England Art And Culture

Art Tate Liverpool saved my life. In my memory my first visit to Tate Liverpool, and you’ll have to forgive me but it was twenty-five years ago, I was thirteen and most of anything which happened back then is submerged in a love of Transformers and Kylie Minogue, but in my memory, I visited on its first weekend of opening. I remember it being very busy, I remember that much. I remember laughing a lot. Boldly, Tate Liverpool’s opening exhibition was Surrealism In The Tate Gallery Collection, which as a statement of intent ranks with Lady Gaga turning up for an awards ceremony dressed in raw beef. My thirteen year old self, submerged in a love of Transformers and Kylie Minogue, thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. One of the pieces on display was Michael Craig-Martin’s An Oak Tree, a glass of water on a shelf above head height. Which was hilarious then and still is because as I now know, for reasons which later became apparent to me, the whole field of “conceptual art” is about challenging the viewer’s beliefs in the construct of the art world and themselves. Did I innately understand that? No. What was hilarious then was that an artist was able to put the glass of water on the shelf, put it on that wall, have a card which says “An Oak Tree”, other stuff, and people would turn up to see it. Even as I type that, I can’t quite believe it despite now thinking it’s one of the greatest pieces of art ever ushered into reality, even if it must be a bugger for the technicians to keep clean. How I got from one reason for finding An Oak Tree hilarious to the other reason I find An Oak Tree hilarious, is the reason Tate Liverpool, amongst other things, because there had to be a qualifier, because everything has a qualifier, saved my life. Perhaps this something which happens to everyone. Perhaps all of this is just part of growing up. Perhaps I’m just trying to find something to write. What I do remember is never being very good at school. Apart from the bullying, apart from that, I wasn’t an especially academic kid and easily distracted, by Transformers and Kylie Minogue, and not easily able to retain information. All of this is still true. I’m not an especially academic adult really, still easily distracted by Doctor Who and the Spotify, and barely able to retain information. But for the purposes of this story, let’s assume that in fact, I was a different person, that the premise of Michael Apted’s 7 Up series doesn’t apply to me. At the age of thirteen, when Tate Liverpool opened, another strong memory I have is of my parents returned from parents evening and telling me that the head of year, who didn’t even teach me, had said that “Stuart won’t amount to much.” Which wasn’t an especially nice thing to say, but you should also know that the school I went to, an old style grammar school despite being classified as a comprehensive, not fee paying but selective, was very much geared towards producing Oxbridge candidates, the rest of us, no matter how had we’d worked to get there, sometimes felt like the flotsam and jetsam of humanity. Not that I was old enough to really understand the implications of those words. I was thirteen and “not amounting to much” at that point didn’t really have a context. What I do know is that mum and dad weren’t worried, this wasn’t some moment when they thought I’d need a private tutor or anything like that. I just wasn’t academic. Not everyone is academic. Meanwhile, school continued. My grades, when I’m finally graded, which wasn’t something which happened then as often as it does now, are minimal. When I’m “setted”, I’m in the fourth set for French, fourth for Maths. I simply couldn’t learn. I remember working really, really hard sometimes, but not being able to retain anything. This now looks like something diagnosable but not then. It wasn't then. But one of the constants was art class. I wasn’t very good at that either. I certainl

Anna and David Henry Hwang in the Park Theatre (Thanks to Kat for snapping this one)Anna and Dr Amanda Rogers at Thursday's Yellow Face press nightAmanda and Charles Shaar Murray on press nightKevin Shen (who plays DHH in Yellow Face) introduces today's Q&A session with David Henry Hwang and Dr Amanda RogersAmanda and David in the Yellow Face Q&ADavid Henry HwangTo the spanking new Park Theatre in north London for the British premiere of David Henry Hwang's Yellow Face only 20 years after David's Tony-award winning M Butterfly which starred Anthony Hopkins was a smash hit on Broadway and beyond. (As he wrote one of the few parts for east Asian women, practically all young actresses have played the chilly Comrade Chen in various productions ... including me!)It's a sparkling stylish comedy, witty, clever and very tightly directed and acted. And it's made a timely appearance in the wake of the RSC The Orphan of Zhao controversy, having something to say about the absurdity of judging human beings by their skin.Kevin Shen, who produced and stars as the leading character (a certain award-winning playwright called "DHH"), said his production company had offered it to all the theatres who turned it down on the grounds it wasn't "commercial", so thank heavens for the Park Theatre for having the vision to take it on.My review will be published in the Morning Star on Wednesday. I gave it four stars.You have until 16th June to catch it.Review, interview, South China Morning Post column, and video of the Q&A to come ...Madam Miaow says ... visit Anna Chen's website here: http://www.annachen.co.uk/ Anna's food blog here: http://annacheneats.blogspot.com/

The tale of a perfect Sunday in the lovely village of Otley; a bargain hunt, a beer garden, and a typically British Sunday roast.

