An online & print journal celebrating contemporary culture in the North West of England.
Tusk is an online & print journal, a team of writers & collaborators dedicated to providing features on the best in independent music, lifestyle & cultural events in the North West. Based in Manchester & Liverpool, we are a platform for young aspiring writers & artists who wish to be published online and in print, covering the things they love and are passionate about to a wide & varied audience.
http://tuskjournal.com/online-features/2015/1/28/the-death-of-dreams
In 1997 a teacher once asked me, ‘Alex, have you got your brain today?’
Naturally perplexed, my retort manifested in nothing more than a whimper as
my (rather dashing and lion-like) eyes squinted back at her in juvenile
confusion. I mean, what was this woman thinking, for of course I hadn’t. I
was 7 years old, and it was a Monday, after all.
A Carefully Planned Festival arrives in the Northern Quarter this weekend
for the fourth year running, taking over an ambitious seven venues,
including The Castle, Soup Kitchen, Kaak and Gullivers. Originally the
brainchild of Matthew Boycott-Garnett, who curated the first Carefully
Planned with the help of Mike Glenister way back in 2011, this year, with
help from a few friends, the pair have managed to put together another
impressive line up of 125 live acts over two days, as well as after parties
with local DJ favourites such as Underachievers Please Try Harder, Dots &
Loops, and Turn It Out.
The comings and goings of book publishing can feel so ancient and
entrenched and ‘the business of other people’ that it could plausibly
operate in a world completely divorced from our own. Unlike record labels
and other platforms for accessible art forms, which conduct their business
very visibly, you rarely hear of publishing as new endeavor, and rarer
still, does that new endeavor set up shop on your doorstep.
Established Canadian master David Cronenberg returns this week with Maps to
the Stars; an icy, star studded, pot shot taking Hollywood satire that
premiered at Cannes earlier this year. A sprawling, tangled character
roster includes Julianne Moore’s aging actress who desperately wants to
star in a remake of her deceased, abusive mother’s most famous feature.
Robert Pattinson’s opportunistic, small fry, limo driver slash
wannabe-actor-writer...
With more exhibitions, plays and all forms of creative goodness occurring
on a weekly basis, the North West has never felt such a surge of artistic
hope. Coincide this with the opening of the Whitworth (scheduled for early
2015), and the emergence of HOME as a creative hub, Manchester in
particular is currently riding high upon wave of artistic production. And
yet, throughout the tide of artistic change, it has never been so important
for graduates to stay afloat. Speaking ahead of tomorrow’s exhibition, ‘
Play On MCR’, we caught up with Manchester School of Art graduates Emily
Briselden-Waters and Rachel Dargavel – Leafe in a bid to discover what
drives such a force throughout our region, and how by channeling a passion,
the daily realities for our graduate talent can easily be forgotten…even
if, it’s for one night only….
As Cornerhouse unveil their latest solo-exhibiton, we were keen to pick the
artistic brain of Qasim Riza Shaheen: the Manchester-based artist behind ‘
Autoportraits in love-like conditions’. Touching upon his lifelong
obsession with love, his links within Manchester and the joy of working
with his father, Shaheen provides an insight into both his philosophical
mind & multi-layered practice…
A synopsis is little needed, for Romeo & Juliet stands alone as a play that
penetrates the cultured consciousness of the world over. Thus, to stage
such a cultural anchor holds its dangers, yet HOME’s offering of the Bard’s
tragic love-story triumphed so magnificently that it quashed such dangers,
and very much flaunted its overcoming with grand interpretation.
For a career filled with oddities, the strangeness of Orson Welles' The
Lady From Shanghai (1947) is still a surprise to find. With hindsight,
Welles' cinematic path is one littered with unfairness and poor treatment,
though this is of course with the knowledge of just how ahead of the times
he really was. Contextualised in the forties, however, Welles was a beat
walking maverick who had tricked America into thinking it was being invaded
by Martians and was the creative force behind the flop of Citizen Kane
(1941); a film that, in spite of being nominated for an Oscar, came close
to bankrupting the studio that made it. From Kane onwards, Welles' projects
were fraught with problems, largely caused by excessive interference from
paranoid producers and money men. The Lady From Shanghai is one of the many
films that has clearly been taken out of Welles' hands at various points
though the sheer will power of Welles means that it still manages to bear
his mark.
Last Thursday, to coincide with GCSE results day, Cornerhouse screened Art
Party, a new agritpop feature film from artist Bob and Roberta Smith and
director Tim Newton. Part documentary, part ‘mockumentary’, the the
narrative follows the events of the Scarborough alternative art conference
in November 2013. Claiming to have “predicted the demise of Michael Gove!”
- the film aims to launch a campaign against the removal of art from the
national curriculum. A whole host of artists make an appearance and proffer
their words of support - “Art is part of our DNA”, from Jeremy Deller, and
incredibly sweetly from Richard Wentworth, “without art people won't love
each other, they won't even hold hands”.
