Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…

Monday – Continuing: Liverpool Biennial 2025: BEDROCK – FREE

The 13th edition of Liverpool Biennial eases into its first full week across the city and the public realm. There is the usual rich mix of institutional and ‘found’ spaces, with the city-wide arts festival a celebration of discovery as much as anything else. This iteration’s subtitle, BEDROCK, suggests nothing if not a solid foundation from which to build. Curator Marie-Anne McQuay and an array of international artists’ excavations of and responses to the city await. Check individual venues for opening times.

Further Reading: My Life in the Biennial with Ghosts

Continuing: Independents Biennial 2025 – FREE

Running in parallel to BEDROCK is the just-as-well established Independents Biennial which, this year, feels as ambitious as it ever has done. Taking place in an astonishing 120 locations across Liverpool, Wirral, Sefton, Knowsley and St. Helens, it boasts 22 new commissions of its 64 exhibiting artists. From degree show first-timers to the likes of Rebecca Chesney, Johnny Vegas, and Brigitte Jurack, there’s much to look forward to from this year’s showcase of grassroots art and artists. Check individual venues for opening times.

Tuesday – Last Chance to See: Fractured Familiar @ 50MV, Crosby, Liverpool – FREE

Bringing together paintings and sculpture by Roxy Topia & Paddy Gould, Jeffrey Knopf, Jamie Kirk and Luke Skiffington, Fractured Familiar includes: 1970s cgi, medical models, signage, photography and 3D scans. Introducing glitches and uncertainty into such ordinarily typical territory, ‘truth and fiction,’ goes the exhibition blurb, ‘become blurred, forgotten and then reimagined’.

Wednesday – Sink Presents: Ben Vince 7pm @ Lost Art, Liverpool – £10 (no one turned away for lack of funds)

Saxophonist, producer and collaborator with, among others, Mica Levi, Ben Vince rocks up in the Baltic Triangle’s Lost Art, showcasing new works ahead of the release of his latest record. In a packed midweek line-up, Vince is supported by Grey Streak & ELIJAH RIGHT?, Ria Bagley, and Kepla.

Bound 8.10pm @ FACT Liverpool – £9.35

Before The Matrix, siblings Lana and Lilly Wachowski made their directorial debut with this hard-bitten, sexy, 90s updating of the film noir. Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon star as Violet and Corky, who simmer as they plot the former’s escape from her mobster boyfriend, and find love amid a scheme to relieve the mafia of $2million.

Thursday – Exhibition Opening: Caroline Gorick: After Hours 6pm @ The Bridewell Studios & Gallery, Liverpool – FREE

At the intersection of abstraction and figuration, artist Caroline Gorick (above) presents new paintings inspired, she says, by “subjects found in my camera roll.” Part of the Independents Biennial, the exhibition – with themes including fear, memory, and fragility – runs until 18 June.

Friday – Semay Wu & Branton/Kelly 7.30pm @ Metal Liverpool, Edge Hill Station – £7/£5

An evening of atmospheric, innovative composition awaits at Edge Hill train station-based Metal Liverpool this Friday. With electroacoustic composer, improviser and cellist Semay Wu joined by experimentalist duo Nick Branton (reeds) and David Kelly (drums), expect the unexpected.

Friday the 13th 8pm @ FACT Liverpool – £9.35

An absolute no-brainer of programming, check in with Jason et al at Crystal Lake for a stone-cold genre classic, this Friday the 13th…

Saturday – The Lord of the Rings Trilogy: Extended Editions 11am @ FACT Liverpool – £25.85

With a combined running time of 727 minutes, this special screening of Peter Jackson’s TLotR trilogy (the extended versions, no less) practically approaches a durational art happening in its scope. Marking the 20th anniversary of The Return of the King, make a day of it with Mr. Frodo, Gandalf and pals.

From the Archive: Nik Glover takes an in-depth look at on-screen fantasy

Liverpool Biennial Guided Tour – FREE

Don’t know where to start with this year’s Biennial? Each week, guided tours will take place from 2pm. Check the Biennial website for details.

Sunday – The Night of the Hunter 4.30pm @ FACT Liverpool – £9.84

Writing about the film in 2014, George Jepson called Charles Laughton’s 1955 film The Night of the Hunter (starring Robert Mitchum as so-called preacher Harry Powell) “a twisted amalgam of Southern Gothic, a terrifying fairy-tale and vaudevillian slapstick comedy.” Adapted from a 1953 novel of the same name, it follows Mitchum’s psychopathically cruel ex-convict weedling his way into the unfortunate lives of a former cellmate’s family, in the name of hidden loot.

Further reading: Adam Scovell on The Night of the Hunter

Orchestra Baobab 7.30pm @ Liverpool Philharmonic Hall – £31/£26

I had one of those sit up and take notice of what’s on the radio moments recently, when Cerys Matthews played Senegalese dance troupe, Orchestra Baobab, on her 6music show (the song that grabbed my attention was Ray M’bele). Formed in the 1970s, they’re currently touring their winning blend of Afro-Cuban, pop and Griot (a West African oral tradition of music and storytelling) in venues across Europe. This Liverpool date is programmed in partnership with festival supremos, Africa Oyé.

