Featured event
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | 02 | |||||
| 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 |
| 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |
| 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 |
| 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
Crazy Crafts - Recycled Art
Date: 22nd Jun 2013
Location: Belfairs Park, Vardon Drive / Eastwood Road North, Leigh-on-Sea
Time: 14:00 - 16:00
Cost: £5 donation per child
It's the end of the Leigh Art Trail so we'll be making our own crazy creatures using recycled materials.
Music Bugs and flocks of recycled birds are on the plan for today's arts and crafts session.
Please come dressed for the Belfairs weather! Meet by the New Woodland Centre.
Children must be accompanied by an adult.
Booking is essential and can be done online.
Happening Today, 19th June 13
Storyrhymes at Southend Central Library
Date: 5th Dec 2012 - 25th Dec 2013
Every week
Location: Southend Central Library
Time: 9:30
Cost: Free
Stories and nursery rhymes for children under 5 years old and their parents. Everybody welcome!
Wet Wednesdays
Date: 3rd Apr 2013 - 26th Mar 2014
Every week
Location: Various Locations
Cost: Free
Over 65-year-olds are being invited to swim free on Wednesdays at pools in Southend.
Further details can be acquired by contacting the centre concerned on 01702 215011.
Shoe Heaven
Date: 2nd Feb 2013 - 29th Jun 2013
Location: Beecroft Art Gallery & Central Museum
Cost: Free
All the fabulous footwear on display comes from Southend Museum’s collection.
You won't find any designer names, but you will see the historic shoes which continue to influence fashion today.
If you like shoes, you'll soon be in 'Shoe Heaven'.......
Watch out for special shoe related events, demonstrations, pamper nights and an amazing raffle!
For further information please visit the Southend Museums website.
‘Maha Kumbh Mela’ Phil Wingfield
Date: 7th Jun 2013 - 21st Jun 2013
Location: Southend Central Library, Cafe Gallery
Cost: Free
Visit Southend Central Library’s Ground Floor Gallery for a photographic coup; of spectacular sights seen only once every 12 years.
Making a welcome return to Southend Central Library, Phil Wingfield exhibits stunning new works, of most notable potency and immediacy; from his constantly evolving portfolio of travel and reportage photography.
For this exhibition Phil's most recent excursion to the north Indian city Allahabad provides a feast of visual interest, where the Hindu festival Maha Kumbh Mela takes place. Held only once every 12 years this is the largest gathering of humanity on earth.
Though this exhibition will document human activity in a most exceptional circumstance, Phil's foremost passion is photographing people in everyday scenes, where composition, colour and tone may imbue beauty, pathos, suggest narrative; celebrating the unexpected delights of the mundane.
A fascination with photography began at an early age for Phil who recalls using his toy Babette camera to capture those fleeting moments of childhood preoccupation; whereupon the seed was sown. Phil's passion has endured the multitudinous changes in photographic media and processing of the last few decades and now practises with, amongst other formats, the latest digital image technology.
Prints will be available to purchase.
Lunchtime Walks
Date: 6th Mar 2013 - 18th Dec 2013
Every week
Location: Civic Centre, Victoria Avenue
Time: 12:30
Cost: Free
Lunctime Walks every Wednesday.
Meeting at the fountain outside Civic Centre at 12.30pm.
Approximately 30 minutes per walk.
For further information please see the Visit Southend website.
Eddie Peake ‘Video’
Date: 27th Apr 2013 - 13th Jul 2013
Location: Focal Point Gallery, Southend Central Library
Cost: Free
Opening: Saturday 27th April 2013 between 2.00pm and 4.00pm Exhibition runs: 29th April to 13th July 2013
If Staffordshire Bull Terriers have a contentious reputation in the British psyche for being fierce and aggressive, in Essex they are known affectionately as 'nursery dogs' for their ability to guard young children. Their warmth towards people (it's been said that 'no breed is more loving with its family'), combined with their natural astuteness, could be seen to reconfigure preconceptions of intelligence, within the context of Southend-on-Sea, a town where 'Staffies' are the most commonly owned dog, an environment where loyalty and care pervades.
Water-cut from Michelangelo marble, Peake's Staffie Innately Fluent (all works 2013) stands proudly with its eyes and mouth cut to the shape of Mediterranean Gulls in flight, another creature that appears en masse at the end of Southend Pier, and which has adopted Southend-on-Sea and the surrounding Thames Estuary as its home. The dog's mouth glides straight towards the viewer, while each eye hurtles away from the other.
