Images, from top: RIBA/Tate: Long Life, Low Energy: Designing for a Circular Economy Agnese Sanvito; Klimt And The Kiss trailer; Stereolab; Of Time And The City (still); Bernice Mulenga
