Culture Diary w/c 7-01-2019
Welcome to the first Culture Diary of 2019, featuring our pick of the 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!
Monday – Bands FC 10am-5pm daily @ British Music Experience – FREE
Aligning their twin passions of music and football, Bands FC manifests the idea – hit upon last July – of “Bands as Football Teams, Football Teams as Bands”. Now, the British Music Experience has pulled their crest designs together for this free exhibition. Bands receiving the treatment range from the massive to the niche and downright obscure; the fun is finding a band you love among those depicted.
Tuesday – RBG 6.30pm @ FACT – £12.20/concs
Co-produced by the exceptional Storyville, and CNN, this doc brings to light the story of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Now in her mid-80s, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Bader Ginsburg (the RBG of the title) became a lawyer, she says, “when women were not wanted by the legal profession”. Today she is recognised as a trailblazer who fought for the law to acknowledge that “men and women are persons of equal dignity and they should count equally”.
Wednesday – She’s Eclectic: Women Artists of the VG&M Collection @ Victoria Gallery & Museum – FREE
This timely new exhibition from the Victoria Gallery & Museum team showcases (as the title suggests) works by female artists in the university of Liverpool collection. Including recognisable names such as Bridget Riley, Gillian Ayres and Dame Elisabeth Frink, the show also features previously overlooked artists as well as recent acquisitions.
Thursday – Exhibition Opening: Kevin Casey: Shouldn’t Throw Stones – The View of a Night Watchman @ Output Gallery – FREE
Artist Kevin Casey has documented the remains and archives of the former-Pilkington Glass HQ in St Helens, whilst moonlighting as an on-site security guard. Interested in charting what the factory meant then, Casey breathes new life into its carcass, leading us to ask questions of the workers, their lives, relationships and the conversations conducted within those walls.
In pictures: The Night Watchman at Pilkington Glass
Friday – Exhibition Opening: Six Memos 10am-5pm @ St. George’s Hall – FREE
This group exhibition is inspired by Italo Calvino’s book Six Memos for the Next Millennium. The show, convened by CreArt, a “network of cities for artistic creation”, and curated by Branka Benčić, has been staged in Spain, Poland and now comes to the UK. Featuring artists from across Europe responding to Calvino’s essays on Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, Multiplicity and Consistency, The Double Negative’s own Laura Robertson has created new text works for each show, and this time collaborates with artist/designer Mark Simmonds.
London Short Film Festival @ venues across London until Sunday 20 January
Now in its sixteenth year, London Short Film Festival’s 2019 iteration has a special focus on culture of the 1980s. Drawn from the UK and internationally, its strands cover music, politics, culture, and foregrounds LGBTQ+ and BAME experience and filmmakers. Highlights include Derek Jarman: The Music Videos, It (Still) Ain’t Half Racist, Mum, revisiting Stuart Hall’s 1979 film essay, It Ain’t Half Racist, Mum, and Queer films to #FuckTrump.
Spare Snare 8pm @ 81 Renshaw Street – £6
Friend of TDN and erstwhile contributor Marc Hall recalls seeing Dundee band Spare Snare – around since the early 90s – back in the day (in the old Lomax) “maybe in a support slot for Bis”. It speaks volumes then that their latest release, Sounds (out in July last year), attracted not only rave reviews, but adjectives such as “fresh”. Recorded with Steve Albini, the lo-fi indie legends are touring through January.
Saturday – L8 Laffs launch night/Coming to America 6pm @ VideOdyssey – £5
In venues across Toxteth and as part of the BFI’s Comedy Genius strand – a nationwide celebration of comedy on film and TV – L8 Laffs opens this Saturday with Coming to America. With screenings taking place through January priced between £3 and £5, it caters to twin January concerns – leavening the gloom and being kind to the wallet.
Exhibition Opening: Motion Sickness @ STOCK Gallery 12-8pm – FREE
Initiated by Cambridge School of Art graduates Denise Kehoe, Eleanor Breeze and Arabella Hilfiker, Motion Sickness are intent on forging a new path. Railing against societal pressures, the group aims “to explore and satirise society’s view of ‘millennialhood’”. STOCK Gallery’s Kieran Healy describes the collective’s output as “an idiosyncratic blend of sculpture, painting, video and drawing create[ing] narratives that are uniquely irreverent and completely mundane, marking them as a tour de force of Generation Y.” Worth keeping an eye on.
Sunday – The Last Movie 3.15pm @ Storyhouse – £8.50
Directed by Dennis Hopper, 1971’s The Last Movie divided the critics. In his review that year, Roger Ebert described it as “a wasteland of cinematic wreckage”. In December of last year, however, the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw called it “a fascinating, flawed adventure in ideas”. Co-written by Hopper and Rebel Without A Cause screenwriter Stewart Stern, one suspects that this film, about says Bradshaw “the ritualistic voodoo of cinema”, is worthy of reconsideration.
Mike Pinnington
Images, from top: Self Portrait by Evelyn Gibbs, 1927 (Drypoint etching); Six Memos exhibition poster; Spare Snare Sounds sleeve artwork