The Salterton Arts Review 2024 Countdown

It’s time for the Salterton Arts Review’s annual New Year’s Eve countdown, in which we look back at a busy year of arts, theatre and travel and discuss a few highlights.

The 2024 Countdown: A Year in Review

I can’t believe it’s that time again. This is the fifth annual countdown post since I relaunched this blog during the pandemic. And what a lot of art, theatre and new places we have seen together in that time! The first couple of years were about navigating a changing cultural landscape and COVID-19 rules, and being grateful for the things that were still accessible. In 2020 one of my highlights was being able to see three things at Open House London, for instance. This year I saw so much I split it across two bumper posts here and here!

But there are a few things I remain grateful for. One is just how much there always is to explore in London. On the theatre front alone, new (to me) venues for 2024 included Barons Court Theatre, Seven Dials Playhouse, Camden People’s Theatre, Drayton Arms Theatre, Riverside Studios, the Courtyard Theatre, and The Glitch. My first outing to several of these coincided with theatre festivals. They’re a great way of discovering new theatremakers, companies and venues. I was similarly lucky to encounter many new art venues this year, including Autograph in Shoreditch. And I continue to make my way through a long list of museums and historic sites in London, with outings this year to the Bank of England Museum, Sambourne House, the Museum of Neoliberalism and more. For all its inconveniences, London remains one place that can sustain my thirst for arts, culture and history!

Looking back at the year, there were many more highlights than I could fit into a top 5 countdown. I’ve seen institutions challenging conventional narratives on history and architecture. I saw theatre in a Roman setting in St Albans, West End premieres like this, this and this, and amazing history like the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. It’s been a very good year. But it wouldn’t be a very good countdown if I didn’t narrow down those highlights just a little. Let’s make a start on that now.

5. Monet and London: Views of the Thames – Courtauld Gallery

Starting off this year’s countdown is the most recent of the posts I’ve included. It’s Monet and London: Views of the Thames, which is currently still on at the Courtauld Gallery. It’s not the first time the Courtauld Gallery has been included in a Salterton Arts Review countdown. Their well-curated exhibitions and small gallery size appeal to me.

This time around, I’ve included Monet and London for just those reasons. The exhibition is interesting enough that I experienced a newfound appreciation for Monet’s work. The curator has at the same time brought back together many works which were part of an exhibition in Paris in 1904, and fulfilled Monet’s unrealised ambition to bring the same exhibition to London in 1905. It’s very focused, with only three repeated London views, two of which are on the Courtauld’s doorstep. And compared to other very popular London exhibitions this year, it was a delight to visit and not overly crowded.

It’s also an interesting exercise in perspective. Artistic perspective, of course: Monet painted the same views again and again for a reason. But historic perspective, too. The thing Monet found most interesting about London in the 1890s was its atrocious levels of industrial pollution. He would look at our sunsets, which are also polluted but less diabolically so, with disdain. He loved the effect of the sun bouncing off all of those industrial particles from the South Bank’s chimneys and factories. Thanks to clean air acts, however, it’s been decades since London had a good smog. Monet’s loss is all of our lungs’ gain (although the battle isn’t over yet). The paintings, however, are splendid.

4. HKPAX (Hong Kong Performing Arts Expo)

The Salterton Arts Review is primarily a London-based blog, but I do take all of you lovely readers with me when I travel. In at number four on our countdown is an arts festival I encountered on one of this year’s excursions. Tourism was not the primary reason for my visit to Hong Kong, but I did have a few evenings and a Sunday free to explore. And when checking what was on when I visited, I came across the inaugural HKPAX (Hong Kong Performing Arts Expo).

As I was saying above in the context of new theatre discoveries, festivals are a great way to explore new venues. Most places in Hong Kong are new to me, of course. But despite multiple visits to the territory, I’d never even heard of the Pokfulam Farm, much less visited. I really enjoyed experiencing this former dairy farm on the south side of Hong Kong Island as part of a site-specific dance performance by City Contemporary Dance Company.

I focused deliberately on local productions when selecting which works to see as part of HKPAX, so the other one I squeezed in was Time in a Bottle by Leon Ko. This intersection between music, scenography, storytelling and scent took place at West Kowloon Cultural District, a relatively new arts quarter which was also a discovery for me. I enjoyed watching the sun go down over Hong Kong Harbour before taking in this unique self-guided experience.

I could just as easily have spent my evenings in Hong Kong checking out new restaurants or cocktail bars, outdoor spaces or vantage points. It’s a place I could happily come back to again and again. But an unexpected arts expo was a great way to layer in some new cultural experiences during my trip, and get me away from the immediate radius of my hotel. I definitely recommend having a look at events listings before you head away on a trip, just in case there’s something equally interesting happening where you’re going.