Set to open its doors this autumn, PLY is a Northern Quarter restaurant
with a unique and delectable twist. Offering a range of pizzas and
cocktails, PLY aims to combine the tastes of Naples with the artistic
essence of Manchester, meaning that in the 90 seconds it takes to cook your
pizza, there’ll be plenty of illustration, art and moving image to soak
in.
When British film-critic-turned-filmmaker, Lindsay Anderson, broke apart
the cinematic establishment with his Palme d'Or winning If.... (1968), it
was unpredictable as to what move he'd make next. If.... marks the turning
point where British cinema really awakens to the political, philosophical,
and sexual potential opened up by the counter-culture movement and, in
hindsight, it surmised the next wave of great British films by Nicolas
Roeg, Ken Russell, and many others. Anderson's film wasn't the first to
address these things in such a way but its perfectly timed release, chiming
with worldwide protests and violent desires for breaking down the
establishment, meant that it now seems the cultural pinnacle for the era
with hindsight.
Why choose to study at Shillington College? Well, with a mantra based
around ‘eating, sleeping and breathing’ graphic design’, we find three good
reasons already….
With campuses throughout Australia, New York and here in Manchester,
Shillington College offer their students the opportunity to study over a
three month, full time period, or spread across the course of 1 year’s part
time. And with a philosophy based around ‘teaching’ rather than
‘preaching’, Shillington’s track record of preparing their graduates for
life as a graphic designer is one shrouded in success. Whether starting
from scratch or building upon an existing portfolio, Shillington can be
proud of the platform they deliver to the creative communities throughout
the world.
With only a big hill in place to separate Manchester and Skipton, it makes
sense that the Mancunian contingent at Beacons Festival was wholly
populous. A geographically and musically varied line up including Action
Bronson, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart and Hookworms was punctuated with
a lot of northwest. They probably came in convoy.
Abel Ferrara, much like Martin Scorsese or Woody Allen, is known as a New
York director. Films such as Bad Lieutenant, Ms. 45 and King of New York
trawled the squalid underbelly of the great city, taking us into the drug
dens, back alleyways and seedy parties, both exposing and reveling the
violence, squalor and perversions found there. For his latest, Ferrara
moves from the streets and into the upper echelons of society, and finds no
less depravity or corruption. Welcome to New York is the loosely
fictionalized story of Dominique Strauss-Kahn – the former head of the
International Monetary Fund on his way to becoming the next president of
France, who lost it all after being accused of sexual assault by a New York
hotel maid.
With the close of this year’s Manchester Fringe Festival, Salford’s The
Kings Arms opened its basement under the guise of the ‘Lucy Davis Vaults’
to the Ransack theatre company’s ‘high octane revival of Pinter’s classic
two-hander’ The Dumb Waiter. And the uncannily ordinary basement room under
the pub and the efforts of the performance company combined to create a
first-rate revival of the absurd dark comedy.
“It’s all to do with space and bums”. Sarah Lynch-Jones is joking when she
makes this summation of Less Comfy More Fun, a debut exhibition by a group
of young Manchester-based artists, but the statement does hint at the
uninhibited irreverence of the project, which is to be underestimated at
your peril.
You can only admire the artistic expression Sharon Lockhart showcases at
her first UK solo show, which is currently on display at FACT. Running as
one of the main attractions to this years Liverpool Biennial, this
exhibition concentrates on the artist’s distinctive relationship with the
Polish teenager, Melina. The pair first met whilst Lockhart was recording
her 2009 film Pódworka, which features children from the city of Łódź
playing in its streets and courtyards. Melina was just nine years old at
the time of its recording.
A small but perfectly formed exhibition at the Holden Gallery, Urban
Psychosis sets out to explore how the intensity of city living can lead to
a slip on reality; with the dweller finding themselves often forced into
the position of spectator by the hustle and bustle of urban life. Finding
its roots in literature by Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Karacauer, Will Self,
and Georg Simmel (who declared in 1903 that the modern city was a potential
threat to individual balance and normality), the exhibition draws on work
by eight artists and allows us a glance into their personal stance on city
life, cutting through the dense layers of human activity to find a more
penetrable focus.
© Drew Forsyth
Trove is a cafe and bakery nestled within Manchester's Levenshulme community who we featured recently in Volume 1. We profiled the business and it's founders, married couple Marcus and Katy, whilst photographer Drew took some wonderful shots inside their cafe on Stockport Road to accompany the piece.
On a mild May morning around 5am, photographer Drew Forsyth visited again, only this time to take a trip inside Trove's warehouse bakery to document their baking process. The photos you see here are from that day, a chance to see the morning routine of Manchester's finest artisan bakery, before their treasured loaves are loaded onto Citroen van 'Cyril' and carried away to cafes and restaurants across Manchester.
Typically at this phase of the summer, as the euphoria of another
Glastonbury festival slowly begins to fade from our being, festival-goers
begin to exhibit symptoms that are unmistakably characteristic of a
condition known to be post-Glastonbury blues. As the memories begin to blur
and become hazy over what was an intoxicating weekend, it would be
forgivable to assume that Glastonbury was the finest epilogue of one’s
summer.
