ART LIFE

Slung Low at The Holbeck presents ... Exhibition: Justin Fitzpatrick’s ‘Alpha Salad’ at The Tetley

From the beauty salon to the football terraces, via a onenight stand and some chamber music - it’s all going on at The Holbeck.

Slung Low present a series of visiting shows upstairs at The Holbeck, starting on Saturday 5 February with My Jerusalem by Avital Raz.

My Jerusalem is a solo performance derived from a song. A politically-charged tale of a drunken one-night stand between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man in Edinburgh infused with stories of growing up in the turmoil of 1980s Israel.

A nuanced exploration of the politics of division, from internal checkpoints and separation walls to gender norms.

With the escalation in violence after Trump declared Jerusalem to be the Jewish capital; questions of antisemitism in the Labour Party; rising levels of awareness of the Palestinian cause — this performance feels very timely.

A work about Raz’s ethnicity, gender, racism, and the underlying fear that perpetuates it. Can we surmount divisions imposed by occupation? Can we go beyond the blame game and really see each other’s all too vulnerable humanity?

Please note: Contains adult themes, the content of which may cause distress. In particular, issues of political turmoil and child abuse.

On Saturday 12 February it’s Too Pretty To Punch.

A comedy spoken word show about gender, the media and not fitting any of the boxes, full of explosive movement, original songs and kickass video projection. Edalia Day is a banjo wielding, poetry slam winning, trans warrior, taking on the world one troll at a time. The show

Too Pretty To Punch is a hilarious and uplifting journey through what it means to be trans in 21st century Britain. It reminds all of us (regardless of who we are) of the power of celebrating our existence.

How To Be A Better Human: A spoken word comedy about grief, loss and self-acceptance is on Saturday 19 February.

“In 2019...I lost my Dad.

“Well, I didn't lose him. I knew exactly where he was – in the coffin at the front of the crem.”

How to Be a Better Human is a spoken word comedy about grief, loss and self-acceptance. It tells Chris' story of losing two of the biggest relationships in his life - Dad and Wife - in the space of a few months. It finds the lightness and humour in death, loss and divorce, exploring how they help us become better at empathising, connecting and understanding. How we can lose everything and still find the strength to rebuild. How growing a beard can be the best decision of your life, and why some hedgehogs are absolute d*******s.

Performed by Chris Singleton and directed by Tom Wright, How to Be A Better Human uses powerpoint comedy, poetry, autobiographical storytelling, original music by Reece Jacob and animation by Huckleberry Films to open accessible conversations about grief, loss and mental health.

ENG-ER-LAND is on 26 February. “Walking up to Highfield Road for the first time was mind blowing. Seeing all the other people with their shirts and scarfs, feeling like you’re part of that, feeling that excitement in the air.” 1997. Last year England made it to the semi-finals of Euro 96, Gina G came third in Eurovision and 13 year-old Lizzie went to her first in-person football game: Coventry vs. Manchester City. Not the Man City of today, oil and superstars, but the old Man City - a bit rubbish, but with good fans. Lizzie fell in love with the beautiful game that day, and she’s been obsessed ever since. But then something happens to make her question her place in the stands. ENGER-LAND is an energetic play about who’s really on your team.

And finally in February, on 27th Winterreise by Schubert: A Concert.

Katherine Broderick –soprano; Kathryn Stott - piano; Performance Ensemsble and local community performers; Paul Whittaker – BSL interpreter.

The songs of Franz Schubert’s song-cycle Winterreise have long been the sole territory of the male singer, Justin Fitzpatrick presents Alpha Salad, his first major solo exhibition in a public gallery, exploring decadence, food and bodily consumption.

Alongside new and existing works by Fitzpatrick, the exhibition includes a selection of artworks and archival material from Leeds University Library Galleries and Special Collections.

Alpha Salad presents a narrative from soil to table, that extends beyond pleasure and the aesthetic and sensory understanding of taste, to highlight the tension between the surreal theatre of germination, food preparation and service and the underlying biological necessities and risks of eating. In Alpha Salad, Fitzpatrick considers the bodies created, consumed and at work throughout the food and hospitality industry, and invites us to reconsider their complex, but often overlooked, relations and their implications in our everyday lives.

The exhibition will incorporate both Fitzpatrick’s painting and sculpture, and his curated selection of works from Leeds University Library Alpha Salad is exhibited at The Tetley, Hunslet’s own art gallery

Galleries and Special Collections, including work by Wendy Abbott, Duncan Grant and Käthe Kollwitz as well as photographs from the Leeds Archive of Vernacular Culture. Responding to The Tetley’s unique architectural spaces, the exhibition is imagined in a series of chapters, moving through sexual reproduction and photosynthesis to the afterlife of food presentation and consumption.

