Culture Diary w/c 17-07-2023
Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…
Monday – The Tunnel to Summer, The Exit of Goodbyes 12.50pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8.20/concs
Time-bending urban legends abound in The Tunnel to Summer, The Exit of Goodbyes, a prize-winning anime adapted from the novel and manga of the same name.
Midsummer Mechanicals 10am/2pm @ Shakespeare North Playhouse, Prescot – £3-£30
Olivier Award-nominated, family-friendly introduction to Shakespeare based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream (top).
Tuesday – Lost, Found, Given ~ Stored, Shown, Seen: Artists’ Responses to the West Cheshire Museums’ Collections @ Grosvenor Museum, Chester– FREE
What works have museums collected over time? Whose artworks and cultures are represented, and why? Ever more urgent questions of both representation and relevance collide here as staff, students and alumni from the Department of Art & Design at the University of Chester respond to the collections of the West Cheshire Museums.
A Terrible Sound: A Curated Programme of Shorts by Steve Oliver plus Q&A 6.20pm @ Marina’s Cinema, HOME Manchester – £7.70/6.20/5
Three short films themed around our mis/trust of the image, or as the artist behind tonight’s event Steve Oliver puts it, “poking at the power of the image to control/sell/deceive/inform/deform.” Oliver’s showing his new film-cum-constructed courtroom drama tonight, A Terrible Sound, alongside social media Cinderella fable, This is the Difference Between Evidence and Belief (pictured, above), by visual artist Jo Clements, plus the uncanny Wine & Spirits by filmmaker Rachel Reupke. Expect unnerving, challenging viewing, followed by a 20 minute discussion with our own co-founder Laura Robertson about the slippery lines between fact and fiction.
Wednesday – Exhibition Closing: Sorry, Did You Miss Me?: Stephanie Trujillo @ The Royal Standard, Liverpool – FREE
“I use my art to support my mental health and explore themes of identity, belonging, familiar and platonic relationships, trauma, grief, and healing,” says multidisciplinary artist Stephanie Trujillo. This exhibition addresses, she says, “my past and all that I left behind”, across painting, collage, photography and poetry.
YEP Directors Festival 2023: X 2pm/7pm @ Everyman Theatre, Liverpool – £5
You don’t get a great deal of science fiction made for the theatre. It’s great, then, to see X, part of Young Everyman Playhouse Directors’ Festival, explore themes of psychology and isolation at an increasingly ominous research base on Pluto.
Thursday – Bluedot @ Jodrell Bank Observatory, Cheshire – £Various
Music, science, arts and culture all taking place beneath the incredible – not to mention iconic – Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank. Those there for the music this year can expect the likes of Grace Jones, Pavement, Max Richter (joined by Tilda Swinton, no less), Dry Cleaning, Kokoroko and Big Joanie. Add to that talks including from The Sky at Night team, discussion about how science becomes fiction in the form of the authors and scientists of Collision: Stories from the Science of CERN, and Jodrell Bank’s own Professor Tim O’Brien, as well as Adam Buxton performing his Bug Bowie special. A festival with something for everyone.
Friday – Current Affairs 7.45pm @ Future Yard, Birkenhead – £11.20
Glasgow-based Current Affairs, with members drawn from various bands you may or may not have heard of (including Shopping), arrive in Birkenhead in support of debut album, Off the Tongue. Contemporary take on DIY post-punk and new-wave. No bad thing.
The Drawing (Paper) Show @ Bridewell Studios and Gallery, Liverpool – FREE
Drawing – so often seen merely as the preliminary steps before the ‘real’ art is made – is, quite rightly, celebrated in and of itself here, with the joyous return of The Drawing Paper. A publication last seen in 2015, 2023 sees it return in earnest with 50 artists (both local and global) foregrounding drawing for drawing’s sake in this exhibition, and a special, new edition of the Drawing Paper.
Saturday – LB2023 Family Day: Movement workshop with Unmute Dance Theatre #1 11am @ Bluecoat, Liverpool – FREE
Family friendly movement workshop facilitated by Unmute Dance Theatre, a company of artists with mixed abilities and disabilities exploring choreography and ideas through music and physical theatre.
Maeve Thompson: Rabbit Holes in the Playing Field @ The Royal Standard, Liverpool – FREE
First solo show for Maeve Thompson, an artist working across sculpture, film, field notes and installation to explore themes of personal histories and the urban and organic mundane.
Sunday – YÖRGOSBORD: The Killing of a Sacred Deer 2.10pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8
Writing on the release of the Greek director’s 2011 film, Alps, DW Mault said that “uncertainty and unease are very much to the forefront of the cinema of Yorgos Lanthimos.” Anybody who saw last week’s screening at FACT of his previous film Dogtooth can, no doubt, attest to this. With his latest. Poor Things, incoming, Picturehouse continue their exploration of all things Lanthimos (a YÖRGOSBORD they’re calling it), with Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman-starring psychological horror, The Killing of a Sacred Deer.
Mike Pinnington
Images/media, from top: Midsummer Mechanicals; West Cheshire Museums’ stores; X YEP; still, This is the Difference Between Evidence and Belief by Jo Clements (9 mins, 2 sec); Bluedot Festival; Drawing Paper
