🎭 Read below about our day in the city for the start of Bradford 2025 and its opening show
🎭 See our video and interviews with Bradford Creative Director Shanaz Gulzar, and artists and curator
🎭 We saw ‘Nationhood: Memory and Hope’; David Hockney ‘Pieced Together’; Salt’s Mill: Ian Beesley, ‘Life Goes On’; Peace Museum; Hockney Portraits, Rise show.
🎭 See this link for the very latest announcements
THERE was a wide range of talent on the stage at the opening show of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture and it managed to warm up and enthuse a crowd estimated to be 10,000.
Differnt dance styles and multiple languages were all represented – as we were treated to rap and stirring voices across the town square. The Rise show was put together by award-winning theatre director Kirsty Housley.
www.asianculturevulture.com saw the show firsthand on the very first night (Friday) and also got an opportunity to visit some of the key galleries which form the city’s offical UK City of Culture status, following on from Derry~Londonderry (2013), Hull (2017) and Coventry (2021).
On the day, acv got to visit the Impressions Gallery, a hub for creative photography – free and right bang in the city square where Rise – took place on consecutive evenings this month. Here there’s work specially commissioned and work by five artists in all. (More about ‘Nationhood: Memory and Hope’ in our video).
Just over the road from there at the National Science and Museum – there’s an exhibition of work by one of the town’s most favourite artistic sons – David Hockney is one of the country’s best-known artists and has a global reputation – the exhibition at the National Science and Media Museum shows off his work with photography and video in the area itself.
Called ‘Pieced Together’ it is closer to painting in some ways: a series of similar or the same images are stitched together to form an overall picture – with video there are large screens and representative of the multiple cameras Hockney used to create an effect that can be revealing and surprising – on an extremely chilly (it was -2C during the day) and when darkness fell, the temperature for ‘Rise’ was about -3C – you felt your feet were going to leave the rest of your body in protest – despite two layers of woollen socks.
with a ‘portrait’ of his mother
From the Science and Media Museum, we went to perhaps the most impressive gallery space acv has seen in a long time for its sheer size – almost three football pitches in length – it’s hard to believe it was built as a factory for textile manufacturing.
Salts Mill, in Saltaire (it’s an area), occupy a huge area some 20 minutes from the city centre; once a thriving, bustling factory garment space that became redundant in the late 1980s – along with the decline of many traditional manufacturing industries in the region at the time – and has now been converted into a gallery space which has some of the largest single room dimensions anywhere in Europe.
Celebrated US visual artist Ann Hamilton will mount a new exhibition at the top of the main building to mark the structure and the area’s textile heritage. We saw the space it will occupy – it is huge and empty when we visited ! The show will open on May 3; currently this top floor is not open to the public.
work will be seen later this year
While that space is at the top – there is also another part devoted to Hockney again on the lower floor – and some of his earliest portraits – they blend in with the rest of exhibits, a shop and other work highlighting the area’s once booming industrial heritage.
There’s another revealing photographic exhibition – ‘Life Goes on’ by Ian Beesley. He chronicled the changing face of the area, taking photographs of people and places forced to move on as globalisation began to impose itself on the UK – with difficult consequences in some parts of the country.
recording what Partition did
Also and quite newly transferred to Salts Mill is The Peace Museum – it has a wide range of exhibits and video and photographs (some of which can be seen in our Youtube video). There’s the history of the CND symbol and lots of other fascinating objects and items all related to the desire for peace and the end of violence. We can but dream…
From here it was back to the hotel for the evening’s entertainment and the show ‘Rise’.
Most people appeared to enjoy it and thankfully it wasn’t too long – at 40 minutes, standing in the freezing weather and there was a strong turnout with tickets going for as little as £3. As for the show itself, the best parts on a personal level were the dance and the music early on and the use of different languges and lights – the orchestra played in a building adjacent to the stage and in the sanctuary of warmth and light.
The final act was Steven Frayne, as Dynamo, and he was his usual enigmatic and impressive self – playing with the audience and stunning them with his tricks.
It was a good place to be – despite the cold, it was spirited and friendly with families and many people enjoying the entertainment and the feeling of the nation watching on and year when the UK culture spotlight rightly will be on this town and its creative citizens…
More- https://bradford2025.co.uk/
Our video
Should you visit Bradford this year?
The answer has to be a resounding yes – plan your day and what gallery and exhibitions you want to see – and identify events or shows, you can visit and build a programme around that – and of course, in the evening, you must end it all with a curry at one of the many restaurants in and around the city – some have a bring your own alcohol policy, so check out where you want to go and what you might need to accompany your food. It’s a friendly place – enjoy!