Mike Pinnington

Images/media, from top: The Night of the Hunter still; Independents Biennial, The Old Fire Station; Ben Vince, Don’t Give Your Life; Cast, 2025, by Caroline Gorick: Friday the 13th trailer; Orchestra Baobab poster, Toucan Tango

Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…

Monday – Exhibition Continues: Between the Earth and the Sky @ New Adelphi Exhibition Gallery, Salford University – FREE

A hidden gem of the region’s art spaces, New Adelphi Exhibition Gallery regularly showcases works from the University of Salford’s collection. Between the Earth and the Sky (open from last week) is the latest to catch the eye. With contemporary print, photography and video, the group show – which includes work by Darren Almond, Jessica El Mal, Mishka Henner, Bridget Riley, and Liang Yue – reflects on nature’s transitional and transformative moments.

In the Mood for Love 8pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8.50

Wong Kar-Wai’s films are synonymous with beauty, melancholy, and unexplored desire. To have seen one of his films is to have, for its running time at the very least, lived all of those things and more. For many, that film will likely be In the Mood for Love, starring a ravishing will they won’t they Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung. Exploring their unconsummated relationship – which the pair toy with, and that we luxuriate in – the director has described it as akin to “two people dancing together slowly.”

Tuesday – The Merchant of Venice 1936 7.30pm @ the Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool – £11-£41

The play that opened my eyes to theatre and, specifically, Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice revolves around the titular merchant, Antonio, defaulting on his debt to moneylender, Shylock. Written in the 16th century, for this new adaptation the action has been transposed to a London on the eve of the Second World War, with the role of Shylock now occupied by TV’s Tracy-Ann Oberman. It arrives in Liverpool on the back of raves and sell out audiences in the West End.

Wednesday – Exhibition Opening: The Plant That Stowed Away @ Tate Liverpool – FREE

Bearing an exhibition title that, owing to its poetic ambiguity, puts one in mind of Biennials of yesteryear, The Plant That Stowed Away brings together Tate collection works to speak to the global movements of flora, positioning Liverpool as a starting point. Featuring works by Wirral-born photographer Chris Shaw and Atkinson Grimshaw’s Liverpool Quay by Moonlight, alongside an international cast of artists including Cristina de Middel, Kader Attia and Wangechi Mutu, it speaks to post-industrialisation, colonisation, and migration.

Macbeth 8pm @ FACT Liverpool – £22

Another reimagining of Shakespeare this week sees David Tenant and Cush Jumbo star in this new version of the Bard’s famed Scottish Play, filmed live at London’s Donmar Warehouse especially for the big screen.

Thursday – Exhibition Opening: Rave On 5pm @ Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool – FREE

With new exhibition For Your Pleasure’s lens trained on the queer club culture of 1990s UK, and Rave On’s celebration of the roughly overlapping 80s and 90s Liverpool rave scenes, Open Eye Gallery seems to have declared February to be party time. Get down to Mann Island for a nostalgic glimpse of clubbing pre Instagram and TikTok.

Exploring Family History, Migration, & Memory Through Poetry w/Jennifer Lee Tsai 5.30pm @ the Bluecoat – FREE

Jennifer Lee Tsai, poet and Bluecoat artist in residence, recently featured in the gallery’s But Does it Speak?, a season exploring language in a gallery setting, with the film, Fallen Star. She returns today for this free generative poetry workshop looking at family history, migration and memory.

Further Reading: Jennifer Lee Tsai’s Fallen Star

Friday – The Brian Jonestown Massacre 7pm @ the Liverpool Olympia – £36.85

90s psych-rock scene survivors, The Brian Joenstown Massacre, land in Liverpool tonight to get your weekend off with a bang. Their leader, Anton Newcombe (above), features on the latest podcast from our pals, Dead Air Records.

Further Reading: The Big Interview: Anton Newcombe

Saturday – The Graduate 3pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8.50

Best known for Mrs. Robinson’s seduction of Dustin Hoffman’s Ben (and the related soundtrack), from today’s perspective, that almost fabled film of ennui and in-between-ness, The Graduate, is also a strange insight into the cultural mores of the period – not least, a particular brand of male entitlement both on and off screen.

Sunday – Liverpool Poetry: Reading & Discussion w/Pauline Rowe 1pm @ Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool – FREE

More poetry to round off your week, coming in the form of this Pauline Rowe-led reading and discussion reflecting on 1967′s The Mersey Sound, an anthology which launched the careers of Liverpool trio Roger McGough, Adrian Henri and Brian Patten into the stratosphere. This workshop considers their legacy and asks what it means to be a Liverpool poet today.

