Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from around the UK – and most of it’s free!

Monday – 61 Minutes In Munich: Howard Gayle In Conversation With Emy Onuora 7pm @ Toxteth Library, Liverpool — £6/3

What was it like to the first Black footballer in Liverpool’s 88-year history to play at first team level? To grow up in Toxteth and Norris Green, and be heralded as the man who took Liverpool to the European Cup final in 1981? Howard Gayle tonight shares first-hand experience of his footballing career with Emy Onuora, author of Pitch Black, The Story of Black British Footballers.

Tuesday – Poetry Workshop : Drive-Through Sublime 7—8.30pm @ Parasol Unit, London — £8/6, Booking Required

Budding poet? Then enjoy tonight’s workshop with poet and record producer Simon Pomery, which promises lively discussion and poetic exercises. Expect the night to take particular inspiration from German artist Elger Esser’s photographic landscapes (detail of Salwa Bahry I, pictured, below), which are currently on show as Morgenland at Parasol, and created during his travels across Lebanon, Egypt and Israel.

Wednesday – Plume w/ Live AV Show 9—11pm @ Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester — FREE

With one of Plume’s earlier performances this year reviewed as “intricately textured trip-hop… giving the impression of a single long-form composition slowly unfurling”, this Manchester-based electronic/experimental four piece have piqued our imagination with their sneak peek trailer for this week’s RNCM show (top). Expect abstract, digital projection mapping alongside a trippy, one hour live set in the RNCM opera theatre.

Thursday – Storyhouse Launch @ Chester – FREE

With a growing sense of excitement, Chester’s brand new cultural centre opens this week: a cinema, library, cafe and theatre space firmly focus on new performance, film and music. Expect drama inside and outside of the new building, as many of the performances will also be shown as open air events: Alice in Wonderland, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Julius Caesar – and a “filthy” interpreatation of musical The Beggar’s Opera; drama and comedy with new cinematic releases The Sense of an Ending and Mindhorn, as well as a crowd-pleasing mix of blockbusters, from La La Land to Moana, as open air screenings; and a blend of world, classical and experimental live music, of which Craig Charles’ interpretation of Red Riding Hood, Tales Of The Dark Woods, is a highlight. Read our feature on the space here.

Primary Lates 6—10pm  @ Venues Across Nottingham – FREE

Enjoy five different exhibitions tonight in five different venues, alongside yummy  “School Dinners” from the Small Food Bakery. At Primary, expect to see Sahej Rahal’s live performance launch his shamanistic solo show, 
Dry Salvages; whilst Trade Gallery (also situated at Primary) introduces the strange cereamcs of Urara Tsuchiya (pictured, above). 

Paint It Black: Double Indemnity (1944) 7pm @ Penketh Library, Warrington — £3

As part of Culture Warrington’s Paint It Black film noir series, Penketh Library shows one of the first: Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler’s cracking thriller (pictured, below). Based on James M. Cain’s novel, and filled to bust with memorable one-liners — “I couldn’t hear my own footsteps. It was the walk of a dead man” – it’s a thrilling and doomed affair of two greedy lovers: one blond femme fatale and her insurance salesman lover who plan to murder her unsuspecting husband.

Friday – Exhibition Opening: A Look At Looking, Eason Tsang Ka Wai 10—5pm @ CFCCA, Manchester – FREE

Hong Kong as seen through the eyes of artist Eason Tsang Ka Wai. Expect photography and experimental media to capture the experiences of city-dwellers: interior spaces, crowded public spaces and “hidden anxieties about excessive modernisation”. Until 18 June 2017.

PICK OF THE WEEK: Saturday – Pierre Henry: The Liverpool Mass 7.30–10pm Location @ Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral — £10/£7

Introduced by the wonderful Jarvis Cocker (Pulp frontman and BBC 6 Music presenter), this one-off evening spent with composer Pierre Henry’s previously un-staged work is bound to be one to remember — as programmed to celebrate the Bluecoat’s 300 year anniversary (listen to our playlist here). Using 40 speakers to create a huge sound around the circular cathedral space, which is bathed in blue light from its stained glass, expect a truly immersive live mix of Henry’s “musique concrete” by his collaborator Thierry Balasse, in addition to a set by a set by contemporary electronic sound designers Vincent Epplay and Samon Takahashi.

Sunday –  LOOK/17: Shaping The City: Artist Talk By John Davies 2—3.30pm @ Tate Liverpool — FREE

Sadly, today is the last day to see LOOK/17 Photography Festival. Fear not, as artist John Davies sends it out in style: presenting a selection of his black and white and colour documentary cityscapes (pictured, above), from work made since the 1980’s to the present day, to start a conversation about our evolving cities.  Be sure to pop into the other LOOK/17 venues, which include the nearby Open Eye Gallery and Museum of Liverpool: read our articles here.

