Cultural Diary: the UK’s best events and exhibitions in June
This month’s Cultural Diary is a veritable smorgasbord of cultural, architectural and design happenings. Here’s our rundown of the UK’s best events and exhibitions in June.
London Festival of Architecture, various locations
Europe’s largest annual architecture festival is back with a 400 event-strong programme, which this year explores the theme of ‘identity’. There are talks and debates, exhibitions, films screenings and more throughout the month but we won’t be missing Studio Kyson’s Treehouse at Battersea Power Station, a sleek installation that deploys charred timber and smoked mirrors to nuanced effect. Likewise, an exhibition of the shortlisted designs for a new Dulwich Pavilion will be high on our list to see.
Lee Miller and Surrealism in Britain, Hepworth Wakefield, Yorkshire
American-born Lee Miller’s life was, in many ways, as surreal as the art she championed: she left a career as a New York fashion muse and model to become Man Ray’s apprentice in Paris, joined the Surrealists and then documented Nazis during World War II for British Vogue. However, it’s her time living in Britain’s Surrealist heyday that this exhibition will focus on, with highlights including the 1937 ‘Surrealist Invasion’ of Cornwall, when the likes of Nusch Éluard, Leonora Carrington and E. L. T. Mesens decamped to the South West for an artist retreat.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Barrels and The Mastaba 1958–2018, Serpentine Galleries, London
Everyone’s favourite large-scale installation outfit comes to London from June until September this year, with a major exhibition (Barrels) and a temporary floating structure on The Serpentine lake (The Mastaba) – Christo’s first outdoor public work in the UK. A survey of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s (the latter of whom died in 2009) 60-year oeuvre will explore the importance of barrels to their work, which will be nowhere more obvious than in the 7,506 of them that will form The Mastaba outside.
Also worth a look will be the annual Serpentine Pavilion, which this year comes by way of Mexican architect Frida Escobedo.
Designing for the Public Good, RIBA, London
Not long ago 49% of all practising architects in the UK worked for the public sector. That number is now 0.7% in England and 0.2% in London. But does that mean architects can no longer design for the many? Join a panel of civic-minded architects to hear what attempts are being made in the private sector to ensure how architects and designers can design for common good.
New Designers, Business Design Centre, London
Over 3,000 bright young sparks from all corners of the UK design scene will converge in Islington later this month for a two-week showcase of new work from students of over 200 creative courses. Keep your eyes peeled for the next big thing: it was here that Thomas Heatherwick was discovered 25 years ago.
Birmingham Design Festival, various locations
The inaugural edition of Brum’s Design Festival opens with a mantra to ‘bring world-class talent to the city as well as celebrating the local scene’. Expect four days of screenings, talks, tours and workshops organised into three ‘districts’ – digital, graphic and product – at venues across the city.
Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing, The Barbican, London
Part of a photography ‘double-bill’, this is the first retrospective of preeminent American photographer Dorothea Lange on UK soil. While Lange’s ‘Migrant Mother’ will be known to many, this piece will be joined by over 300 others, which collectively reveal their maker’s proclivity towards depicting human suffering in a time (1919 to 1957) characterised by war, the Great Depression and the loss of traditional ways of life. Running at the same time is ‘Vanessa Winship: And Time Folds’, which showcases the eponymous photographer’s intimate portraits.
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