Mike Pinnington

Images/media, from top: In the Mood for Love still; The Merchant of Venice 1936 trailer; Chris Shaw, Weeds of Wallasey, 2007-12 © Chris Shaw; Anton Newcombe; The Mersey Sound

Currently enjoying her first solo exhibition in Finland, artist Liz West talks to Laura Robertson about being deeply in love with colour: on creating vivid sensations through hue and saturation, and the technical lengths she is prepared to go to in order to “mix colour in space”…

Liz West holds an iridescent circle up to the webcam, moving it back and forth so I can see it sparkle. It’s a small sample of dichroic glass, invented by NASA and one of West’s favourite materials. She shows me two varieties: a warm hue, which ripples from yellow to pink, and a cold spectrum of blue to green. “With normal glass, you obviously see through it, and it either has a green tinge or it’s clear. Dichroic glass has a wonderful quality. When you move it around the colours change, like the iridescence of a butterfly wing. It’s incredible.”

West’s art evokes the sensations of colour. The 35-year-old British artist’s sculptures and installations have delighted audiences all over the world. Colour affects her spirit, and through her work, ours. She is intoxicated by the science, history and theory of colour. Previous works have condensed the essence of a sunset; deconstructed Sir Issac Newton’s seven-colour rainbow; and made entirely new hues from the Munsell Farnsworth 100 Hue Colour Vision Test – a method typically used to check colour blindness.

The artist confesses, unsurprisingly, to being “obsessed with materials”. During our interviews – held by video conference because of the UK’s Covid-19 restrictions, despite us living barely 45 miles away from each other in the North-West of England – she manoeuvres her computer screen so that I can see the studio cabinets behind her. She opens drawers and starts to remove a steady stream of miscellanea: colour swatches, spreading them out in her hands, one by one, like Japanese folding fans; paper samples in various weights and shades, from a sheaf of thick white matt to shimmering metallic; a keyring of fluorescent Perspex rectangles; metal brackets, bespoke fixings; and more dichroic glass circles, loose like coins.

Out of more drawers come sketches for works-in-progress and completed commissions. I recognise a drawing for Iri-Descent, lightly outlined in coloured pen (more on that later). These works on paper are surrounded by copious, neat handwriting and collage, too, using tiny pieces of foil and vinyl. They suggest to me a sense of West’s process, one that is careful, meticulously organised and engineered down to the last millimetre. “I am an absolute control freak. I like to know what’s happening and when. And if I don’t know, I feel quite disorientated and stressed.”

West is smiley and direct. She uses her hands to describe things. For our interviews she wears a simple vest top and jeans with her hair tied back, ready to work. She seems like the “practically minded” person she says she is, who becomes animated and increasingly confident when discussing how she executes her techniques and processes.

It is clear that West enjoys collaboration. It is, in fact, very necessary in order to realise her ideas – she needs complex machinery, designers, engineers and fabricators to deliver her large-scale sculptures. “Sometimes being on your own in the studio is quite a lonely pursuit. For me, working on the bigger projects with teams of people can be enlightening, because everyone’s come to the table with their own experiences and ideas, and people are generally very generous.”

But she does have to trust who she works with. She is involved in every stage of production and “oversees each element in scrutiny”. West loves to work with a particular team of fabricators called M3 Industries based in nearby Salford, Greater Manchester. Scroll through West’s Instagram and you’ll see many images of her artwork being tested and built in their workshop.

Most recently, new sculpture A Familiar Variant has been created especially for the In Physical Reality exhibition at Hyvinkää Art Museum, Finland. It is West’s first solo show in the country and will present three major works to the public. When we last speak, she has just shipped the six-foot cylindrical sculpture to the gallery. Visitors will be able to walk around it and slot themselves into a colour wheel of transparent, polyester-coated polycarbonate panels. As the light shines through the primary and secondary colours and the panes overlap, we will ”see the colour mix happening in space.”

West’s aforementioned Iri-descent has evolved over a longer period, and gives insight into to the problem-solving skills central to her practice. Originally commissioned by Britain’s famous upmarket department store, Fortnum & Mason, London, in 2019 as an installation for their great hall, West initially envisioned the artwork as “a cacophony of suspended modular cubes” in her beloved dichroic glass. The idea would prove “too heavy and too expensive”.

Collaborating with the company who construct Fortnum’s Christmas decorations, West navigated the difficult space – busy with lavish architectural detail and merchandising – to eventually create a “massive” yet lightweight, extra-terrestrial-looking, nine-column suspended sculpture. This work has been deconstructed, shipped to Hyvinkää and rethought in “a new form and shape, throwing out all kinds of multi-coloured refractions on the new white carpet.”

A Familiar Variant and Iri-descent, along with West’s hugely popular touring work, Our Colour Reflection (2016-20), will be showcased across two rooms that will “awake the senses.” West hopes that Iri-descent in particular will respond to “the darkest months” of the severe Finnish winter. “That vivid colour and illumination that comes from the work, it’s almost needed at that time of year – as soon as you point a spotlight at this piece, it’s just going to ping like a jewel.” West suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and has “had many conversations with Finnish people about what it’s like to live there”.

