My cultural awakening: a Marina Abramović show helped me to stop hating my abusive father

On an unseasonably warm day in October 2023, I arrived, ahead of the queues, at London’s Southbank Centre for a conceptual art takeover by the world-famous Marina Abramović Institute.I had recently read Marina’s memoir Walk Through Walls, which had resonated. So, when I’d seen the event advertised – hours-long performances by artists she’d invited, curated and introduced by Marina – I bought a £60 ticket and waited for my time slot to enter the Queen Elizabeth Hall. I hadn’t seen performance art before, and this was due to include her well-known work The Artist Is Present with an artist sitting, static and silent, in a chair all day, as Marina once did for an accumulated 736 hours and 30 minutes at the Museum of Modern Art. I felt certain that it would affect me, I just wasn’t sure how

Rodney Wilson obituary

My husband, Rodney Wilson, who has died aged 82, was a widely admired producer of innovative arts television programmes. His leadership as film officer at the Arts Council helped to expand and enhance the UK’s vital independent film industry of the 1970s and 80s.Trained in fine art at Camberwell in the 60s, Rodney taught painting and drawing at Loughborough College of Art, but seeing James Scott’s film Richard Hamilton in 1969 proved life-changing. After studying film at Hornsey College of Art in north London, in 1970 he joined the Arts Council and channelled funds to new film-makers with imaginative ideas, nurturing projects from initial treatment through filming (at locations from Transylvania to Pennsylvania) to final edit.Unafraid of controversy, Rodney supported the director Franco Rosso whose Arts Council-funded film, Dread Beat an’ Blood, about Linton Kwesi Johnson, was pulled by the BBC in the runup to the May 1979 general election owing to “unacceptable” political content

Kae Tempest: Self Titled review – the rhythms in his lyrics are still so distinct

On a track called Bless the Bold Future, Kae Tempest wrestles with the urge to bring children into a world beset by catastrophe; the landscape of the 39-year-old’s fifth album Self Titled is indeed characterised by pain, anxiety and suffering. On Hyperdistillation, a man dies sleeping rough outside uninhabited penthouses as NHS backlogs threaten lives, and the ravey Diagnoses presents mental health issues as “the right response to a world gone wrong,” while Statue in the Square’s doomy grime reckons with a climate of transphobia (Tempest came out as non-binary in 2020 and earlier this year revealed his gender transition).And yet, there is something irrepressibly joyous about this album, which is essentially a collection of love letters: to the trans community, to the Londoner’s home town, to his partner. Tempest’s ability to imbue societal decay and personal torment with strange beauty, via lyricism honed on the performance poetry scene, is unparalleled, and his roots in the art form are still very much evident in his earnest, rhythmic delivery.Sometimes, the actual music struggles to keep up and fit in

Mark Gatiss: ‘What does Benedict Cumberbatch smell like? Strawberries’

As the writer and actor unveils his new detective show Bookish, he sits down for a chat about famous sleuths, the odds of a return to Royston Vasey and what it’s like working with Tom CruiseMark Gatiss arrived on our screens playing a variety of grotesques in The League of Gentlemen: mysterious butcher Hilary Briss; palm-reader Mama Lazarou; the buck-toothed, mullet-sporting job-seeker Mickey Michaels; and many more. He co-founded and co-wrote the BBC comedy with Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson after meeting them at college, and has teamed up with Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat to write and cameo in numerous episodes of the Time Lord drama, before the pair created the smash-hit update of Sherlock, in which Gatiss also appeared as Holmes’s brother Mycroft, and another BBC series, Dracula. If that weren’t enough, Gatiss has also popped up in Game of Thrones, Operation Mincemeat and the last two Mission: Impossible films.Now he’s back in a new detective drama Bookish, in which he plays a crime-solving book emporium owner. We caught up to chat about why he loves the 1940s; whether there will be more Sherlock, Dracula or League of Gentlemen; and what he’d like to do with Tom Cruise

To Kill a Mockingbird: a call to compassion that’s more urgent than ever

It’s impossible to watch Robert Mulligan’s 1962 adaptation of Harper Lee’s great novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, and not be moved by Gregory Peck’s performance as Atticus Finch, a small-town American lawyer with an unfailing moral compass. Light years from the archetypal legal eagle, he radiates good old-fashioned decency, espousing tolerance and compassion that sadly feels almost passe amid the Sturm und Drang of the current world.“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view,” goes one of Finch’s great lines, sourced from Lee’s book. In perhaps the film’s most memorable scene, Peck deliverers a grand courtroom monologue, declaring that “all men are created equal”, imploring the jury to “in the name of God, believe Tom Robinson,” the black man accused of raping a white woman – a crime he didn’t commit.When I think about this film, my mind recalls that monologue in vivid colour – even though it’s shot in monochrome

My night at the museum … for an ‘adult sleepover’, with lots of dinosaurs and no kids allowed

Museums around the world are opening up for grownups wanting to explore by torchlight and sleep among exhibits. Clem Bastow heads to Melbourne Museum to try one outGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailIt’s about 1.30am and I’ve just heard a spooky noise – the sort of noise that would usually send me shooting out of bed with a torch and baseball bat to investigate my no doubt impending doom. Fortunately, on this occasion I am not alone in my flat but surrounded by 39 other nerds sleeping (relatively) soundly in the Dinosaur Walk at Melbourne Museum. The source of the noise is a nearby tawny frogmouth