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27/6/2014

Festival of Love

Southbank Centre, London

Southbank Centre opens its first Festival of Love on Saturday 28 June (to Sunday 31 August) in a wide-ranging programme of performances, poetry, music, differently-themed weekends, exhibitions and installations across the site. Seven of the most powerful variations of love identified by the Ancient Greeks, have been chosen to be the focus of the Festival. Southbank Centre today announces that the next three summer festivals will also be devoted to the theme of Love.

Jude Kelly, Artistic Director of Southbank Centre, said: “This summer we celebrate love to mark the historic change in legislation enabling everyone to marry their partner of choice. I’m thrilled with the interest we’ve had from couples who will publicly declare their love at our Big Wedding Weekend, the climax to the Festival. We’re looking for 100 more couples – young or old, straight or gay – to join the celebrations in what is an alternative, fabulous and affordable way to get married.

We also wanted to commemorate Nelson Mandela, who along with other political activists including Martin Luther King Jr, Aung San Suu Kyi and Mahatma Gandhi declared that love was the most fundamental way to bring about change. As an organisation that strongly believes the arts and culture can enable change we’re dedicating our next three summer Festivals to the rich and complex subject of Love.”

The Festival’s Opening Weekend (Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 June) will be an in-depth look at the seven types of love with talks, debates, workshops, readings and performances. Highlights include writer and founding faculty member of The School of Life, Roman Krznaric, talking about the Different Varieties of Love; Dr Bettany Hughes and Professor Angie Hobbs discussing the nature and power of erotic love; and a Flirtology workshop with social anthropologist Jean Smith.

Roman Krznaric, said: “There is a crisis in the art of loving. 50% of couples get divorced. One in four people say they are lonely. The average couple spends more time watching TV together than actually speaking to each other. The surprising news is that gazing into the past and looking at the Ancient Greeks' different varieties of love can be a cure for our contemporary dilemmas. It's time to challenge the myths around romance sold by Hollywood and draw on the best thinking in philosophy, history, psychology and the visual arts to give us new tools to think about love.”

Dr Bettany Hughes, said: “I’m fascinated by the millennia-long history of the power of love from the Bronze Age to the present day. We can learn a huge amount from the Ancient Greeks and in particular, Socrates. For him, Love has a purpose. It is the life force, the desire to do, to be, to think. It is the thing that makes us feel great about the world, and therefore makes us be great in it.”

The site has been transformed with love-themed exhibitions and installations including Sliding Gate, a series of play slides by Sean Griffiths of Modern Architect (previously of architecture firm FAT), which symbolise the ups and downs of family life and the strong bonds between families; Love Flags by Turner Prize nominee Mark Titchner using the seven colours of the rainbow, signifying the peace and gay pride movements, which fly from the Royal Festival Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall roofs, and the Jubilee Gardens flagpole; the Tunnel of Love by disability arts organisation Heart n Soul, a multi-media and sensory installation with vibrating floors, mirrors, love-songs soundtrack, which pays homage to the cheeky, flirty Tunnels of Love of yesteryear; Siege Weapons Of Love by Zoe Walker and Neil Bromwich, giant bright pink inflatable cannons and a tank inviting visitors to make love not war, which is part of their Friendly Frontier Peace Campaign; and Pragma Tree: Growing Together, a playful installation by The Edible Bus Stop including a large tree, symbolising Pragma, a love that is enduring, patient and strong, and seating.The Temple of Agape on Queen’s Walk by Morag Myerscough and Luke Morgan, measuring eight metres high, is made up of hundreds of brightly-coloured, hand-painted flag-like signs covered in words about love. Tying into the Agape theme – the love of humanity – the temple will represent the power of love to conquer hate and features a quote by Martin Luther King Jr.

Artist Lothar Götz has created Seven Colours for Seven Loves, an artwork that gives a colour to each type of love, which will help guide visitors around the site and the introductory exhibition What Love Is in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, curated by Southbank Centre with a design concept by Hemingway Design. Lothar Götz is also creating an artwork for The Clore Ballroom called Happy Together, an enormous floor painting incorporating the seven colours and representing ballroom dances of years gone by. A new neon love sign by Chris Bracey welcomes visitors to Heartbreak Hotel, in Festival Village, under the Queen Elizabeth Hall, which includes an exhibition created with publishers DC Thomson of letters from Jackie magazine’s famous agony aunts Cathy and Claire and Valentine issue covers from the 70s. Jessica Voorsanger’s I Think I Love You Lounge explores the obsessional love of celebrity. Visitors will be able to dress up as pop stars through the decades selected by Voorsanger including Elvis, Abba, Michael Jackson, the Spice Girls and Beyoncé. The Museum of Broken Relationships, set up by artists and ex-lovers Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubišić in 2006, is an award-winning collection of remnants from past relationships. The exhibition will include items from the collections and new works gathered for the Festival, including a Slovenian’s sleepover bag from a relationship that included 20 breakups over 17 years and a marriage contract from the Philippines.

