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London’s cultural highlights this month
A film festival, art fair, even a cocktail week: it’s strange the way that October seems to generate such creative wealth – particulary given that all this is after the design and fashion extravaganza that was September… But if film, art fairs and cocktails aren’t your thing (as if), we’ve also got everything for you from bawdy theatre to experimental food, plus the unveiling of the new Unilever installation at the Tate Modern. Talk about spoiled…
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ART: GRAYSON PERRY: THE TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN CRAFTSMAN
Oct 6 – Feb 19
British Museum, Great Russell St, WC1B 3DG
Forget bulls and chinashops – the folks (some would say crazy) at the British Museum have let none other than Grayson Perry loose in all his Turner-winning, drag-glory on their vast (and priceless) trans-historic catalogue… Thankfully, what he’s come back with is quite wonderful: combining objects from the last two Millennia, from ancient tapestries and tools through to a Hello Kitty pilgrim hand-towel and his own piece of work – a richly-decorated cast iron coffin-ship. The result is, as he puts it, “a memorial to all the anonymous craftsmen that over the centuries have fashioned the manmade wonders of the world…” |
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DRINK: LONDON COCKTAIL WEEK
Oct 7-16
Various Locations
Now this is what we call culture: nine glorious days spent celebrating the golden age of the cocktail, at over 100 of our fine city’s greatest bars. Sigh: life is tough. Register for your wristband through the LCW website for discounts on drinks and access to the free cocktail buses, plus there are tastings, dinners, masterclasses, and clearly parties galore. Education, appreciation and memorable experiences – all with a tasty cocktail in-hand? Oh, go on then… |
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THEATRE: JERUSALEM
Oct 8 – Jan 14
Apollo Theatre, Shaftesbury Ave, W1D 7EZ
It rocked the Royal Court, shook the rafters of Shaftesbury Avenue, was victorious over Broadway – and now Jez Butterworth’s sensationally electric, eccentric, monstrously mischievous take on our fair and verdant land is back once more at the Apollo. The wondrous Mackenzie Crook is back on the boards as Ginger, while Mark Rylance continues to hold trailer-court as the show-stealing Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron. We can’t stress quite how much you need to catch this at once hysterical and heart-rending show – and how essential it’s probably going to be to book in advance. |
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ART: THE UNILEVER SERIES: TACITA DEAN
Oct 11 – Mar 11
Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 9TG
The Unilever Series installations in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall are always things of conversation-stealing cultural prominence, here in London. And their latest – this time by the Berlin-based, Kent-born YBA filmmaker, Tacita Dean – is set to do it once again. Quite how her contemplative, poetic lens will take on the hall’s vast concrete space is of course a mystery – especially considering that she’s following on from a lineage of vast setting suns, architectural fractures, and storey-high abstract lilies – but we have no doubt it will be enthralling and conversation-worthy at the very least. |
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SHOP: JONATHAN SAUNDERS X SMYTHSON IPAD CASE
£395
Who says you can’t be fickle and culturally savvy – not us, that’s for sure. After a spell of rumour-milling, Jonathan Saunders collection for Smythson has finally landed, and we’re all over it here in the office – particularly the stunning colour-blocked goatskin iPad case, lined, naturally, in Saunders’ signature flora and fauna printed silk. Even if it does cost as much as your iPad in the first place… Want to stand out at Frieze/LFF while still pretending to work? This, right here, is the answer. |
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DANCE: ARMITAGE GONE! DANCE
11 – 12 Oct
Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre,
Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX
Unseen in London since the ‘80s, the NYC-based Armitage Gone! Dance company returns for a world premiere and revival this month as part of the Dance Umbrella event. Famed as the ‘punk ballerina’, Karole Armitage presents Two Theories- Quantum and String, which explores the poetry underlying Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum mechanics in a flurry of dramatically over-pronounced movements and pointed toes. Drawing inspiration from fashion, Japanese aesthetics and physics itself, it should make for an enjoyable show (especially if we come out understanding quantum physics). |
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FILM: LONDON FILM FESTIVAL
Oct 12-27
Various Locations
After last month’s London Fashion Week and London Design Festival, it’s high time we celebrated art of the cinematic variety. This year’s LFF will be offering no less than its usual fare: including current goldenboys du jour, Michael Fassbender and Ryan Gosling taking to the screen – the former appearing in Shame, a sexed-up odyssey of self-loathing in present day New York filled with extended shots and phallic references, while Gosling appears in Clooney’s stylish and politically savvy The Ides of March. Tough call. |
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ART: FRIEZE ART FAIR
Oct 13-16
Regent's Park, NW1 4NR
It’s not an October without a Frieze art festival. And this year, among the various and always creatively inspiring talks, films and installations on offer for the art-hungry, we’re particularly intrigued by Christian Jankowski’s project, in which a boat dealer will be selling a full size yacht from a conventional gallery stand. More yacht fair than exhibition, you say? Not if you view the boat as art, and the shoppers as artistic subjects, says Jankowski. Deep. Like the ocean. |
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FOOD: EXPERIMENTAL FOOD SOCIETY SPECTACULAR
Oct 21-23
Truman Brewery, Dray Walk Gallery, E1 6QL & The Folly, 41 Gracechurch St, EC3V 0BT
It’s food; it’s experimental; and it’s almost certainly going to be spectacular (talk about doing what you say on the can.) If you’ve never been to an EFS event before, then get thee forthwith and henceforth to Brick Lane to have your hungry little brain blown; and if you have, well then you don’t need us to tell you what to expect. Two days of bizarrely beautiful and oddly appetizing exhibition on the Friday and Saturday (at £5), with gastro-sculptors, -magicians, -futurists and -artists, are rounded off by a piece-de-resistance of a Sunday banquet (at £60). Pitch for the Sunday: your standard supperclub this most certainly ain’t. |
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| SPOTLIGHT |
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Priceless London
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Experiences money can’t buy with MasterCard
Discounts at luxe hotels and restaurants, access to private after-hours events, tickets to hot shows, legitimate queue-jumping: these are all things that we like here at UJ. And MasterCard’s new initiative Priceless London is a way of getting all that – from a special deal at Heston Blumenthal’s Dinner to a guaranteed window seat at the Oxo Tower restaurant. It’s easy to browse the experiences on offer at the Priceless London site but only those with a MasterCard can make use of them.
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LINK TO THESE FEATURES: ART & CULTURE
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AC and JC |
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(c)
2011 Urban Junkies. All rights reserved.
Reproductions of any portion of this website only with our express
permission. Urban Junkies is a free daily mailer. All listings
and features are editorial: We do not receive any payment from
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accuracy of information listed but we cannot accept responsibility
for errors or omissions.
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