Culture Diary w/c 27-05-2024
Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…
Monday – Exhibition Continues (until 31 May): Life at Arena 12-4pm @ Bridewell Studios & Gallery, Liverpool – FREE
Exhibition showcasing artists drawn from the current roster of members of Arena Studios and Gallery.
Trainspotting 6pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8
Danny Boyle’s lurid, high-octane adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s 1993 Edinburgh-set tales of drugs, friendship and debauchery is back in cinemas having been treated to a 4K restoration. Choose Life. Screens again Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Tuesday – The Tara Clerkin Trio 7.15pm @ Future Yard, Birkenhead – £13.50
Inspired by jazz, trip hop, electronica, psychedelia & minimalism, the The Tara Clerkin Trio (veterans of the Bristol music scene Pat Benjamin, Sunny Joe Paradisos and Clerkin) land at Future Yard armed with ‘looped and layered clarinet, vocals, samples, keys & percussion’. Lovely stuff.
Wednesday – Come, Come to Mama – Performance by Dahong Hongxuan Wang 2pm @ the Bluecoat – FREE
In artist Dahong Hongxuan Wang’s film Role Model (top), she plays Chinese-American star Anna May Wong, retracing the actor’s footsteps to consider her journey to her ancestral hometown. Come, Come to Mama promises an intimate performance that includes food, song and story-telling in which Dahong will draw on her identity and experiences portraying Wong who, to paraphrase, was rejected by the Chinese for being ‘too American’ and by Hollywood because of systemic racism.
Exhibition Opening: Bonds/Ripples 6pm @ Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool – FREE
Exhibition of new graduate works drawn from from BA Photography and Social Practice (UCEN Manchester) and BA (Hons) in Digital Imaging and Photography (Hugh Baird College). Variously addressing shared experiences, grief, place and memory, the future of the form – if appearances are anything to go by – is in good hands.
Thursday – Scratch #1 8pm @ Mirage Bar, Islington Mill, Salford – from £4
Inaugural Scratch – “a chance for creatives to test their performance based work for an audience.” Held at Salford’s artist-led space, Islington Mill, and hosted by long time pals of the publication, the phenom that is Short Supply, expect “live painting, clowning and audio visual wonder” from a variety of artists honing their craft.
Friday – Liz Roche Company: Sentient 7.30pm @ Everyman, Liverpool – from £11
A work featuring dancers, saxophone and early electronic instrument ondes Martenot, and voice acting from Adrian Dunbar, Liz Roche Company’s Sentient (above) responds to Samuel Beckett’s work of existentialism and loss, Molloy. Part of Beckett: Unbound.
Saturday – Exhibition Continues (Until 8 June): The Town is The Gallery, Convenience Gallery pop-up, Birkenhead – FREE
When stores such as M&S desert the high-street, worse things can happen than their premises being taken over by art and artists. Such is the case with Convenience Gallery’s The Town is The Gallery. Rather than a closed husk of a building, the space is currently occupied by Leo Fitzmaurice’s site-specific work, FIT IT, in response to “the physical fabric of the store itself” and In a Past Line, by Kate Bigley, an artist “utilizing architecture and playing with structures to reimagine a space.”
Sunday – Last Chance To See: On the other side @ FACT Liverpool – FREE
Exhibition of new work from artists Melanie Crean and Katrina Palmer, as well as Pilvi Takala’s Close Watch (chosen for the Finnish Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2022, above) that considers collaboration, systems of control and, ultimately, human nature, comes to a close.
Last Chance To See: Infinite Encounters @ Liverpool Cathedral – FREE
Group exhibition Infinite Encounters has been made with the senses in mind. Visitors are invited to engage with conceptual artist Rasheed Araeen’s ever-changing sculpture, Zero to Infinity, and similarly (although it will be the olfaction sense activated here), with Frances Disley’s Holodeck Program 106. Myriam Thyes’ video work Mutable Worlds presents the viewer with an interactive journey, while Neringa Naujokaite’s Horizon considers the urban environment through sound. From the Archive: The Big Interview: Rasheed Araeen
Mike Pinnington