We both miss Finland, having had the privilege of visiting separately many times, and were each planning on returning earlier this year before Covid scuppered our plans: me to Helsinki Biennial on Vallisaari Island, and West to oversee install in Hyvinkää.

Over the course of our conversations, it becomes clear that, rather than something restricted to her artworks, West is an expert on the experience of colour. For her, the gamut of shades in her installations – including the three key spectral colours, electric reds, violet- blues and spring-greens – are personal. In the precise quality of the structures, they become anonymous, or in other words, allow us to lay our own associations onto their surfaces.

I’m reminded of what author Maggie Nelson says about us turning to colour in particularly fraught moments (explored in 2009’s Bluets). We are all aware of one such colour in our lives; for me, it’s the melancholy blue-brown of the turbulent river Mersey. A book that West turns to again and again is David Batchelor’s The Luminous And The Grey (2014), in which he talks about the vivid colours of the city, and how they coexist with a degree of darkness. I think about the metallic kaleidoscope that West recently produced for Paddington Central’s Westway Bridge in London, and the people that must pass it at all hours of the day and night, in a city that never sleeps, and take comfort from its prism.

The artist’s most vivid memories of colour are from her childhood during the 1990s in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. Like being in the car with her parents (who are both artists themselves) and seeing fast-moving reflections of neon signs bouncing off on rain-soaked pavements. The colours, sights, smells and sounds we sense as young people stick with us through life – and have the jarring ability to take us back there without warning.

West perhaps feels this more than some. “My world is quite a noisy place. From being very young, I’ve been a super, super sensory person. I was incredibly fussy with food, the textures frightened me, and they still do. Being in a busy room with different conversations going on was quite overwhelming.”

She says she is “plugging into this world, and then making work about it.” One of the ways that she does this is by deliberately employing a limited palette, and controlling her environment with rules and systems. West chooses only the hues available for the material she’s utilising for each project. She eliminates blacks and browns and other colours that she says don’t appeal. With digital editing software, she selects the highest line of saturation in order to determine the best combinations.

“I want to see the highest line as it limits my palette from millions to hundreds. I do the same with artificially-lit pieces. People ask me why I don’t use LEDs more often in the work, and that’s because you can do anything with them, whereas a fluorescent glass light tube comes in 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 8-foot lengths, and three different thicknesses, T5, T8 and T12, and that’s it. I love that.”

There’s a huge degree of subtlety going on in West’s relationship with colour. She wields it as a device to pull you in, and once there, her work holds you in an intense chromatic space that references colour as a subject, a fixation, and a memory aid. As an artist, she recognises and respects the appreciation for colour in others, too. “It’s about a deep understanding and a deep love of it. I am in love with colour.

“Some people are afraid of colour. Some people just know it exists and it’s in the world around them, they don’t think too much about it. But I’m in love with it. And when you’re in love with something, you find out everything about it.”

Laura Robertson

See Liz’s first solo exhibition in Finland, In Physical Reality, at Hyvinkää Art Museum until 28 March 2021 

Open Tue−Thu 11:00−18:00, Fri−Sun 11:00−17:00 – adults €6, pensioners and students €5. Free entry for children and unemployed, and on Wednesdays 16:00−18:00

Images from top: Liz West, A Familiar Variant, 2020 © Jussi Tiainen: Hyvinkää Art Museum. Sketches for Iri-descent, 2019, courtesy of the artist; Iri-descent installed at Hyvinkää Art Museum, courtesy Aleksi Nurminen, with thanks; Our Colour Reflection & A Familiar Variant, 2020 © Jussi Tiainen, Hyvinkää Art Museum

Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from around the North of England and the rest of the UK – and loads of it’s free!

Monday – In:Visible Women Week Dual-heritage, diaspora and Liverpool life from 1pm @ Tate Liverpool – FREE

From today and for the next two weeks, as part of Liverpool Irish Festival, Tate Exchange will host In:Visible Women. Grappling with the place of women in Irish society and the creative industries, the project weaves together stories, discussions, workshops, performances and activism. The aim is to invite conversations about dual heritage and offer a space for female exchange, to produce and collect cultural capital, from community stories and ideas to making a set of ‘Wiki women’ entries and artworks.

Tuesday – Black Girl Lit Club: Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye 6.30pm @ Toxteth Library – FREE

When Toni Morrison died in August, my Twitter feed – filled with posts about the late American novelist and essayist – indicated (in fact, screamed) that I had been missing out by not yet having read her. Shortly afterwards, I did so for the first time, in an essay published in the Guardian. Writing on the condition of being a Black author, Morrison states: “Western or European writers believe or can choose to believe their work is naturally ‘race-free’ or ‘race transcendent’. Whether it is or not is another question – the fact is the problem has not worried them. They can take it for granted that it is because Others are ‘raced’ – whites are not.” Join Black Girl Lit Club this week for a discussion on Morrison’s 1970 debut, The Bluest Eye, and her ongoing legacy.

