Culture Diary w/c 07-11-2016
What’s hot this week? Our pick of the arts, design, film and music listings from around Liverpool and the rest of the UK…
Monday – Talk: Marina Abramović On Walk Through Walls 7.30pm @ Royal Festival Hall, London — £20/15/12.50
One of the most famous performance artists in the world talks about her controversial new memoir, Walk Through Walls, tonight. Expect insight into her most provocative work – which has included being threatened with guns and knives, and brushing gore off cow bones for hundreds of hours — plus her collaborations with Ulay (who has recently sued her), Lady Gaga, Jay Z, and more.
PICK OF THE WEEK: Tuesday – The Invisible City: The Cinema Of Surveillance @ Pilkington Glass HQ, St Helens — FREE
A special week of surveillance-themed cinema from Heart of Glass and collaborator Abandon Normal Devices Festival, expect a theatrical exploration of espionage at this former glass factory. See creepy CCTV thriller Red Road (tonight), plus Johanna Hamilton’s heist documentary 1971 (Wednesday) and Francis Ford Coppola’s paranoid classic The Conversation (Thursday); and on Saturday, Alfred Hitchcock’s urban murder mystery Rear Window will be screened in a surprising new way (hint: binoculars) with a new short film by artist Liam Young, plus “quasi-fictional” tours of the factory with artist Michelle Browne.
Symposium – Policy Change Through The Counterpublic? 1—6pm @ Castlefield Gallery, Manchester — FREE
Rebecca de Mynn presents the findings from a year of ethnographic research on artist development this afternoon, via discussions and ideas sharing for and by artists, industry professionals, researchers, and policymakers. Refreshments included…
Thursday – Exhibition Opening: The Radical Eye 10am—4.30pm @ Tate Modern, London — £16.50
See Sir Elton John’s (yes, THAT Elton John) private collection of Modernist photographic portraits and prints, displayed in all its glory at Tate Modern. Expect Man Ray, Brassai, Imogen Cunningham, André Kertész, Dorothea Lange, Tina Modotti, and Aleksandr Rodchenko and more. Exhibition continues until 7 May 2017.
Exhibition Opening: No Such Thing As Gravity 11am—8pm @ FACT, Liverpool – FREE/£10
What do Will Self, 3D portraits, CERN, and tarot reading have in common? They’re all part of a whole day of events celebrating FACT’s new exhibition, which questions the relationship between art and science. Have your face scanned and 3D printed at Face Lab, to add to Gina Czarnecki’s artwork, Heirloom; hear artist and magician Nahum Mantra talk about hypnosis; and end the day with the Roy Stringer 2016 Memorial Lecture by Will Self, followed by a Q&A and drinks. Exhibition continues until 5 Feb 2017.
Exhibition Opening: The Cat Show 6—9pm @ Paper Gallery, Manchester — FREE
Meow! Featuring feline-themed artwork by artists Tilo Baumgärtel, Mike Chavez-Dawson, Ilona Kiss, Cathy Lomax (pictured, below, with It woke him up because it was hungry (The Long Goodbye) (2016)), Rui Matsunaga, Narbi Price, The Royal Art Lodge, and Miho Sato, who ask: are Internet cats the new opiate of the masses? You decide. Until 17 Dec.
Revolution – New Art For A New World 7pm @ VUE Cheshire Oaks, Ellesmere Port — £11.49
In a (very) limited release across the UK – including for one night only at VUE Cheshire Oaks – don’t miss this intriguing documentary (trailer, top) about Russia’s most iconic Avant-Garde artists, and their stories of censored masterpieces, banned for decades, and rarely seen outside Moscow. Cinema times in link above, and more info on the film here.
Friday – Peaches 8pm—2am @ Invisible Wind Factory, Liverpool — £17.60
Described by the Guardian as “joyous, gender-mashing cabaret”, expect Peaches (pictured, below) to bring a raucous mix of penis-shaped windsocks, yoga-poses, and big, electronica-shaped tracks from new album Rub, her first in six years. Supported by local superwomen (and Dazed approved) FAUX QUEENS.
Saturday – Unique Editions 12—6pm @ Rogue Project Space, Manchester — FREE
Did you know that Rogue Artists’ Studios is having to leave Crusader Mill, making way for residential apartments? They also share their building with textile businesses, such as Unique Knitwear, and in an interesting and timely collaboration, artist Sam Meech has linked-up the neighbours by experimenting with and sharing ideas about digital art and knitwear production. Expect an exhibition of his results — Internet-age Christmas jumpers, binary scarves, knitted punchbags and portraits – giving an amusing and poignant insight into factory life and manufacturing processes old and new. Until 13 Nov.
Laura Robertson, Editor