Culture Diary w/c 09-09-2024
Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…
Monday – The Parallax View 7.50pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8
A paranoid conspiracy thriller for paranoid times, Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax view stars Warren Beatty in a breathless, post-Watergate thriller. The director also made Klute, and All the President’s Men in this period, with the trio of films coming to be known as Pakula’s paranoia trilogy, as 1970s Hollywood turned its attention to a politics of distrust.
Tuesday – Exhibition Opening: Reclama @ St. George’s Hall, Liverpool – FREE
La Feria 2024 festival, a celebration of music, dance, theatre and street arts from across the Latin American continent, gets underway today with Reclama, an exhibition documenting the heritage of Afro-descendant and Black women. The festival runs for just a week and at various venues, so check out the full programme lest you miss anything.
Ride 7pm @ Camp & Furnace – £33.25
Shoegaze survivors Ride formed in 1988 and were in the vanguard of a scene they helped pioneer, before calling it a day in 1996. They reformed in 2014 and, unlike many a heritage act, have continued to release new material (gleaning a largely favourable critical reception). Currently touring their latest, Interplay, it is the third such album since getting the band back together.
Wednesday – The Third Man 5.30pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8
Sitting in joint 63rd in the 2022 Sight and Sound Great Films of All Time poll, few would question The Third Man’s inclusion; in fact, I was surprised it wasn’t higher. Written by Graham Greene, Carol Reed’s noirish thriller starring Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton playing cat and mouse in a crumbling post-war Vienna remains peak cinema; great, then, that it is back on the big screen to mark its 75th anniversary. I can practically hear the zither of Harry Lime’s theme now…
Thursday – Exhibition Opening: The Flowers Still Grow 6pm @ Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool – FREE
One of the outputs of a multi-project collab between photographers, creative writers, and communities in Anfield and Garston, exhibition The Flowers Still Grow foregrounds the concerns, experiences, and aspirations of those communities in an exploration of local – yet in many ways, universal – issues.
Friday – Exhibition Opening: Tomo – Frutopia 6pm @ Future Yard, Birkenhead – FREE
An early TDN Artist of the Month, tonight sees street artist Tomo take over Future Yard’s gallery space until 15 October, with Frutopia!, an exhibition of (presumably fruit-related) recent print and illustration works.
Last Chance to See: Into the Wyld – Nature @ Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, Birkenhead – FREE
The first leg of Into the Wyld – a major artistic exploration of the medieval poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in which the Knight of the title does battle with assorted beasts, nature and the elements in the ‘Wilderness of Wirral’ – comes to a close this week. Catch this interrogation of nature (curated by Patric Rogers), before legs dedicated to chivalry (19 September – 25 October) and spirituality (7 November – 21 December) follow.
Saturday – Exhibition Continues: Lee Miller – Friends at Farleys @ Victoria Gallery & Museum – FREE
With a biopic of Lee Miller’s life as a war correspondent about to hit cinemas, it’s well worth visiting VGM exhibition, Friends at Farleys (on display until 30 November). There we find the photographer relishing her position behind the camera, with husband (English Surrealist painter), Roland Penrose, entertaining a who’s who of modernists, including Picasso, Man Ray, Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning.
Bidston Observatory Open Days 12pm @ Bidston Observatory, Birkenhead – FREE
Built in 1866, in-part, to establish the ‘exact time,’ today the wonderful Bidston Observatory Artistic Research Centre operates as a ‘self-organising study site for research, communality and experimentation’. Whether interested in its history, as an affordable place to contemplate and conduct your own research, or both, take a look around this weekend for free.
Further Reading: Field Trip: Bidston Observatory Artistic Research Centre – Bringing Forth Other Worlds
Sunday – Last Chance to See: Anish Kapoor: Monadic Singularity @ Liverpool Cathedral – FREE
Last seen in a major show in the city more than 40 years ago, Anish Kapoor’s Monadic Singularity is something of a coup for Liverpool Cathedral. Timed to commemorate the centenary of its 1924 consecration, architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott surely could never have anticipated seeing his imposing neo-Gothic building in conversation with anything quite like this. Curator Elisa Nocente said: “As one of the leading figures in contemporary art, [Kapoor's is] a unique visual language that embraces painting, sculpture, and architectural forms.” If you haven’t yet visited the exhibition, we’d urge you to do so.
Fantastic Planet (La Planète Sauvage) 2.30pm @ the Bluecoat, Liverpool – £10.50
Part of Bluecoat’s Weird Futures season, René Laloux’s 1973 surrealistic allegorical Sci-Fi, Fantastic Planet, sees the animation’s small human-like Oms subjugated by their much larger oppressors, the Draags. Largely thought to be a reflection on the then occupation of Czechoslovakia by Soviet forces, today it could equally stand for any number of contemporary power imbalances that continue unabated.
Mike Pinnington
Images/media, from top: The Parallax View trailer; The Third Man trailer; Frutopia! flyer; Material Matters/Into the Wyld; Anish Kapoor, Sectional Body Preparing for Monadic Singularity, 2015