As a twin (Peake was born two minutes apart from his brother Lewis), the artist has a natural affinity with Chuka and Dubem Okonkwo, who grew up in the same area of north London as the artist. Peake has known Chuka and Dubem, The Islington Twins, since he was seventeen years old, and for this exhibition decided to present footage of both men positioned within Southend Central Library. In the work Tumult, featuring an HD video shot with a Canon 5D Mkii, the twins' similarity to one another constitutes an analogy for the fidelity of reproductions of reality, a characteristic which could be said to be typical of photography at large. They also appear to be a facsimile of one another, conjured by digital trickery, whilst in fact the video is an un-doctored truth.
Re-presentation, and an exchange of opposing, or even synchronic positions, is taken further and performed within the gallery in Peake's examination of the ethos of Berthold Lubetkin's early Modernist Tecton designs for Dudley, Whipsnade and London zoos. In the main gallery space, the artist has constructed an eight-foot high walled enclosure which shares an endeavour towards imposing a theatrical narrative on its inhabitants, in this case, the gallery's spectators. This structure contains the aforementioned footage of the twins, and is peered into by the huge and slightly absurd model giraffe - the concept design for which was created by Peake's twin Lewis - in a situation where an obvious reversal of spectatorship takes place between animal and human. In a wry but curious comment, any imposed theatricality enacts the opposite intention of Lubetkin; this is a situation where the act of viewing is put on display.
However, Peake's project is anything but a rumination on the perceived failure of Modernist architecture. Instead, it's an elaborate puzzle or optimistic historical and ideological Russian doll that situates one form of Modernist architecture within another via a contemporary performative twist. When seen within the context of the soon-to-be-emptied Brutalist building that Focal Point Gallery and Southend Central Library currently occupy (both organisations will move to another structure in late 2013), Peake's project is akin to the endearing vision of Tecton which, much like the collection of animals in a zoo, or the archive of books in a library, somehow continue to survive against all external forces.
For further information and images, please contact Laura Bowen, Focal Point Gallery Exhibition and Marketing Officer on 01702 534 108 / laurabowen@southend.gov.uk / www.focalpoint.org.uk.
Eddie Peake 'Video' is generously supported by Arts Council England and Southend Borough Council.
Cricket Festival
Date: 9th Jun 2013
Location: Garon Park, Eastern Avenue, Southend-on-Sea
Cost: Various
The renowned Southend Cricket Festival returns for another year, with a packed programme of exciting matches.
For further details, times of events and how to purchase tickets please see either Visit Southend or the Southend Cricket Festival website.
'Bridging the Seas' by Denis Calleja
Date: 8th Jun 2013 - 22nd Jun 2013
Location: Southend Central Library
Cost: Free
Visit Southend Library for an exhibition with a Maltese connection.
Living and working in Malta, Denis Calleja is an artist who celebrates the fresh spontaneity of the self-taught practitioner; embracing the role of the artist conduit: of emotions and instincts manifested in 2 dimensions without deference to imposed academic rules or aesthetic precepts.
His work is unusual and unique, using a variety of materials, some of which may be scorned by traditionalists of high art circles- beach mats, glitter and pens all feature as tools of Denis’s vision; to externalise emotions in a constructive and beneficial form through abstract imagery. It is hoped visitors to the show will experience a range of emotions and moods when meditating over the pieces displayed, according to Denis, the result will be dependant as much upon the ‘eye of the beholder’ who brings his or her own experience and history to an artistic interaction as to the nature or mood of the piece; it might be argued therefore that any work, especially non-figurative, is simply a reflective surface, one which informs ourselves of ourselves.
Alongside creating artworks, Denis composes music on piano and guitar and writes poetry in many languages, utilising his love of linguistics and travel. Denis experienced a period of great stress and depression which led to his creative outpouring, but his works do not immediately betray this- rather they seek to transform the darker energies of the mind into positive, life-enhancing and light-giving designs which attract the eye and which emanate a feel of the Mediterranean. Since 2003 Denis has extended his interest in art as therapy by creating numerous Art Therapy activities for persons living with disability.
Denis has exhibited previously in Malta, and enjoys the status as the first artist to exhibit on the Malta Gozo Ferries.
All works will be available to purchase.
Visit http://www.deniscalleja.com for more information.
Elvis Costello & The Imposters
Date: 19th Jun 2013
Location: Cliffs Pavilion, Station Road, Southend-on-Sea
Time: 20:00
Cost: £42.50 (Please note that a £2.50 per ticket booking fee applies to all transactions)
13 Revolvers - The Return of the Spectacular Spinning Songbook
Following the success of his recent 'Revolver' UK tour, Elvis Costello has decided to revolve again next year, wheeling his gigantic vaudevillian contraption up and down the country and will be in Southend for one night only!
Elvis will be joined by The Imposters - keyboardist Steve Nieve, drummer Pete Thomas and bassist Davey Faragher.
For further information or to book tickets please visit the Cliffs Pavilion website.