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There are plenty of romantic ways to spend your weekend if you're feeling all loved up ahead of Valentine's Day, including card-making workshops, brunch clubs and a whole programme of events planned at Keats House. If that all sounds a bit soppy, opt for some ace film events, the five-star Hockney exhibition at Tate Britain or one of the great theatre shows below!
Things to do
Alara Wassailing Party, Alara Wholefoods Warehouse, TONIGHT, free. Feeling the bleakness of the season? Time to get yourself a nineteenth-century English pick-me-up: a drink from the wassailing bowl and an encouraging song to the apple tree that produced it.
Late at the Library, British Library, TONIGHT, £20. Get a bit deeper with the new exhibition, 'Maps and the 20th Century: Drawing the Line' with a cocktail in hand.
Valentine's Weekend at Keats House, Sat, £15. Love is in the air at the beautiful Georgian house Keats called home between 1818-1820 this Valentine's weekend.
Mushpit Valentine's Card Workshop, magCulture Shop, £10. Fancy getting crafty this Valentine’s Day? Make a card for your beau, best friend or mum with help from the girls behind the brilliant Mushpit magazine.
Resonance FM Annual Fundraiser, Aces & Eights, Sat, £7. An evening of sonic experimentation presented by sound-art collective Gwaith Sŵn featuring Rie Nakajima & Ken Ikeda, Phil Minton, Viewfound & Daniel R Wilson, Dan Linn-Pearl and Paul TQ Freeman.
Framed Lives Screenings, ICA, Sun, £20 each, or £50 for the season. Give your Sunday mornings an intense start with this series of screenings run by the Institute of Psychoanalysis. This season features biographical films on famous scientists and screenings are followed by discussions with psychoanalysts and film buffs.
The Camden Vintage Furniture Flea, London Irish Centre, Sun, £2, early bird £3. From Atomic-prints to ornaments, cushions, crockery and glass you’ll find all sorts of retro oddities at this flea market celebrating all things kitsch.
…or check out more events happening in London this weekend.
Eating and drinking
Love Potions Cocktail Class with Sweetdram, Borough Wines, Sun, £20. Learn how to whip up a selection of drinks with Dalston-based spirit brand Sweetdram, in the suitably boozy surrounds of one of south London's finest grog shops.
The Krio Kanteen Supper Club, Canvas Cafe, Sat, £25. Tuck into some West African grub with a Western twist at this Sierra-Leonean supper club. Join for an evening filled with food, a free cocktail, and West African vibes.
The Bloody Brunch Club, Haunt, Sat, £19.50, £29.50 for bottomless Bloody Marys. A loved-up version of the boozy brunch club with romantic rhythms from resident DJs and a sitting especially for single brunch lovers. Seating time are at 11.30pm-1pm, 1.30-3pm (single sitting) and 3.30pm-5pm.
Tea At The Vicks Valentines Special, 6 The Mother's Square, Sun, £27. Not down with Valentine's Day? Well, you're in luck as the door to pop-up restaurant 'Tea At The Vicks' is opening for a three-course afternoon tea extravaganza, with an Anti-Valentines twist.
…or check out the latest restaurant reviews.
Live music
Two Door Cinema Club, Alexandra Palace, TONIGHT, £24.50. The melodic quirk-pop trio, signed to the hip Kitsuné label, headline this enormous show with ecstatic and melodic cuts.
Bloc Party, Roundhouse, Fri-Sat, phone for availability. They’re back! After another long, long hiatus and a line-up change, Kele Okereke’s emotional post-punks have finally reconvened.
Twin Peaks, Moth Club, Sat, £10 adv. Hey, how do you reckon they thought up that radical band name? Apparently this young Chicago indie band had never watched David Lynch's iconic TV series when they called themselves Twin Peaks.
…or take a look at all the live music events in London this weekend.
Nightlife
The Last Tuesday Society - Dandies And Daemons Valentine's Ball, Clapham Grand, TONIGHT, £7.50-£20. A romantically-themed night of burlesque and clubbing.
Kitsuné French Kiss Party, Village Underground, TONIGHT, £18.50. French label Kitsuné are pulling out amorous house sounds for their fourth Valentines party that also offers live performances.
Stevie Wonderland: Let Love Flow On, Corsica Studios, TONIGHT, £15. Funk-flinging night Stevie Wonderland is taking over Corsica Studios for a disco drenched Valentine's love-in that brings together resident DJs with international guests Marcel Vogel and Mr Mendel going back to back.
The Artful Badger's Galactic Love Valentine's Ball, The Vaults, Fri-Sat, £22. The annual – and brilliant – Artful Badger Valentines Ball returns with a galactic theme of inter-species love over two nights.
Skream, XOYO, Sat, £5-£20. Dubstep don-turned disco-ace Skream is something of a master at laying down killer party-starting DJ sets, so hearing him do his thing here should be a treat.
…or see all the parties planned this weekend.
20th Century Women
Film
My Twisted Valentine: ‘The Secret of Dorian Gray’, Barbican Centre, Sat, £9.50, £8.50 concs. Every year, the Barbican present a short season of films offering an alternative to the usual slew of romantic classics, movies that take a darker, weirder look at the subject of love.
Arrow Video Club: ‘The Driller Killer’, Prince Charles Cinema, Sat, £10. Reno, a painter, is driven to distraction by financial troubles, the punk band rehearsing next door, and the city squalor he sees all around him.
‘OJ: Made in America’ + director Q&A, Bertha DocHouse, Sun, 12.50, £10 concs. Is it a TV series? Or a seven-and-a-half-hour movie? Either way, it’s been nominated for Best Documentary at this year’s Oscars, and quite rightly so.
Or at the cinema...
20th Century Women ★★★★☆ Set at the end of the 1970s, liberation, motherhood and sex swirl in Mike Mills's captivating evocation of his teenage years.
The Lego Batman Movie ★★★★☆ A little plastic bat fights the forces of evil in this mad, hilarious comic-book pastiche.
Fences ★★★★☆ Denzel Washington and Viola Davis light up the screen in this adaptation of a play set in a black neighbourhood in the 50s.
…or see all of the latest releases.
© Darren Bell
Theatre
The Boys in the Band, Vaudeville Theatre, Fri-Sat £20-£50. Mark Gatiss and his hubbie Ian Hallard star in this rancorous gay theatre classic.
School Play, Southwark Playhouse, Fri-Sat, £20, concs £16. A seriously impressive debut play about the target driven grind of British primaries.
Beware of Pity, Barbican Centre, all weekend, £16-£40, phone for availability. Complicite return with a painful, gripping adaptation of Stefan Zwelig's epic novel.
…or see our theatre critics’ choices.
This week's best new art
Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932, Royal Academy of Arts, Sat-Sun, £18. Here, hung across these walls, is the birth of fake news. Sure, governments lied to their people for millennia before the Russian Revolution in 1917, but none took propaganda, manipulation of the media and suppression of the arts to Soviet levels.
David Hockney, Tate Britain, all weekend, £19.50, concs available. The 80-year old Yorkshireman is a giant of twentieth-century art, a painter with an incredible eye for the iconic. But this show isn’t just some stodgy funereal look back – Hockney is still painting, and he’s still good.
Helen Johnson: Warm Ties, ICA, all weekend, free. You can say this for Helen Johnson: not many artists could fill their paintings with images of white British men farting lyrics from the Australian national anthem and get away with it.
…or see all London art reviews.
And finally
Win... a seriously splendid Fortnum & Mason hamper or the ultimate weekend package in Connaught Village
Book… these gigs while you still can
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