Gentlemen ✩✩✩✩ Arcola Theatre, London The first term for new arrivals at university is a heady mix of emotions. For young people, often away from home and lifelong friends for the first time, this involves channeling high levels of hormones and intelligence with newly-found freedoms and prospects, and the opportunity to create a new … Continue reading
Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power is filmmaker Nina Menkes’ thought-provoking analysis of the sexual politics in (heterosexual, I should add) cinematic shot design. Part documentary, part student lecture, and using scenes from dozens of our favorite movies as examples, Menkes successfully argues that shot design perpetuates sexism and other ills across the world. Movies such … Continue reading
ON RAILTON ROAD ⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎ MUSEUM OF THE HOME, HOXTON, LONDON It’s hard to believe, but free housing was once plentiful in London. In the 1970s and 80s, squatting was common and there were empty properties all over the city. Queer groups of people squatted too. One such group, the Brixton Faeries, famously held court … Continue reading
Renowned filmmaker Isaac Julien’s biggest show to date, What Freedom Means To Me, is currently on at London’s Tate Britain. Julien’s films tell important stories – queer stories, black stories, and social justice stories. Julien, himself a gay black man, has a 40-year story-telling history, including Derek, his 2008 film narrated by Tilda Swinton, about … Continue reading
Cock, tits, arse, sex, cigarettes, ham sandwiches on sliced white bread, lurid tabloid headlines and suggestive photographs. What passes for a perfect day at the seaside for most Brits, is also the backbone of British artist Sarah Lucas’s work of the past thirty years, now enjoying a well-deserved retrospective, Happy Gas, at London’s … Continue reading