Ben Cowles speaks with IAN ‘TREE’ ROBINSON and ANDY DAVIES, two of the string pullers behind the Manchester Punk Festival, ahead of its 10th year show later this month
‘Effervescent’
This is poetry in paint, spectacular but never spectacle for its own sake, writes JAN WOOLF
Babel
PAUL FOLEY is disappointed by a production that encourages the audience to laugh at rather than with the characters
Odysseus’s homecoming myth is treated as a factual story, with strong resonances for our contemporary world. This is an implicit anti-war film that has an urgent relevance, writes JOHN GREEN
The Star's critics ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARTIN HALL, MICHAL BONCZA, ANGUS REID reviews Holy Cow, One to One: John and Yoko, King of Kings, Panda Bear in Africa
PATRICK JONES recommends a vital anthology from Afghan and Iranian poets where the political and personal fuse into witness-bearing and manifesto-making
WILL STONE is impressed by Hania Rani who is already making a name for herself in the male-dominated world of modern classical music
MIK SABIERS enjoys the theatrical feminist six piece who have a lot of fun that the audience feeds off as the set rolls on
Twist and Shout
David Evans
Three Highgate, London
EPIC watercolour seems like a contradiction in terms, but that rather genteel medium, stereotyped by English evening classes and the Sunday morning easel was handled with vitality and drama by David Evans (1929-1988).
Resistance in watercolour is a juicy term coined by the exhibition’s curator Alistair Hicks, whose fine essay on Evans in the 2017 Liss Llewellyn Fine Art catalogue (on sale in the gallery) fixes his star in the constellation of post-war British art: among Edward Burra, Peter Blake and David Hockney.
Further back we find soulmates in Turner and Samuel Palmer in his landscapes. Well yes, male artists all, but at least pointing up that watercolour has balls.
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