Culture Diary w/c 22-04-2019
Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from around the North of England and the rest of the UK – and loads of it’s free!
Tuesday – Eighth Grade 6pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8
Don’t be fooled by the title and youthfulness of this film’s cast, Eighth Grade is a serious take on adolescence and what lies just over the horizon, (and has been subject to a slew of stellar reviews). The focus here is thirteen-year-old Kayla, negotiating the final days of middle school and the trials and tribulations of teendom in the age of social media.
Wednesday – Fat White Family in-store @ Phase One, Liverpool – £18
Nice to see Liverpool venues increasingly committing to in-store performances from bands touring new records. The latest sees Domino Records’ Fat White Family out in support of new long-player, Serfs Up!, released this week. The album, which has gleaned a clutch of favourable early reviews, sees a return to form for the South London provocateurs.
Thursday – Open Source in Conversation: Maria Ansell 6pm @ Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool – FREE
With her practice rooted in “narratives surrounding people, places and objects”, photographer Maria Ansell’s series, ‘89’, is currently on display at the Open Eye Gallery. The project addresses archives, why photographers feel the need to collect and – informed by her grandfather’s recent Alzheimer’s diagnosis – the nature and credibility of memory in images. Tonight sees Ansell expand on the themes running through her recent work.
Friday – Exhibition Opening: Larry Achiampong: Dividednation @ Primary, Nottingham – FREE
The title of this exhibition seems all too timely in its observation that we are a people gripped by polemics – whether they be of climate change, Brexit, or any other albatross that may rear its ugly head. But there is hope, too (Perhaps), suggested by the strike-through, leaving us with divination; that is, to look into the future. An artist whose point of departure is Afrofuturism, the exhibition will be Achiampong’s most comprehensive to date, employing video, installation, performance, sculpture, and text-based works to address the UK’s dizzying socio-political landscape.
Exhibition Opening: Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition @ The Design Museum, London – £16
Just occasionally, those who write the copy for gallery websites can be prone to hyperbole. The Design Museum’s proclamation that Stanley Kubrick is “one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th century” is, therefore, practically a study in understatement. Known for his obsessive nature in researching and producing his pictures (stories about his scouting photographs are legendary), this exhibition includes props, models, rarities, projections and interviews to piece together his process. Including approximately 700 objects and complemented with a season of his films at BFI, this exhibition seems an essential companion to those looking for insight into what drove Kubrick’s genius.
Saturday – Music from the Star Wars Saga 7.30pm @ Liverpool Philharmonic –£15/£21/£27/£35/£45
It’s fair to say that John Williams’ score for Star Wars is perhaps as fundamental to the sheer cinematic enjoyment of the space opera series as its beloved cast of characters. If you’d like to test that assertion, head along to the Phil this evening as Williams’ music is given the room to breathe and takes centre stage, separated from the movies that birthed it. From The Phantom Menace to The Last Jedi, the full Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra plays music from the entire Star Wars saga.
Sunday – Wong Kar-Wai Lecture 3pm @ Moth Club, London – £11
Wong Kar-Wai’s films are synonymous with beauty, melancholy, and the suffering of unexplored desire. To have seen one of his films is to have, for its running time at the very least, lived all of those things and more. For many, that particular film will likely be In the Mood for Love, starring Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung. Exploring their unconsummated relationship – which the pair toy with, and that we luxuriate in – the director has described it as akin to “two people dancing together slowly.” Tonight, film critic and writer Tony Rayns revisits the great Hong Kong auteur’s career through clips, photographs and more.
Mike Pinnington
Images from top: Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love; Maria Ansell, ’89′; Kubrick on set, 2001: A Space Odyssey; Star Wars still
