January can seem like the longest of months. For some, resolutions are an important ritual in marking a fresh start. For others, gently easing into the new year feels most appropriate as hibernation calls following the festivites of December. However adventurous you’re feeling this month, we offer you five inspiring events to add to your diary, from an independent film festival to expansive textile exhibitions.
Lubaina Himid: Lost Threads at The Holburne Museum
Born in Zanzibar in 1954, British artist Lubaina Himid has spent her four-decades-long practice providing a platform to marginalised voices while uncovering silenced histories and cultural expressions. Confronting the legacy of colonialism, she explores political questions and engages in artistic traditions that span the eighteenth century to today. Holding a mirror up to the transport channels that moved cotton, yarn and enslaved people throughout history, Lost Threads will see the artist transform Bath’s Holburne Museum with 400 metres of colourful Dutch wax fabric that weaves and flows through the front façade and around the permanent collections.
Lubaina Himid: Lost Threads is on at The Holburne Museum until 24 April.
David Hockney: Love Life at Charleston
In this exhibition of David Hockney’s early drawings, the artist’s ability to find joy in the ordinary and his elemental love for life is abundantly clear. The sensitively rendered works focus on everyday items, from a box of matches on a table to a Fair Isle knit sweater. Realised in pencil, coloured crayon, pen and ink, they range from well-known drawings to those that have rarely been shown in public. Love Life takes its title from an affirming quote from 2017: “I love my work. And I think the work has love, actually … I love life. I write it at the end of letters — ‘Love life, David Hockney’.”
David Hockney: Love Life is on at Charleston until 10 March.
London Short Film Festival, Multiple Venues
Now in its 21st year, each January the BAFTA and BIFA-qualifying London Short Film Festival hosts a ten-day multidisciplinary curation of short films, workshops and panel talks at multiple venues across the capital. Spotlighting filmmakers, visual artists and creatives across intersections and with a focus on peripheral voices, the internationally-regarded film festival prides itself on giving a platform to unconventional and independent filmmaking that creates a dialogue between the contemporary, its history and the world at large. Watch at the ICA, BFI Southbank, Rich Mix, Curzon Soho and more.
London Short Film Festival, runs across multiple London venues between 19 and 28 January.
Kim Lim: Space, Rhythm & Light at The Hepworth Wakefield
Born in Singapore in 1936, Lim studied under Elisabeth Frink and Anthony Caro at Central Saint Martin’s before going to the Slade School of Art. She remained in Britain for the rest of her life, and though Lim has been featured in group exhibitions on post-war art histories, her work has been overlooked in comparison to her contemporaries. Space, Rythm & Light is the first major exhibition of the artist’s life and work, exploring Lim’s multimedia engagement with abstraction through more than 100 displayed artworks created over four decades. Discover her interdisciplinary exploration of light, architecture and nature through multipart wood and metal sculptures, prints, paper cuts and maquettes, sketchbooks and more.
Kim Lim: Space, Rhythm & Light is on at The Hepworth Wakefield until 2 June.
Deep Rooted at City Art Centre
A group exhibition featuring work by eight contemporary artists, Deep Rooted explores the relationship between people and the natural world. Using a host of multidisciplinary artworks, Dalziel + Scullion, Anya Gallaccio, Andy Goldsworthy, Andrew Mackenzie, Naomi Mcintosh, Katie Paterson and Hanna Tuulikki engage in dialogues with contemporary ecological issues, explore the beauty of biodiversity and examine the fragile coexistence between people and the planet. An urgent and thought-provoking meditation on the climate crisis.
Deep Rooted is on at City Art Centre in Edinburgh until 25 February.
Image 1: Kim Lim, Candy, 1965. Photography by Michael Brzezinski.
Image 2 & 3: Lubaina Himid, Lost Threads, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Hollybush Gardens, London. © Jackie Jones.
Image 4: David Hockney, Christopher Isherwood's House, Santa Monica, 1966. Courtesy of Charleston. © David Hockney.
Image 5: Empty Rooms, Zhenia Kazankina, 2023. Courtesy of the London Short Film Festival.
Image 6: Kim Lim working on Twice, 1966. Courtesy of The Hepworth Wakefield.
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