Wednesday – BlacKkKlansman 6pm @ Blackburne House – £Donation

Director Spike Lee won his first Oscar (Best Adapted Screenplay) for BlacKkKlansman, a film that tells the incredible true story of Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), the African American detective who infiltrated and exposed the Ku Klux Klan. Better late than never (just like Lee’s overdue Oscar), a key question is why this story wasn’t better known, sooner. While we can all hazard a guess at the answer, it’s clear that society can no longer afford – as if it ever could – to delegate the responsibility of ridding ourselves of racism, and that voices like Lee’s are as vital as ever in showing the way.

Thursday – Book Launch: I Will Not Be Erased by gal-dem 6.30pm @ The Women’s Org, Liverpool £8/£5

Created by women and non-binary people of colour, I Will Not Be Erased is the first book published by gal-dem, an online and print magazine committed to ‘addressing inequality and misrepresentation in the industry’. With the subtitle ‘Our stories about growing up as people of colour’, this collection includes fourteen writers who relate previously underexplored – by the mainstream, that is – experiences. Join gal-dem’s Niellah Airboine and Leah Cowan alongside founding editor of Aurelia Magazine, Kya Buller, for this Liverpool launch.

Exhibition Opening: LOOK Photo Biennial from 5pm @ various venues, Liverpool – FREE

This launch evening encompasses various Liverpool venues marks the second phase of this year’s LOOK Photo festival, which focuses on international dialogue with a specific emphasis on UK and China (current events makes it a fascinating lens through which to view the relationship). Things get underway from 5pm at St George’s Hall, then at Open Eye Gallery from 6pm, with PEER TO PEER, ‘a major new exhibition bringing together 14 rising artists from the UK and China, selected by 14 leading curators around the world’. The night also includes JUMP!, an exhibition at The Gallery, Liverpool, and concludes with an afterparty at nearby Constellations. Se you there?

Exhibition Opening: Nam June Paik @ Tate Modern, London – £13

Nam June Paik began his career as a classical pianist, training in 1950s Tokyo (having fled Seoul with his family at the outbreak of the Korean War). Making his way to Germany, he became a disciple of Joseph Beuys and immersed himself in the Fluxus movement. This wouldn’t be his only collaboration of note, as Paik fostered significant professional relationships with cellist Charlotte Moorman, avant-garde composer John Cage and dancer/choreographer Merce Cunningham. He also beat Andy Warhol to making the first meaningful video work. If you’re even remotely interested in the development of post-war modernism and culture’s evolution, check this out.

Friday – Festival of Ideas: Leonora Carrington’s Labyrinth of Film 10am @ Tate Liverpool – FREE

A series of talks, exhibitions and performances intended to engage academics, students and members of the public alike, Edge Hill University’s Festival of Idea’s kicked off earlier this week. Today sees discussion of the so called ‘lost surrealist’ Leonora Carrington, with particular regard to her overlooked engagement with moving image. Carrington, of course, was the subject of a well-received retrospective at Tate Liverpool in 2014, so this bit of programming offers a welcome opportunity to revisit her work and ideas. Further Reading: Female Human Animal

Saturday – How can we do business? The Art B&B Experiment 1pm @ Art B&B, Blackpool – FREE

Later this year, a new boutique hotel opens its doors in Blackpool. Now, you may well ask ‘why include this information in these pages?’ But, this is no ordinary hostelry, the B&B part of Art B&B being something of a misnomer. Each of the establishment’s bedrooms has been created by nineteen contemporary artists, so called ‘unique installations for sleep, relaxation and play’. The long term intention is to embed it in the heart of the community, with plans for Art B&B to host workshops, artist talks and more. This first workshop, led by artist and economist Kate Rich, asks: ‘What does a home for creatives, change-makers and the culturally curious look like?’

Manchester Literature Festival: Stories of Uprising 4pm @ International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Manchester – FREE

A timely publication for those of us who watch the news aghast at the liberties being taken and the bare faced lies being told by the powerful, Resist is the latest anthology of fiction paired with essays from Manchester’s Comma Press. Join Comma’s Ra Page and Resist contributors as they discuss ‘key moments of British protest and resistance through those involved rather than those who hold power’.

Sunday – Walking Tour: When Bauhaus Met the Hampstead Spies 11am @ Belsize Park Station, London – £20/£15

Modernist movers and shakers plus cold war espionage intrigue? Sign us up! This expert-led walking tour reveals truths (and no doubt the odd unproven whisper) about a building in NW3 that Bauhauslers Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy once called home. It just so happened to also house the KGB’s finest spy recruiters – leading to the postcode being dubbed ’the Bolshevik colony of Hampstead’. The walk coincides with RIBA exhibition Beyond Bauhaus – Modernism in Britain 1933–66

Mike Pinnington

Images and media from top: Nam June Paik trailer, Tate; BlacKkKlansman; Alix-Marie-Orlando-2014-photo-credit-Ben-Westoby; Leonora Carrington; Resist front cover

Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from around the North of England and the rest of the UK – and loads of it’s free!

