ART FAIR: LONDON
London Art Fair
Rounding up the latest in contemporary art this weekend in London is – suitably enough – the London Art Fair taking place at the Business Design Centre in Islington. Celebrating its 27th edition, the event across two floors is showing collections from 128 galleries featuring modern British works such as those by London-based street-artist Slinkachu and more global fare such as Antwerp-based urban and natural landscape-photographer Jan Kempenaers’ vivid reexaminations of what surrounds us. Also on the programme is the annual Photo50 exhibition of contemporary images curated by Sheyi Bankale, editor of London photography magazine Next Level.
Business Design Centre, 52 Upper Street, Islington. Open Saturday, 10.00-19.00; Sunday 10.00-17.00. Until 25 January.
londonartfair.co.uk
THEATRE: SINGAPORE
M1 Singapore Fringe Festival: Art & Loss
This weekend is the last chance to sample the best in local theatre at the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival taking place across the island. The productions this year span companies from eight countries and use theatre to explore the shared human experience of loss. This weekend local theatre company The Necessary Stage is presenting three performances of the double bill Untitled Women at the Drama Centre, featuring Singaporean thesps Ethel Yap, Edith Podesta and Sharda Harrison. The first part of the show features two women talking about their relationships while the second tells the somewhat unusual tale of a widowed cow during 12 days of mourning. The burning question you’ll have to answer after watching: do humans or cows deal better with loss?
Performances take place at venues across Singapore, see website for details.
singaporefringe.com
ART: ISTANBUL
The Sacred + The Profane
Through the atypical combination of anonymous and found vintage photographs, advert cut-outs and the use of traditional Turkish kilim tapestries, Istanbul-born artist Elsa Ers’ mixed-media works on show at Istanbul’s Pg Art Gallery are an exploration of her cultural heritage and the tensions at the heart of gender identity. Ers emigrated to Paris for her studies but in her work she constantly revisits her homeland, with emotive combinations of these unnamed local figures set among elements of traditional craft. These disparate companions are given new life and new backstories that question familiar feelings such as belonging, displacement and what it means to embrace the past.
Pg Art Gallery, Tophane Iskele Caddesi, 34425. Until 25 February.
pgartgallery.com
ART: NEW YORK
Matters of Pattern
Skarstedt Gallery in New York’s Chelsea neighbourhood presents Matters of Pattern this weekend – an exhibition featuring 15 pieces that play with perception and repetition through the use of patterns and motifs. Highlights among the sculptures, paintings and photography on show include New York-based veteran photographer Cindy Sherman’s surreal “Untitled #138” that touches on the role that women play in society and another “Untitled” by young LA talent Lucien Smith. The latter’s paintings adopt patterns such as camouflage used in the Vietnam war to explore how aesthetic beauty can grow from the most unlikely sources.
Skarstedt, 550 West 21st Street. Open Tuesday to Friday, 09.30-18.00; Saturday, 10.00-18.00. Until 21 February.
skarstedt.com
MUSIC: GLOBAL
BC Camplight: How to Die in the North
Brian Christinzio has taken a roundabout route to musical success. The New Jersey native uprooted to Philadelphia where stints with bands such as The War on Drugs helped refine his musical vision but it’s been his latterly adopted hometown of Manchester UK that has seen his BC Camplight moniker mature into what we hear on How to Die in the North: a richly layered pop treat that surprises and indulges in equal measure. There’s everything here from smooth yacht rock to Brian Wilson-esque falsettos twirling around some genuinely strange and slightly unsettling arrangements. It might be early in 2015 but if you hear a record quite as good as How to Die in the North in the next 11 months, consider this year a vintage one.
‘How to Die in the North’ is available now.
bellaunion.com