Clare Tollick previews the NOSH Night Market, co-founded by our old friend Andrew Critchett of @Fish& fame, and Ben Duong from The Hop Box, returning for its third helping in Sheffield next Thursday

A culture-rammed week began with Crosstown Lightnin' at the Black Velvet club in West Kensington last Saturday 18th May, supporting Bex Marshall and her band. Here's Crosstown Lightnin's encore with special guest Stephen Dale Petit. Charles Shaar Murray, Buffalo Bill Smith, Marc Jefferies and Pete Miles play "Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon.Video by Anna Chen.Madam Miaow says ... visit Anna Chen's website here: http://www.annachen.co.uk/ Anna's food blog here: http://annacheneats.blogspot.com/

The latest offering from preeminent art publisher Laurence King is a huge purple and pink tome put together by two leading thinkers in the graphic design world. Angharad Lewis was behind the brilliant (and now sadly defunct) Grafik Magazine, and Angus Hyland is a partner with mega design consultancy Pentagram. Their beautiful joint creation sets out to explore the relationship between illustration and the written word when it comes to describing desire and eroticism. Contributions from illustrators are paired with quotes, poetry and short stories from famous characters and writers such as the Marquis de Sade, Edgar Allan Poe and James Joyce. Most of the artists work in a predominantly monochrome or subdued palette, using fine line detail to create swirly lines and decorative patterns reminiscent of art nouveau, and there is an exemplary use of typography and layout throughout, the pale pink of the pages ensuring that even the most obviously erotic artwork never seems crass or in your face. At intervals a selection of the illustrators explain their working process, making this a must read for any fans of delicate decadence and erotic fantasy. Everything about the curation and design of The Purple Book has been thought through to make it as tactile and desirable an object as possible: one that you will want to hold and pore over, caressing the thick matte paper and marvelling at its weightiness. This publication is the antithesis of fast internet imagery: it’s one you’ll return to again and again, reminding you why beautiful books will never be usurped by the worldwide web.

POMPEI, HERCULANEUM AND ICE AGE ARTIn the cultural whirl that's been my life this past week, I've seen not only the sold-out sexily titled Life and Death: Pompei and Herculaneum exhibition (on until 29 September), I also caught Ice Age Art now in its final weeks: both at the British Museum. Some of the ice-age artefacts go back 31,000 years and, as the curators blast out from the posters, it does indeed mark the arrival of the modern mind. Female forms abound. Closer to Beryl Cook than Vogue, them were the days when being voluptuous (or as we called it in Hackney, "podgy") made you an object of beauty and the muse of artists. I wonder if those cavemen slept with their models.The funniest exhibit to have survived the volcanic wrath of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 is the statue of Pan shagging a goat — a garden ornament, it is believed, and certainly one I'd have frightening the squirrels in my back yard any day. It's a nanny, not a male goat the god of the wild is penetrating, so, hey, at least Pan's not GAY, thus preserving some decorum for the elderly ladies and school parties clogging up the aisles. However, I bet she's under age, thereby opening up another can of net-curtainland anxieties.However, she looks happy enough, and Pan has the manners to take her missionary stylee rather than doggy, so he's showing respect and not a little affection in the way he's playing with her beard. If a guy tugs fondly at your facial hair while making sweet lurve instead of demanding electrolysis, you know you're in with a second date. Up close enough for my breath to steam up the glass case, the wickedness in his smile is achieved with such subtlety that I could swear he winked at me.ELLEN GALLAGHERAt Tate Modern, I did one last circuit of the Lichtenstein on its last day, quite liked the Saloua Raouda Choucair but fell head obver heels in love with Ellen Gallagher who I'd never even heard of before.Motifs of boggle eyes and big grinning thick-lipped mouths run through her early work and are immediate clues as to her identity as a mixed race black woman working in the US. She's funny, beautiful and political so that's my fandom sewn up.Three vast canvasses made up of hundreds of original mid-20th century newsprint magazine adverts targeting American black people sport new hairdos courtesy of the artist made out of bright yellow plasticene in an amusing and imaginative series of ludicrous formations that aren't half as mad as the neuroses those magazines were feeding.One of my favourite pictures, Abu Simbel, is a mucked around photogravure of the three giant statues of pharoahs sitting outside one of the pyramids. Again, thick minstrel lips, broad noses and boggle eyes are stuck on the pharoahs' faces. Heads of murdered black men tumble in a heap at the base, two nurses smile and three tiny men in suits point feebly at a flying saucer made of yellow plasticene, turquoise fun-fur and spangles shooting its death rays.Those nurses are referenced throughout Gallagher's earlier work but it wasn't until I read the notes for another big canvas and my overall favourite, An Experiment of Unusual Opportunity (2008), that I realised the significance.The experiment referred to is the notorious Tuskegee experiment where hundreds of poor black men were deliberately infected with syphyllis and observed over 40 years from 1932 with no medical treatment even when pennicillin was found to be a cure. Nurse Eunice Rivers was the trusted intermediary between the men and an insane medical establishment. This work is an abstract, like several other of the 100 or so works on show, made of hundreds of paper strips soaked in blue ink to varying intensities so that the whole surface ripples, and contrasted with smaller areas of oranges and ochres. It is the most beautiful thing to look at yet represents one of the ugliest events in modern American history. The reproductions don't do it justice so do see the real deal.There's a ton more from Gallagher, with her tendrilly m

Ben Fincher (@benCVTW) overcomes his customary cynicism and admits to actually having fun at Leeds City Varieties when he goes to see I Was a Rat.

The Pink Shed in the Trinity Centre invited us to be amongst the first to sample pop-up private dining: we sent Joshua Woodall along to see what it was all about.

Leeds Student Union abandon plans to open a petting zoo for exam-stressed students; instead they are hiring a bouncy castle. In my day student stress was coped with by having lots of alcohol and sex ... how times have changed! Paul Thomas has the story.