Monday – Stephen Malkmus @ Yes, Manchester – £17.50

Now 53, earlier this year ex- (and soon once again) Pavement leader, Stephen Malkmus released Groove Denied – arguably his best solo effort. Meanwhile, Sparkle Hard, last year’s SM and the Jicks release is equally arguably his best post-Pavement record full stop. A good time then to catch the godfather of slacker rock, as he hits Manchester this evening.

The Shock of the Future 4pm @ FACT Liverpool – £7.70

“I’m afraid there’s no market for such music in France. Don’t get discouraged, you are beautiful.” Paris, 1978. An ode to female electronic music pioneers such as Wendy Carlos, Suzanne Ciani, Delia Derbyshire and Laurie Spiegel, this is The Shock of the Future, directed by the Nouvelle Vague’s Marc Collin and starring Alma Jodorowsky. It follows Ana who, amid the boys’ club of the music scene and at the height of the new wave, turns to groundbreaking new sounds to cut through the chauvinist pack. From the Archive: C James Fagan on Delia Derbyshire, the Radiophonic Workshop and more: A New Sound: Delia Darlings

Tuesday – Midnight Cowboy (50th Anniversary Release) 6.15pm/8.40pm @ BFI Southbank, London – from £10.20

Directed by John Schlesinger, Midnight Cowboy remains the only X-rated film to win a best picture Oscar. That it also won Schlesinger Best Director and picked up Best Adapted Screenplay (Waldo Salt) tells you it was no fluke. Back in cinemas celebrating its 50th Anniversary, if you’ve never seen it, take this chance. Don’t, however, expect any of the schmaltz often associated with the films Hollywood chooses to recognise during awards season. Gritty and often bleak, it successfully punctures the American Dream – and yet, at its heart, it also manages to paint a touching portrait of friendship amid hard times.

Wednesday – SICK! FESTIVAL | Mats Staub: Death and Birth In My Life @ the Whitworth, Manchester– FREE

Founded in 2013 on the principles of facing up to the complexities of mental and physical health, SICK! Festival gets underway this evening at the Whitworth with Mats Staub’s Death and Birth In My Life. This UK premiere video installation, which presents ‘a series of intimate conversations about the most moving and challenging experiences in life’ was developed with intensive care unit staff. Expect challenging and, hopefully tender moments, from the work partly informed by the 2014 death of Staub’s brother.

Thursday – SixBySix Launch 7pm @ Ropes & Twines, Liverpool – FREE

I recently had the privilege to speak with Don McCullin, and one of the things I wanted to know, was whether he thinks of photography as an artform. “I see it as photography,” he said. “I strictly believe photography is photography, and it doesn’t need to be fancied up – do you know what I mean?” (Read the full interview) Which is a roundabout way of telling you that tonight’s SixBySix launch, which includes Stephen McCoy, Colin McPherson and Stephanie Wynne, will feature a panel discussion on current trends and ideas in photography, intros to the works of SixBySix members, and a focus on Zoe Strauss, who has dedicated a career to exploring “the beauty and struggle of everyday life”.

Friday – Exhibition Opening: Still Undead: Popular Culture in Britain Beyond the Bauhaus 6.30pm @ Nottingham Contemporary – FREE

Amid large scale celebrations to mark the centenary of the Bauhaus and its ongoing legacy in its homeland, and dedicated programming from the BBC, there has (so far) been a less than significant response from UK galleries and museums. Making up for this oversight somewhat, next month sees RIBA’s Beyond Bauhaus – Modernism in Britain 1933–66, while Nottingham Contemporary’s Still Undead reflects on the movement’s international influence. Exploring how the school shaped British pop culture from the 1920s to the 90s, artists, designers and musicians in the exhibition include Leigh Bowery, Kraftwerk, Liliane Lijn, Lucia Moholy, László Moholy-Nagy, Mary Quant, Peter Saville, Oskar Schlemmer and Soft Cell, to name a few.

Saturday – Holly Hendry: The Dump is Full of Images @ The Weston Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park – FREE

Artist Holly Hendry’s in demand. After last year’s Liverpool Biennial commission, Cenotaph, and a slew of 2019 exhibitions (including touring Cenotaph to the Tetley in Leeds), her latest stop is at YSP’s Weston Gallery, with a new sculpture installation. With a recent practice focussed on excavating and exploring often hidden, overlooked or subterranean worlds relating to the built environment, here (in her first kinetic work) she turns to anatomy, food and detritus. Look out for an interview with Hendry due in these pages soon.

Northern Lights Writers’ Conference from 10.30am @ Waterside, Sale, Greater Manchester – £35/£25

Should you have ever listened to the now sadly defunct podcast End of All Things, or follow developments such as the Northern Fiction Alliance (dedicated to putting ‘the output of Northern indie presses to new audiences and publishers around the world’), you will know that publishing, ever so slowly, is changing. This returning writers’ conference – featuring talks, masterclasses, panel discussions, practical, drop-in advice sessions – looks to further reveal the machinations of the industry for all. With panels on Diversity in Publishing, Support for Writers, and Pathways to Publication, it should prove a helpful and illuminating day.

