Culture Diary w/c 27-01-2025
Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…
Monday – Independent Venues Week Various Venues across the UK – £Various
The equation is perfectly simple: you get to keep your beloved indie venues if you support, frequent and spend money in them. Use them or lose them. Building on this principle, Independent Venues Week celebrates indie music and arts spaces across the UK. In essence, this translates as a slew of great, affordable gigs practically everywhere you look. We’ve picked out the odd one or two below.
Cléo from 5 to 7 7.30pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8
Pre-dating the French New Wave with La Pointe Courte (her 1954 debut is said by some to have ushered in the nouvelle vague) and, indeed, outlasting it, director Agnès Varda’s second feature Cléo from 5 to 7 finds singer Cléo Victoire anxiously passing time, awaiting the results of a biopsy. Shot in real time and flitting from colour to monochrome, this being the FNW and this being Varda, Victoire’s fate is only half the story.
Tuesday – J.M.W. Turner & His Contemporaries @ the Victoria Gallery & Museum, Liverpool – FREE
2025 is a big year for fans of Turner. Marking the 250th anniversary of the painter’s birth, the milestone is being commemorated with multiple celebratory exhibitions in the coming months. It allows is for a variety of different takes and perspectives on Turner – his art, influences and legacy. This show at VGM looks at his work in the context of his peers, including Thomas Girtin, John Sell Cotman, David Cox Snr, Samuel Prout and others.
Wednesday – Matt Berry: in Conversation w/ Eddie Piller 4pm @ Rough Trade Liverpool – £12.50
Matinee performance of the inimitable (though many have and continue to try) Matt Berry, marking the release of latest record, the psychedelia-tinged Heard Noises.
The Bug Club 7.30pm @ Future Yard, Birkenhead – £15
According to their record label, Sub Pop, The Bug Club – by way of South Wales – make ‘Modern-Lovers-meets-Nuggets garage rock’. And, listening to their album, On the Intricate Inner Workings of the System, I take their point. With dead pan delivery of lyrics (“we’re not dead, we’re just dead gorgeous”) among their repertoire, we can add wry and prolific to the adjectives. It all adds up to a band high on our to see list.
Persona 5.30pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8
Ingmar Bergman’s psychological study of an actress (Liv Ullman) experiencing emotional breakdown, and the nurse – played by Bibi Andersson – fighting to reach her. Considered by many to be the director’s masterpiece, the film was named in Sight and Sound Magazine’s top 20 Greatest Films of All Time.
Thursday – Exhibition Opening: For Your Pleasure: 15 Years of DuoVision @ Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool – FREE
New Open Eye exhibition For Your Pleasure – guest curated by DuoVision – celebrates the burgeoning queer club culture of 1990s UK. Against a backdrop of Tory legislation, making it illegal to ‘promote’ homosexuality in schools (it forbade teachers from informing children of same sex relationships) and the AIDs crisis, clubbing and the communities it fostered, proved essential to expression and resistance. Martin Green & James Lawler, guest curators, DuoVision, said: “In recent years Queer culture has become seen as a relevant subject for examination within gallery spaces, and this exhibition explores its roots as it manifested and developed on the dancefloor.”
Crywank 7.15pm @ QUARRY Liverpool – £13
In the pantheon of career-challenging band names, Manchester’s Crywank must be up there with Selfish C*nt. Their blend of anti-folk ‘mostly sad songs‘ has, nevertheless, inspired a loyal following more than willing to forgive – and perhaps even embrace – the initially jarring moniker.
Friday – Studio/Lab Open Day 11am @ FACT Liverpool – FREE
Desk-hopping around cafes and bars proving tiresome and expensive? Can you no longer differentiate your home from your place of work? You could do far worse then than give today’s Studio/Lab open day at FACT Liverpool a go, where you can meet other creatives, get a sense of the various tech and support on offer, and take advantage of the free-flowing tea and coffee. What’s not to like?
Last Chance to See: Ofri Cnaani: The Contactless Condition @ Exhibitions Research Lab, Liverpool John Moores University – FREE
A little off the beaten track of Liverpool’s exhibitions route, this art school space is nevertheless always worth a look. If you’ve missed Ofri Cnaani’s first UK solo show thus far, which includes video works and installation addressing connections between data, coloniality and more. this is your last chance.
Saturday – Paddy Steer w/ nilOO; Another Country; The Late Joe Bowman; & Victor Serge 7pm @ QUARRY –£10
Arch eccentric and TDN fave from the earliest years of Threshold Fest, man of many sonic talents, Paddy Steer, makes a welcome return to Liverpool this evening, with a bunch of special guests in tow. including the multi-disciplinary nil00.
Polyester 8.50pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8.50
Divine plays suburban housewife Francine Fishpaw in John Waters’ Polyester, which sees Francine’s world in freefall owing to a cheating pornographer husband, pregnant teenage daughter, and foot-fetishist son; relief arrives in the form of the wonderfully named (as is FF, of course) Todd Tomorrow. With his first studio picture (and augmented budget to match), Waters leans into and satirizes the ‘women’s pictures’ of Douglas Sirk.
Sunday – GIRLBAND!//Tom A. Smith 7.30pm @ Future Yard – £12.50
Double the bang for your book from twin headliners. Nottingham three-piece, ‘bulletproof wolfpack’ GIRLBAND!, deliver shouty pop punk, while indie-rock comes in the form of wee slip of a lad, 20 year old Tom A. Smith.
Mike Pinnington
Images/media, from top: Cléo from 5 to 7 trailer; Vale of Ashburnham, JMW Turner, c.1816; Persona film still; Jon Shard, from For Your Pleasure; Ofri Cnaani; Polyester trailer