In addition to the Festival of Love Opening Weekend, the differently-themed weekends throughout the summer include a focus on Storge (12-13 July), Pragma (2-3 August), Philia (9-10 August), Philautia (16-17 August), Eros and Ludos (23-24 August) and the Big Wedding Weekend (30-31 August) inspired by Agape – the love of humanity. This final weekend will see couples get married at Southbank Centre in mass ceremonies and celebrations in the Royal Festival Hall, which will be a completely different and affordable take on the ‘big day’. Two of the Royal Festival Hall ceremonies have already sold-out and 60 couples are signed up to marry or renew their vows. Hundreds more couples will be able to ‘marry’ in an inflatable chapel. Other weekends include New Music Biennial (4-6 July), Poetry International Festival (19-20 July), and Urban, Celebrating Street Culture (25-27 July).

Other Festival of Love programme and site highlights include:

Udderbelly (until 13 July) – the upside down purple cow is back for its sixth year with circus, comedy and family shows, as well as a Love-themed Beach Bar and Love Shack. London Wonderground (until 28 Sept) is back for its third summer of circus, cabaret and sideshows including the return of the smash hit circus show LIMBO.

The return of critically-acclaimed Groove On Down The Road by Kate Prince and her award-winning dance company ZooNation, based on The Wizard of Oz story, a classic tale of the love of friends and family (5-26 August).

Poetry International Festival (17-21 July), the biennial festival co-founded by Ted Hughes in 1967, has a special focus on poetry in film. Poets include Robert Hass, Carolyn Forché, Don Paterson, August Kleinzahler, Durs Grünbein and Ana Blandiana. There will be readings of heart-breaking love letters by poets in Do Write Immediately including Harriet Walter and Guy Paul reading correspondence between Byron and Caroline Lamb, and Jason Hughes reading one of Dylan Thomas’s last letters to his wife Caitlin (19 July). Letters by Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Keats, Lewis Carroll, Gertrude Stein and Philip Larkin will also be read during the event.

The Human Factor: The Figure in Contemporary Sculpture at the Hayward Gallery (until 7 Sept) brings together works from 25 international artists including Paul McCarthy, Jeff Koons, Rebecca Warren and Yinka Shonibare who have fashioned new ways of using the human body, the most frequently revisited subject in art’s history, over the past 25 years, and two Hayward Project Space shows, including video installations by artist, Frances Stark, exploring how the internet has transformed interpersonal communication.

The London premiere of RSC’s The Rape of Lucrece, performed by Camille O’Sullivan, Shakespeare’s politically-charged, sexually provocative and violent thriller.

Two shows about female sexuality and relationships in the 21st century: award-winning star of La Clique, Ursula Martinez’ show My Stories, Your Emails (5-10 August), created with material from the emails she received after her infamous striptease act was illicitly videoed and posted online; and Bryony Kimmings’ Sex Idiot (12-16 August), a funny, unapologetic account by Kimmings of her relationship history following her discovery that she had a common sexual disease.

Screenings of David Lean’s classic love story Brief Encounter with live music by Resident Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra – a new Southbank Centre commission – which will headline a film series of love stories in the Royal Festival Hall including Singalonga Grease, Casablanca, iconic Bollywood film Devdas and The Graduate.

New pop ups including SNOG frozen yoghurt, The Bloody Oyster and cocktail bar, The Department of Good Cheer all serving a variety of love-themed treats.

The return of Jeppe Hein’s Appearing Rooms, the Queen Elizabeth Hall Roof Garden, the urban beach, and weekly markets including the Real Food Market or KERB, the street food organisation, on the first weekend of every month (Fridays to Sundays, July to September)

Southbank Centre is the UK’s largest arts centre, occupying a 21-acre site that sits in the midst of London’s most vibrant cultural quarter on the South Bank of the Thames. The site has an extraordinary creative and architectural history stretching back to the 1951 Festival of Britain. Southbank Centre is home to the Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and the Hayward Gallery as well as The Saison Poetry Library and the Arts Council Collection.
www.southbankcentre.co.uk

Temple of Agape
The quote by Martin Luther King Jr on the Temple of Agape, from 1967, is: “And I say to you, I have also decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’s problems. And I’m going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn’t popular to talk about it in some circles today. And I’m not talking emotional bosh when I talk about love: I’m talking about a strong, demanding love.”

The Big Wedding Weekend, 30 and 31 August
As a spectacular alternative to the traditional wedding ceremony, Southbank Centre’s mass wedding weekend will be both a communal celebration and a political act, helping to reduce the financial barrier to marriage. Up to 20 couples at a time will be able to get married in up to eight ceremonies during the weekend on the iconic Royal Festival Hall stage, accompanied by music and performances including the historic organ, in front of an auditorium packed with their wedding guests. The package, which costs £1,000, includes the registrar, ceremony, photography, entertainment throughout the day including an evening disco on The Clore Ballroom and other events around the building. The wedding parties also have the option to join in a celebratory communal feast on The Clore Ballroom (this costs an additional £1000 for the couple and up to 40 guests).

For more information and images about the Festival of Love please contact Katie Toms, Press Manager, at Katie.toms@southbankcentre.co.uk / 020 7921 0926 or Patricia O’Connor, Head of Press, at patricia.oconnor@southbankcentre.co.uk / 020 7921 0632.

Southbank Centre
Belvedere Road - London

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