Au contraire, for summer has yet to reveal all her delights here in the
North of England! Here we present four reasons to remain optimistic for
the remainder of the festival season...
Trove is a cafe and bakery nestled within Manchester's Levenshulme
community who we featured recently in Volume 1. We profiled the business
and it's founders, married couple Marcus and Katy, whilst photographer Drew
took some wonderful shots inside their cafe on Stockport Road to accompany
the piece.
On a mild May morning around 5am, photographer Drew Forsyth visited again,
only this time to take a trip inside Trove's warehouse bakery to document
their baking process. The photos you see here are from that day, a chance
to see the morning routine of Manchester's finest artisan bakery, before
their treasured loaves are loaded onto Citroen van 'Cyril' and carried away
to cafes and restaurants across Manchester.
One of the chief pleasures of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy (Before
Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight – each released nine years
apart) lies in watching the characters mature in a way that films seldom
allow – in real time. For Boyhood, Linklater goes a step further. Filming
commenced twelve years ago, with the cast and crew gathering for a few days
every year in order to capture the growth of Ellar Coltrane’s Mason and his
sister Samantha (a superb Lorelei Linklater) from small children through to
young adults.
Tonight, Manchester Art Gallery plays host to Video Jam ; an experimental fusion of both moving image and sound. Last week we caught up with some of the artists involved to discover what VJ meant to Manchester's collaborative core:
http://tuskjournal.com/online-features/2014/7/8/video-jam-responding-to-ryan
When it comes to artistic collaboration, there are few who can challenge the practice and production delivered by ‘Video Jam’. From the early inception to January’s climatic response to Jeremy Deller, over 280 filmmakers, musicians and artists have collaborated with Video Jam, projecting their respe…
An interview Sacha Lord-Marchionne & Sam Kandel Remember Store Street? Remember the roof-scraping archways, the clandestine doorways and suspended ventilation units? Remember seeing the DJ’s up-close, that rush of blood upon arrival? For some, the nostalgic essence of Store St offers transportation…
Ever wondered what Video Jam is/does/means? We caught up with the artists involved ahead of Thursday's event to find out more...
http://tuskjournal.com/online-features/2014/7/8/video-jam-responding-to-ryan
When it comes to artistic collaboration, there are few who can challenge the practice and production delivered by ‘Video Jam’. From the early inception to January’s climatic response to Jeremy Deller, over 280 filmmakers, musicians and artists have collaborated with Video Jam, projecting their respe…
Ryan Gander has become somewhat an adoptive hero of the Manchester art
community, and judging by his timeline of success, one can understand why
so many are keen to call him their own. Originally from Chester, Gander
graduated with a first class degree in Interactive Art from MMU back in
1999, and has been furiously producing a whole wealth of conceptual pieces,
incredibly varied in medium, ever since.
To those of you who are new to the world of Biennials, let me welcome you
to Liverpool’s eighth: ‘A Needle Walks Into A Haystack.’ The 2014 Biennial
has concerned itself with contemporary art practices that explore themes of
disruption and reconfiguration into our everyday habits, and habitats.
Running until October 26th, the Liverpool Biennial is one of the UK’s
largest visual art festivals, attracting acclaimed artists from all over
the world and spanning across several locations around the city.
Photographs from an afternoon inside Illustrator Rob Bailey's Manchester Studio, our Volume 1 Cover Artist. The full interview with Rob and a selection of his work can be seen within the printed pages of Volume 1, along with specially commissioned artwork which adorns the cover.
Amazing! The lovely followers of Stack have voted & we're the second most popular cover of the year! Thank you so much! http://www.stackmagazines.com/update/popular-magazine-covers-year-far/
Halfway through 2014 we take a look back at the year's best covers as voted by Stack Instagram followers
Our monthly Newsletter will be hitting inboxes later this afternoon, sign up through the tab at the bottom of our website to get an update on whats hot in the north west this July...
Can't wait for this belter...
Full line-up for this year's Liverpool International festival Of Psychedelia, taking place at Camp and Furnace on 26 + 27 September 2014.
For further details on tickets, artists on the bill and extra additions, visit www.liverpoolpsychfest.co.uk
Never mind the rain, it's Friday god damn it!
Midnight Magic's official music video (by Matt Collison) for "Beam Me Up" off their debut album, 'Walking The Midnight Streets,' available now on PledgeMusic...
In the perpetual playground of Manchester music, Only Joking Records have,
for a while now, been curating their gang. Last year they released (and
sold out) Manchester Standards Sides 1 & 2. The twelve-track vinyl was a
forked road into the warm, moist fold of Manchester’s independent music
ecosystem. It featured early tracks, self-releases and all the ‘human’
bits from Temple Songs, S*x Hands, Gnod and the rest of their rowdy,
no-good mates. It stands testament to how “artistically fruitful” the city
is that one record was just not enough, as Sides 3 & 4 were released on the
16th June.
Walking the streets of Manchester, Liverpool, London or Switzerland this afternoon? Pop into one of our stockists and grab yourself a copy of Vol.1 hot off the press http://tuskjournal.com/stockists/
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