Laura Roberson, Editor

Scouse accents, disorientation, loneliness, and constructing portraiture: Maja Lorkowska speaks to LOOK/17 festival artist Yan Preston about her commission to capture Liverpool’s diverse Chinese residents…

“She celebrates Chinese New Year, she uses WeChat [China's most popular messaging app] but she has a Liverpool accent. It’s very nice!”

Artist Yan Preston is on a mission. A photographer born in Central China, she has taken on the challenge of representing Liverpool’s diverse Chinese community for this year’s LOOK/17 photography festival. After all, what does it mean to be Chinese in our changing world? How are mainland Chinese different to those from Hong Kong? What about the Chinese who have lived in Britain for most of their lives?

Preston’s resulting portraits, entitled Now and Before (currently on show in LiverpoolONE and The Museum of Liverpool) challenge the old, mainstream representation of Chinese people: getting away from stereotypes of restaurant and takeaway workers. As a subject, it’s both looking to the past and the future: Liverpool’s Chinatown is home to the oldest Chinese community in Europe; concurrently, China is changing, and the Chinese populace outside of it is too.

Her portraits capture models in what would be considered their natural surroundings. From the football pitch to the local library, each photographed person uses their moment differently. There is a confident stare from a trendy, young student complemented by background graffiti; a thoughtful half-smile from a smartly dressed man sitting in the window of a Sandwich Bar. The series is a captivating cross-section of age, attitude and professional choices.

Preston’s “way in” as an artist initially came in the form of international university students. Those who have recently landed on British soil — with one foot still back home — are the newest addition to the city’s Chinese community. She mentions that photographing these first subjects was actually quite complicated, because there was no one place that “belonged” to them. The very particular medium of the portrait demands a meaningful backdrop with relevant local context — particularly given the festival’s theme this year of Cities of Exchange between Liverpool and Hong Kong. So Preston had to trust her artistic instincts and improvise, responding to the moment.

We talked about one of the models photographed on Crosby Beach, who despite becoming more comfortable around Anthony Gormley’s bronze sculptures (a popular local landmark), nevertheless held a pose that was quite defensive: she had her fists ready, seemingly, to protect herself. “It worked”, Preston notes, “because that’s how she felt at the time.”

Having emigrated from Hong Kong herself 12 years ago, did Preston feel sentimental while working on this project? The artist describes feeling a certain level of empathy with the students’ disorientation, and recalls her own experiences of temporarily refusing to make friends: “If I had friends I’d have ties, and leaving them would be painful.”

However, this LOOK17 commission did not focus solely on students and their non-places. Preston describes the experience of getting to know the more permanent residents as eye-opening. “You see people that have just landed here, and those who have moved here 20, 30 years ago, and how they establish themselves in Liverpool. They are still very much of the Chinese culture however you want to define it; but really, they are from Liverpool now.”

Portrait and landscape photography seem to be symbiotic in Preston’s wider portfolio. Previous artwork Mother River, the subject of her PhD study, took her on an epic journey around China, following the Yangtze River and photographing it at 100km intervals. Preston describes this project as a kind-of portrait; like photographing humanity with the backdrop of the river. “It’s always about the people. How much do we know about a river? We’re not geologists.”

During our conversation, Preston and I discuss the overlaps and differences between the art of landscape and portrait photography. Most forms of photography are documentary of course – the scene is there and you record it. Yet with Now and Before, there is the element of the theatrical: choosing the model, the location, taking into account their clothes and facial expressions. “It’s half, well, mostly constructed”, she states.

After trying various approaches and consequently rejecting them, Preston eventually found her own method. “I decided not to shoot people from a low angle, looking up, so they won’t appear too heroic. I feel that this is already a project designed to give exposure to Chinese people and you don’t need to blow their trumpets too much.” Knowing that they were going to be shown in a public space in addition to a museum setting – LiverpoolONE has a huge footfall — she chose an advertising-style size of 1.5m in height: “I just present them. Make them visible.”

As LOOK/17’s new vision promotes the “trans-global sharing of images and ideas”, what does Preston think the role of photography is now and how can it work in this image-drowned world? After a moment’s thought, the artist answers with a question: “Can you imagine a life without photography now?” She explains the approach of an artist-photographer as somebody who is more careful about constructing and displaying images. “I feel there is so much out there that if what I’m saying is not adding something, then I better just shut up. For this reason, I am not very active on social media. I feel like I don’t want to add to the flood if it is not meaningful.”

