What to do this weekend, from Martin Parr to the Winter Olympics

5 minutes

Arctic Monkeys, Opening Night

Arctic Monkeys are back: Opening Night marks the band’s first new material since 2022’s The Car. Built on sparse electronica and a slow, deliberate guitar twang, the track flirts with the brooding tension of AM-era Monkeys (the opening bars have faint echoes of Do I Wanna Know?) but resists nostalgia. This is no throwback. Instead, it takes the lounge-lit theatricality of The Car and gives it a sharper, more modern edge.

Opening Night is the first song from War Child’s HELP(2), a 23-track charity compilation produced by James Ford and due for release on 6 March. Inspired by the 1995 HELP album – which famously united Britpop rivals Blur and Oasis at the height of their feud – the new album features Fontaines DC, Damon Albarn, Cameron Winter, and Olivia Rodrigo, with proceeds supporting children living through war.

Listen here.

An hour

Martin Parr: A Fair Day at the Photographers’ Gallery, London W1

Before his death in December last year, the British photographer was working closely with the Photographers’ Gallery on an exhibition of black-and-white photographs taken in rural Ireland in the early 1980s. The images capture fair days and communal gatherings, offering a vivid portrait of a country in transition.

The exhibition reflects Parr’s long-standing relationship with the gallery and brings together his rare early black and white work. Softer in tone but no less sharp in observation, the images were made over two years, as Parr approached his subjects with patience, warmth and his trademark wit. From sheep peering over stone walls to teenagers lingering outside the Mayflower Ballroom, Drumshanbo, his eye for character is unmistakable.

Exhibition is free.

3 Hours

Wayne McGregor: Woolf Works at the Royal Ballet, London WC2

Wayne McGregor’s first full-length work for the Royal Ballet, created in 2015, has returned to the Royal Opera House. His Olivier award–winning triptych is an ambitious and distinctive response to Virginia Woolf, translating her restless, questioning intelligence into movement that fractures, flows and repeats, set to Max Richter’s hypnotic score.

Drawing on Mrs Dalloway, Orlando and The Waves, Woolf Works avoids conventional narrative, unfolding instead as a sequence of sensations. Each section occupies its own carefully shaped world, with different visual designs and choreographic textures, yet all inspired by Woolf herself, her writing, her interior life, her elusiveness. More than a decade after its premiere, Woolf Works feels strikingly contemporary, absorbing and emotionally charged.

Now read Sarah Crompton’s review. Tickets available here.

An afternoon

Peter Doig’s House of Music at the Serpentine, London W2

This is the last weekend to catch Peter Doig’s House of Music at the Serpentine, an immersive exhibition that, for the first time, brings his recent paintings into dialogue with sound.

Many of the works were made during Doig’s years in Trinidad (2002–21), a period that deepened his relationship with music through sound-system culture and cinema. Drawing on personal memory, found photographs and imagined scenes, the paintings are shaped by the island’s wider cultural landscape.

Speaking to The Observer last year, Doig described the exhibition as “a deep listening environment in which people can wander through the gallery spaces, looking at the work and lingering with the music”. Unlike earlier exhibitions that simply featured soundtracks, House of Music transforms the entire gallery into a listening space. Each painting invites a different mode of engagement, from recorded music and ambient sound to rooms where musicians perform or figures dance.

An evening

XXV Winter Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, Friday 6 February, 6.30pm, BBC Two and iPlayer 

The Winter Olympics are here, and while two weeks of sporting drama are guaranteed, the opening ceremony remains a spectacle in its own right. Where else would you find co-headliners as different as Mariah Carey and Andrea Bocelli?

This year marks a departure from tradition, with the celebration unfolding across multiple locations. Milan will host the main event, while satellite ceremonies, including athlete parades, take place in Predazzo, Livigno and Cortina d’Ampezzo.

Illustration by Charlotte Durance