Culture Diary w/c 23-11-2015
What’s hot this week? Our pick of the arts listings from around Liverpool and the rest of the UK…
Monday — Cornerstone Festival: Andrew Bick 7.30pm @ Capstone Theatre, Liverpool — FREE
Meet artist and curator Andrew Bick as he joins Liverpool Hope University’s celebrated Cornerstone Festival and leads a panel discussion on conversation as a way of creating exhibitions. Expect to hear about his 2011 exhibition The Conversation, which showcased the works of overlooked British artists, which in turn links to his current collaboration with Liverpool Hope in highlighting modern art through dialogue.
Play The City Now Or Never! The Film 2-4pm @ Metal, Peterborough — FREE
To celebrate the climax of their mobile app Play Peterborough Now or Never!, Idit Nathan and Helen Stratford will be screening a documentary about the project and the light-hearted mischief that town residents got up to when experiencing Peterborough’s first ‘playful app’. The film will be shown whilst you munch on tea and cakes.
Tuesday — Palma Violets 7.30pm @ The Kazimier, Liverpool— £12
Named after the childhood sweet that you either loved or loathed, the four-man indie band from London will be performing hit songs from their critically acclaimed studio albums Danger In The Club and 180. Expect comparisons with The Libertines, and their NME Song of the Year (2012) Best of Friends.
Wednesday — BFI Love Season: Stranger By The Lake (2014) 6.30pm @ A Small Cinema, Liverpool — £4
Screening as a part of the BFI Love Season, this French film by Cannes award-winning director Alain Guiraudie focuses on the newly founded relationship between Franck and Michel. Although first seeming to be passionate gay romance, the drama-thriller soon takes a dark turn after the discovery of a savage secret, leaving the characters to fend for themselves alone in what becomes the most dangerous lake in France. Expect steamy scenes and bucket loads of suspense.
The Wailers 7pm @ O2 Academy, Liverpool — £22
A very special treat for reggae fans as The Wailers will be performing their iconic 1984 Bob Marley album Legend in its entirety. The record, which is the best-selling reggae album of all time, contains greatest hits such as Exodus, I Shot The Sheriff and Jamming. A guaranteed night of fun infused with Jamaican spirit.
Thursday — Cornerstone Festival: Behold the Light of Nature! Ruskin on Turner 7.30pm @ Capstone Theatre, Liverpool — FREE
Join art historian and actor Paul O’Keeffe as he reenacts Victorian critic John Ruskin’s famous lectures which began at the Philosopher’s Hall, Edinburgh, in 1953. Ruskin placed the work of JMW Turner in the context of landscape painting going back six centuries in order to tell the posthumous story of his life; a bittersweet mixture of achievement and heartbreak.
PICK OF THE WEEK: Friday — All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival 2.0: Nightmare Before Christmas @ Pontins, Prestatyn — £199
It’s been two years since ATP announced they’d never do another British summer holiday camp festival, and ten years since enfant terrible artists Jake and Dinos Chapman curated the first Nightmare Before Xmas — “and lost so many brain cells that it’s taken a decade to replace them”. With an eclectic line-up of US and European alternative music from all genres, expect contemporary composer Max Richter (performing his magnum opus The Blue Notebooks), space-folk solo project Grimm Grimm, and one of the most exciting live bands out there, Thee Oh Sees, amongst many more.
Frankenstein (1931) with Live Accompaniment by Gary Lucas 8pm @ Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Hall — £14
Tonight, Gary Lucas, One of the 100 Greatest Living Guitarists according to Classic Rock magazine, will perform a live solo guitar set to accompany the horror film inspired by Mary Shelley’s novel. Directed in 1931 by James Whale, the chilling black-and-white feature-length stars the legendary Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster; expect Lucas’s expert performance to only add to the blood-curdling classic.
Saturday — Mythopoeia III: Legs 8pm @ The Kazimier, Liverpool — £11-20
Here for the third and final installment of the Mythopoeia party, and one of the last ever Kazimier parties, local alt popettes Stealing Sheep presents Legs: a synth-dance, feature-length show, which experiments with themes around aerobics, sci-fi fantasy and the 1980s from a galore of supporting artists, expect an outlandish, surrealist dream incorporating optical illusions, strange rituals and UV special effects. Dress code: LEGS.
Sunday — Homotopia Festival Presents The Queen (1968) 6-7.30pm @ A Small Cinema, Liverpool — £5
Want to discover the movement behind popular drag-culture shows such as Ru Paul’s Drag Race? This 1968 pre-Stonewall film directed by Frank Simon follows the backstage lives of drag queens as they prepare for the Miss All-American Camp Beauty Pageant — at a time when cross-dressing was an arrestable offence. Filled with rival tension, talks of sexual identity and hairspray, expect a peek into the entertaining underground art of the LGBT community, in addition to a serious look at drag history and its many challenges.
Vanessa Wheeler