Sunday – Sounds and Silence Cinema – Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail 7pm @ Phase One, Liverpool – £10

Hitchcock’s 1929 picture, Blackmail, is remarkable for more than its director. Hitch, barely into his thirties at the time, conceived of it as a silent film yet, in the face of the coming talkies, then reshot new and key scenes for sound and dialogue. Arguably the greatest British silent film, ironically, it is also the harbinger of a new era, one that the then up-and-coming hot new thing anticipated and boldly embraced. Presumably showing as the silent version, Blackmail is accompanied by an original live music score.

Mike Pinnington

Images, from top: The Shock of the Future (still); Mats Staub: Death and Birth In My Life; Photograph by Stephen McCoy, From the series Skelmersdale, 1984.  As seen in North: Identity, Photography, Fashion at Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, from 6 January–19 March 2017; Holly Hendry, Gut Feelings, 2016, Installation view at Royal College of Art, London, UK. Photo: courtesy Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead 

A decade since Liverpool European Capital of Culture… What now? Present Tense: a book of new essays from some of the UK’s most exciting writers. Available to preorder now on Kickstarter!

What is the Present Tense book about?

Present Tense is a collection of essays by some of the UK’s most exciting writers, commenting on tensions in the fields of art and culture. It takes as a starting point the celebrations in 2018 that marked a decade of Liverpool’s status as European Capital of Culture. We asked six writers to reflect on the ten years, while not being tied to the past.

Present Tense asks:

• What do we define as the culture around us? Who are the stakeholders? Who chooses?
• What does it mean when an artwork is repeatedly and violently destroyed, especially if that artwork is about the global refugee crisis?
• How does a city like Liverpool understand, and make peace with, a European Capital of Culture award during Brexit negotiations?
• What becomes of ambitious outdoor sculpture that, years after being commissioned, is unloved and neglected?
• What are the consequences of a cultural award on individuals: the people that imagine, make and deliver that ‘culture’?

These essays have something to say about now and the future, while not forgetting what has come before, and what can be learned. This is Present Tense, a book from The Double Negative, and we’d love you to support it.

Featuring new writing from Stephanie Bailey, Oliver Basciano, Jacob Bolton, Denise Courcoux, Mike Pinnington, Laura Robertson, Ellen Mara De Wachter and Eleanor Wiseman – produced under The Double Negative Fellowship 2018-19.

Talking about artists, collectives and venues including The Bluecoat, Between the Borders, Mohammad Bourouissa, Camp and Furnace, Banu Cennetoğlu, FACT, Barbara Hepworth, Homotopia, The Kazimier, Liverpool Biennial, Manifesta Biennial, MODEL Liverpool, OUTPUT Gallery, Queen of The Track, ROOT-ed, The Royal Standard, Tate and Tate Collective, Wu Tsang, John Walter and Richard Wilson.

We mainly publish online… So why do we care about printing a book?

Printing books can be expensive. But as a predominantly online magazine, it’s really important to us that we:

• Get new writing into new hands
• Complement what we already publish online with high quality print
• Make something tangible that can be read again and again
• Give our writers an extra printed outlet for their work that they can share with family, friends, peers and YOU, the reader.

We have already commissioned all of the new writing in Present Tense (thanks Arts Council England!). But instead of simply publishing the texts online at thedoublenegative.co.uk, we would LOVE to print them all in a book – stories you can hold in your hand and keep forever.

Why support Present Tense? 

Since the very start, The Double Negative has commissioned, published, edited and shared skills with the next generation of arts writers. Over the past several years, we’ve worked with hundreds of writers across the UK and Europe, publishing them online and in our first book, On Being Curious: New Critical Writing on Contemporary Art From the North-West of England. We give clear and constructive editorial feedback; connect writers with other publications and networks; and provide writing classes and critical writing bursaries. We’re always teaming up with like-minded organisations to make this happen, as the latter two are often only achievable with the financial and logistical help of other partners.

It’s difficult running The Double Negative with only two people at the helm, but we have a lot of friends who believe in what we do and are keen to collaborate! Preordering your copy of Present Tense will help us to continue nurturing new critical voices.

Why did The Double Negative Fellowship commission the essays?

All the new writing in this new book has been commissioned under The Double Negative Fellowship 2018-19: a mentoring programme for three, Liverpool-based writers. Jacob Bolton, Denise Courcoux and Eleanor Wiseman were encouraged, challenged and championed by mentors at the top of their game – ArtReview International Editor and Turner Prize Juror Oliver Basciano, Ocula Editor-in-Chief Stephanie Bailey, and writer and curator Ellen Mara De Wachter. Our other mentor, Frieze magazine’s Editorial Director Jennifer Higgie, has been giving us gold standard advice from the very start – she even led a writing bootcamp for us and twenty other writers last year!

The Fellowship was only made possible through funding from Arts Council England, alongside financial and in-kind support from CreArt (Network of Cities for Artistic Creation), Culture Liverpool, Contemporary Visual Arts Network North West (CVAN NW), Heart of Glass, History of Art at Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool Biennial, and the University of Salford Art Collection.

