Bold Tendencies runs 19 May – 17 September 2023 in London.
Phillips is proud to partner with Bold Tendencies for the sixth year in support of their 2023 season programming. This year’s program, entitled Crisis, continues the non-profit organization’s mission of commissioning new visual art and presenting public performances of music, opera, and dance at their experimental civic space — the rooftop of Peckham’s Multi-Storey Car Park in South London.
Since forming in 2007, Bold Tendencies has commissioned 128 site-specific works of visual art. This season, Bold Tendencies invites Emory Douglas, Jenny Holzer, Kahil Robert Irving, Sandra Poulson, and Abbas Zahedi to create works that ask what crisis looks and feels like in the 21st century.
“Everywhere, we are told, we are in crisis,” the organization writes. “Fires burn around the world while virtues of democracy, social justice, and freedom are plagued by paranoia, despair, and ignorance.” They go on to note, “The language of emergency is sermonized by politicians and economists, our escalating woes broadcast by insightful yet insomniac media, doom scrolling through an infinite ledger of tragedy.”
Live Performance Highlights
The Philharmonia Orchestra opens the live performance season with British composer Gustav Holst’s The Planets, led by the Finnish rising-star Emilia Hoving. The Philharmonia returns to close the season with Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, Titan — a powerful meditation on human existence and its meaning. “My whole life is contained in it,” Mahler wrote of the symphony, “I have set down in it my experience and suffering.”
The GBSR Duo play Galina Ustvolskaya’s Day of Wrath and Oliver Leith’s good day good day bad day bad day. Manchester Collective perform Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs and Metamorphosen, two iconic late works by the pivotal composer. Bold Tendencies’ in-house Multi-Story Orchestra (led by Kate Whitley and opera director Polly Graham) present Dmitri Shostakovich’s The Silly Little Mouse, a cartoon opera for children written under the thumb of a brutal state, starring a beautiful but dangerous black and white cat played by soprano Claire Booth.
The Slope Stage series opens with a program of inventive works for organ by Philip Glass and Bold Tendencies’ Creative Learning Programs continue with Ask the Artist, Backstage Pass, public rehearsals, and creative workshops.
Bold Tendencies’ 2023 programming reminds us that the question of cultural access is more urgent than ever. The organization’s accessibly priced tickets ensure that everyone has the space to imagine and create and to exercise the right to joy and appreciation of the arts. Visit the Bold Tendencies website below for complete program information.
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