3. The Last Show Before We Die – The Yard Theatre

In third place now we have one of the first posts of the year, going all the way back to the 11th of January. It’s The Last Show Before We Die, which I saw at the Yard Theatre. The Yard has a great track record of staging interesting productions. It will be a tough wait in 2025 for them to build new, more permanent premises. I sincerely hope their inspiring programming and community engagement and outreach make it through the expansion unharmed.

But anyway, back to The Last Show Before We Die. The reason this play has made it into this year’s countdown is the way it has stuck in my brain. Almost a year on now, I still sometimes find myself thinking of it. It’s an ostensibly simple work, by Mary Higgins and Ell Potter, with a Co-Creator credit for Director Sammy J Glover. Higgins and Potter are the performers, and the upcoming death is that of their relationship. Or is it? It’s certainly the question under discussion.

The Last Show Before We Die is about endings. Higgins and Potter have worked together, lived together, overcome the ending of a romantic relationship. As the saying goes all good things come to an end, but what sort of end? To go out with a bang, or to fizzle out, or to become something new: that is the question. And it’s explored through a truly unique theatrical work, one where I never knew what was coming next. To some, that might be disconcerting. I find it invigorating. To lurch from birth reenactment to audio of interviews to song and dance numbers is quite exciting, actually.

And so this little theatrical earworm is still lodged in my brain many months later. Higgins and Potter’s working relationship may truly have come to an end now, but if it lives on in its audiences, that’s a pretty good afterlife.

2. Entangled Pasts, 1768-Now – Royal Academy

We’re almost at the number one spot now, with just one more stop to go. And in second place it’s Entangled Pasts, 1768-Now at the Royal Academy. Like The Last Show Before We Die, this entry has made the countdown because I found it very invigorating.

Entangled Pasts confronted the Royal Academy’s own history, and its part in creating and maintaining the narratives that underpinned Empire and colonialism. It did this through the selection of works, and their curation and presentation. The exhibition put historic and contemporary works of art in dialogue, revealing hidden and suppressed perspectives. In only 100 works the curators examined the role of the British establishment (including the RA) in the enslavement of African people, and connections to India and the East India Company. The exhibition covered the geopolitical background, aesthetic norms and the representation of colonial places, and the Middle Passage. It looked at institutional and individual connections to these global forces, and their legacies today.

We are currently in a challenging moment in history, where tension exists between those who would continue to push for diversity, inclusion and openness about our history and contemporary society, and those who would prefer a reactionary return to a perceived glorious or comfortable past. I feel heartened that major institutions in London are furthering this dialogue and turning their gaze inwards to understand their past role and current responsibilities. I hope for more exhibitions of this nature and calibre in 2025.

1. International Productions and Collaborations (Afrique en Cirque – Southbank Centre & Spirited Away – London Coliseum)

We’ve made it, it’s time for the number one spot for 2024! And like other years, I have to admit I’ve cheated a little and squeezed in a bit extra. Oh well, it’s my blog and what is anyone going to do about it? So taking the number one spot this year are the international productions and collaborations I’ve been fortunate enough to see in London.

We were just looking in the previous entry at the role London and its institutions have played in global politics, forces and society. And as much as it is our duty to be cognizant of the ways in which that power has benefitted some groups to the detriment of others, it has also created a circumstance in which those of us who live in London are immensely privileged in having the world come to us. I can travel a couple of miles from home and see more world-class exhibitions, theatre and other cultural productions than I can keep up with. Some of these are home-grown, but I also enjoy the feeling that the world is coming to me.

To take a couple of examples, I’ve seen some excellent works by African companies this year at the Southbank Centre. Back in July I saw Afrique en Cirque by Guinean company Kalabanté Productions, which was a joyous, high octane showcase of circus skills. A few months later I saw Re:INCARNATION by Nigeria’s QDance Company. This very contemporary dance performance brought the youth culture of Lagos to the London stage. Less of a travelling production and more of a collaboration was Spirited Away at London Coliseum. The beloved Ghibli film came to life on stage, with a Japanese cast and crew acting, manning puppets, and manoeuvering a very adaptable set.

These international productions, and more that I haven’t mentioned, are everything I love about live performance. It is such a privilege to take a few hours out of my day to expand my horizons by exposing myself to new stories, people and creative techniques. The upside of London as a global city and my home is this constant exchange of cultures. Long may it last!