Fitzpatrick’s Alpha Salad serves up anthropomorphic plants coming of age and queer readings of hospitality workers, from existentially troubled chefs to tuxedoed flushed waiters. Against the contemporary backdrop of food poverty, the wide-reaching impacts of industrial meat farming and social media’s unhealthy obsession with ‘clean’ eating , Fitzpatrick invites us to this neurotic feast to contemplate the grotesque nature of decadence and its underlying sensitivities.

Justin Fitzpatrick: Alpha Salad is supported by the Henry Moore Foundation and Fluxus Art Projects.

The exhibition is open 10am5pm Wednesday-Sunday at The Tetley art gallery on Hunslet Road until 8 May.

Alpha Salad: The Demiurge and the Seed by Justin Fitzpatrick 2020

yet the themes of displacement, loneliness and isolation could not be more universally relevant. Feeling adrift, whether it be literally; the displaced person seeking asylum in foreign lands, or metaphorically; the loneliness of being connected to the rest of the world via the internet yet having no real live connection, is a universal issue. Part of the human experience is to crave to be understood and this outsider, having accepted their solitary fate, walks on.

“I arrived a stranger, A stranger I depart.“

Also featuring short creative responses to the theme of winter journeys developed by community groups in Beeston and Holbeck, Chapeltown, and Seacroft, working with Performance Ensemble.

All shows at the Holbeck are pay-what-you-decide (or can afford) - you pay after you’ve seen the show. But you need to book tickets in advance. Go to www.slunglow.org/shows and follow the links.

The Holbeck, the oldest working men’s club in Britain, is on Jenkinson Lawn, Leeds, LS11 9QX.

Parkour champion marks one year to go to Year of Culture

In one year’s time, LEEDS 2023 will begin. Twelve months packed with events, large and small, across communities and in the city centre that celebrate the culture of the city through its people, art, sport and food.

To start the countdown to this major milestone for the city region, the team behind LEEDS 2023 have created a new short film featuring World Champion parkour athlete and Leeds local David Nelmes.

LEEDS 2023 will take place across the city and will encompass a wide definition of what culture means to the people of Leeds in particular.

In this specially commissioned short film, Nelmes – who is originally from Cross Gates in east Leeds, takes the viewer with him up and over Leeds landmarks, vaulting over walls and leaping through windows, meeting different creative individuals and communities along his route. David Nelmes visited DJ Verity Watts at Eiger Studios in South Leeds

“It feels amazing to be part of LEEDS 2023” says David Nelmes “To be an ambassador for the city as well as for Parkour is a big deal. I hope that when people watch the film they are able to appreciate the sport as well as all the places we went and people involved. I hadn’t been to many of these spots before and so it made me more aware of just how much there is going on in Leeds. I think LEEDS 2023 is going to be incredible and I’m really excited to be part of it.”

The film challenges the usual definition of culture in Leeds with a mix of locations and organisations featured ranging from Kirkgate Market to Bramley Baths, the Northern School of Contemporary Dance to the Howard Assembly Room. If you watch carefully you will see David vault a piano in the concert room of The Holbeck club. LEEDS 2023 will feature work across the 33 wards of the city and the artists featured in the film are just some of those already preparing for the year of culture which promises to be transformational.

Over the last 18 months LEEDS 2023 have been working with artists and organisations across the city, commissioning and encouraging those in or connected to the city to develop projects that could take place during 2023. 65 artists or groups have already received funding to develop seed commissions for LEEDS 2023, while there are at least another 50 conversations still taking place on more projects. Eight projects linked to LEEDS 2023 appear alongside David Nelmes in the film: • DJ Verity Watts filmed at Eiger Studios, south Leeds • AGEOFTHE, a Queer Working Class Drag Collective, with member Hollie filmed at Kirkgate Market, city centre • Brazilian Dance Class students at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, Chapeltown • The Life Aquatic Bramley Mermaids group, filmed at Bramley Baths • Visual artist Suman Kaur, filmed at Leeds Beckett University, city centre • Musician Ntantu, performing in the Howard Assembly Room, city centre • Leeds Rhinos’ Jamie Jones Buchanan, Harry Newman and Ash Handley, training in Kirkstall • Arthur France, founder of Leeds West Indian Carnival, filmed at the West Indian Carnival Centre, Sheepscar Road

Kully Thiarai, Creative Director for LEEDS 2023, said:

“This time next year we will be presenting to the world our Leeds, a city that is vibrant and bold and full of exceptional, creative people. This film is giving us the chance to start shouting about LEEDS 2023 from the rooftops, about what we’ve already been doing and what’s to come. This next year is when we put everything together to make sure that LEEDS 2023 is a celebration in every LS postcode, that every child in a Leeds’ school can be part of this year of culture and that we make the most of the 365 days in 2023.”

You can watch the short film at: bit.ly/2023OYTG