London On The Cheap

By Kira Last edited 190 months ago
London On The Cheap
ism.jpg

What a busy week! What with the Bank holiday, Cans Festival, Pangea Day, May ’68 celebrations and more, free cultural activities abound across London. So get out of bed, you lazy hungover git, and go sample what’s on in our summery city.

Monday: In case you missed it over the weekend, catch the last day of the Cans Festival, a graffiti art exhibition

headlined by none other than London’s lovable guerilla stencil artist Banksy. On Leake Street, just next to Waterloo station.

Tuesday: We all love Vice Magazine’s Fashion Dos and Don’ts, and tonight, they take over another realm: video. Vice is hosting a screening of standouts from their latest collaboration with wunderkind Spike Jonze: VBS.TV, exploiting ‘every utopian vision the internet has thus far failed to live up to.’ Free, suggested two quid donation.

For some musical inspiration, try your hand at Macbeth, a Shoreditch club hosting a Raison d’Etre jam session along with soul funk band Something Simple and Matti Roots. Freeeeee.

Wednesday: As part of their bite08 series, this is opening night at the Barbican for In Spitting distance, a one-man show revealing what it’s like to be an Arab traveler in a post-9/11 world. £12 tickets. Thursday: Instead of chucking that cola in the bin after lunch, set it aside and exchange it for a free ticket to the cinema. Head over to the charming Prince Charles cinema at 6.30, where recycling your can gains you entrance to a special screening of the 11th Hour, Leonardo DiCaprio’s sobering answer to the growing threat of global warming. Friday: Thematically coupled with the May ’68 student upheaval, tonight is the opening of .ism, a new show that addresses the eternal mêlée between art and commerciality. Slade Art School students Thomas Yeomans and Candida Powell-Williams have been invited to curate an exhibition featuring a diverse range of new work from their fellow Slade students in a show designed to question the politics of the art world and all of its glorified ‘isms.’ Gallery 12, free. Saturday: Today is the last day of You Dig the Tunnel, I’ll Hide the Soil, an exhibit at White Cube Gallery featuring works inspired by Edgar Allen Poe. The show features 34 artists, including omnipresent Damien Hirst and the illustrious shape-shifter Cindy Sherman.

Celebrate Pangea Day the Somerset House, which is hosting an outdoor screening of powerful human stories from around the world. International food available, bring a blanket. From 7-11 pm. Book your free tickets ahead of time.

Sunday: Start your holy day off right with a little Messia(h)en: movements from the composer’s organ work can be heard soaring through the dome of Westminster Cathedral at their special hosting of a performance of the Pentecost Mass today. Free.

From Westminster, take a long sunny Sunday stroll over to the ICA, where the documentary Annie Liebovitz: A Life Through the Lens is on, a labour of love directed by the photographer’s sister. £8, £7 concessions.

Or, you could just stay in and avoid this gorgeous summer weather, hibernating until it rains again.

Image courtesy of artist Candida Powell-Williams.

Last Updated 06 May 2008