Maja Lorkowska

See Yan Preston’s work at LiverpoolONE and at the Museum of Liverpool until 14 May 2017 

Part of LOOK/17 festival, which continue at venues across Liverpool including Open Eye Gallery (18 June) and the Victoria Gallery and Museum (7 October) — see here for the full programme

Images, from top: Xu Rui (detail), and Xuan Yihao; both portraits from Now and Before by artist Yan Preston, courtesy the artist and LOOK/17

Photography made from a pinhole camera the size of a hotel room will be the star attraction at LOOK/17 festival. Pete Goodbody meets the artist, Luke Ching, to hear more about his peculiar and intense set-up — which includes living in the same room, in the dark, until the exposure time is complete…

You might be surprised to learn that digital photography will not be occupying the prime spot at LOOK, Liverpool’s International Photography Festival 2017. Instead, expect a more traditional, unpredictable format: pinhole photography. Created by Hong Kong-based artist Luke Ching during a week-long residency at the Titanic Hotel on Liverpool’s North Docks, during a chilly January 2017, Ching built a camera obscura the size of an entire room — although he prefers the term “pinhole room”. He’s an ideal choice for the festival’s theme, Cities of Exchange, as he uses an unexpected medium to consider how the language of photography is used to experience and shape the city.

This year’s LOOK festival will welcome Chinese photographers to the UK – via a close working relationship with Open Eye Gallery and former CFCCA curator Ying Kwok — and will explore images taken in Hong Kong and Liverpool; cities with a long history of commercial and creative interchange.

When I meet with Ching, he describes how his pinhole camera images are projected onto a vast collage of A3-sized photo sensitive papers, pinned all over one wall in his hotel room, and thus exposed to the image created by the tiny pinhole lens. The exposures are long: in the case of one image, 24 hours long. Unbelievably, throughout the exposure, Ching lives in the room, never turning on the lights. It’s difficult to imagine such a commitment, which seems comparable with meditation.

This temporary and intense residence is important to Ching. Many will know the Titanic Hotel building and its neighbouring Tobacco Warehouse as significant, historic structures; built in the 19^th century and a meaningful part of Liverpool’s past as a port city, as well as its present iteration as one of tourism and culture. By contrast, Ching’s stay is transient; he acts as a tourist, renting a hotel room for a short period of time. The huge camera that he constructs in this room is a temporary object; installed for about three days, then dismantled; the room returning easily to its intended use. It’s as though he was never there.

We discuss this temporary transformation of an unassuming room into a giant camera as a relatively short period of time in comparison with the life of the building. There is another contrast of time; compared with a “normal” camera’s exposure, usually measured in fractions of a second, the long exposures of the pinhole camera give Ching the chance to have a more considered relationship with the building. He calls this “playing with time”.

Ching’s other artworks also reflect a certain playfulness. Screensaver (2013-14) is a series of CRT monitors, each displaying a corporate logo. Over a period of about six months, Ching made sure that the image was burned onto the monitor’s screen, creating a permanent image on the display. This type of screen-burn doesn’t affect modern LCD or plasma monitors, but it was a problem in the early days of personal computing, and it was the reason for the creation of screensavers: a constantly shifting image displayed so as to prevent the creation of a permanent, ghostly image. Ching’s piece endeavoured to do the opposite.

He likes waiting, Ching explains. Another piece, entitled The Happy Princess, had Ching filming a pair of statues in Manchester in 2012. He waited to start filming until a pigeon landed on the statue’s head, and then filmed until the pigeon left.  It took him 12 days to get about six minutes worth of footage.

The pinhole camera images are part of a project Ching has been working on for more than 16 years and, he says, is likely to carry on for many more. Some of these images were shown at his exhibition For Now We See Through A Window, Dimly, at Gallery EXIT in Hong Kong at the end of 2016. Ching tends to focus on architecture as a metaphor for our times. Most of his photography is of structurally or historically noteworthy buildings. But some, such as a photograph taken at the Hong Kong squatter town of Pok Fu Lam, show the temporary life of structures. This reflects something of modern day Hong Kong, where Ching thinks real estate is treated more and more like a consumer good – a commodity to be bought and sold for money rather than a place in which to live on any long-term basis. Again, we see Ching returning to a theme of time.

He says he is seen as a conceptual artist at home in Hong Kong, and although he does work with other media, perhaps the pinhole shots are the clearest way to see and understand Ching’s fascination with the concept of time and his demonstration of the contrasts. He is very much an artist first and a photographer second: “I just know how to do pinhole”, he insists. As a vehicle for expressing his ideas, this tool seems to be a perfect fit.

The other thought-provoking effect of the long exposures Ching employs is to remove any people or movement from the image. This, then, focuses the work on the architecture, which Ching says should be intended to last, but is so often not the case these days. That is why he found working in the Titanic Hotel so stimulating, as its long history as a commercial warehouse created a contrast with his temporary residence. Yet, he hopes the images created there will speak to Liverpool’s more permanent residents, not just the tourists, as he was for a time.

Pete Goodbody

See Luke Ching at Open Eye Gallery as part of LOOK/2017 from 7 April to 14 May 2017 — FREE

Image, top: Luke Ching’s pinhole camera photography, courtesy the artist. Middle image: Ching in Liverpool during his residency, and bottom, a close up of his work — both image credits courtesy Pete Goodbody