Aside from being excellent critical and reflective essays on Liverpool’s art scene, they have also served as a part of the mentoring (and learning) process for our mentees; discussed and critiqued by the mentors from initial idea to final draft.

We don’t have production costs covered for a printed book, so that’s why we’re using Kickstarter; to crowdfund Present Tense and make it something that the community has endorsed. We think that new writing deserves to be published – we can all relate to the ideas in this book – so we really would love your help to make Present Tense a reality.

Who are we?

The Double Negative is an online art, design, film and music magazine, established in 2011.

The Double Negative was conceived and co-founded in a post-Capital of Culture Liverpool, UK, by then culture journalist Mike Pinnington and artist/curator Laura Robertson.

Liverpool, it seemed, had attained a level of creative maturity – across various disciplines – that meant its output deserved increased levels of comment and criticism. Indeed, it needed those things. The Double Negative was a reaction: a means of analysing what we loved (and what we thought could be better) in contemporary arts, design, film and music. We especially wanted to highlight artists, projects and venues that were flying under the radar in Liverpool and more widely across the North of England.

Now, we’ve grown our ranks to more than 500 contributors based all over the UK and across the world, and we write for the world’s top arts and culture publications — including ArtReview, Frieze, Art Monthly, Elephant, Hyperallergic, The Art Newspaper, a-n,  Art Quarterly, the Guardian, Tate Online and more.

However, our aim is the same: to tell the stories that matter most to us. We have a particular investment in encouraging and developing the next generation of art writers. We believe it is incredibly important to offer platforms for fearless, well-researched and balanced criticism, which represents a wide range of voices, subjects and stories.

Biographies:

Stephanie Bailey is Ocula Editor-in-Chief, a contributing editor to ART PAPERS and LEAP, and the current curator of Conversations at Art Basel in Hong Kong. A member of the Naked Punch editorial committee and managing editor of Podium, the online journal for M+ Museum in Hong Kong, she also writes regularly for Artforum International, Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, and D’ivan, A Journal of Accounts. From 2012 to 2017, she was managing editor and senior editor of Ibraaz.

ocula.com 

TW: @SBRetweets 

Oliver Basciano is a writer and critic based in London. He is International Editor at ArtReview and contributes to the news, arts and obituary desks of the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph. His writing has appeared in the Calvert Journal, Spike Art Quarterly, Building Design, Architects’ Journal, Wallpaper, as well as numerous artist’s monographs, and he has contributed to BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, The Last Word and From Our Own Correspondent. He was a juror for the 2018 Turner Prize.

clippings.me/oliverbasciano 

TW: @olibasciano 

Jacob Bolton writes, designs, and makes art. His writing has appeared in ArtReview, Eye on Design and Corridor8, and his visual work has been featured in Brighton Photo Fringe. He is especially interested in on- and offline spaces and how they work together, power dynamics on the internet, and urban infrastructure.

TW: @bacobjolton

Denise Courcoux is a writer from Coventry, based in Merseyside, UK. She has been published online by The Double Negative, Corridor8 and The University of Manchester’s Institute for Cultural Practices. Her interests include issues of class and representation, popular culture in visual art and artist-curators. She has an MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies, and won Axisweb’s MA Curated Selection prize in 2014. She has worked in various museums and galleries in the North West.

TW: @denisecourcoux

Mike Pinnington is a writer based in Liverpool and the co-founder and full-time editor of The Double Negative. He has been published most recently by Art Quarterly, Art Review, Ocula and byNWR. From 2013-2018 he held the role of Content Editor at Tate Liverpool, working with the exhibitions and communications teams to deliver interpretation across the galleries, web content, and an in-house zine, Compass.

thedoublenegative.co.uk

TW: @doublenegativeM

Laura Robertson is a writer based in Liverpool and London, and the co-founder and contributing editor at The Double Negative online magazine. She has been published in international magazines Frieze, Elephant, Hyperallergic, Art Monthly, ArtReview and a-n amongst others; is a is currently the critical writer-in-residence at Open Eye Gallery, alongside studying MA Writing at the Royal College of Art (2018-20). She is a former director of The Royal Standard Gallery & Studios.

thedoublenegative.co.uk

TW: @doublenegativeL

Ellen Mara De Wachter is a writer and curator based in London, and has worked at arts organisations including the British Museum, Barbican Art Gallery and Contemporary Art Society. She is a frequent contributor to publications including Frieze magazine, Art Monthly and Art Quarterly as well as exhibition catalogues. Her book Co-Art: Artists on Creative Collaboration, published by Phaidon, explores the phenomenon of collaboration in the visual arts and its potential in society at large. She is an Associate Lecturer in Culture, Criticism and Curating at Central Saint Martins.

ellenmaradewachter.com 

TW: @EMDeWachter

Eleanor Wiseman is a freelance writer, zinester, and single mama who relocated to Glasgow in 2019 after five years in Liverpool. She is a History of Art graduate and the creator of Grrrls In Their Underwear Zine. She has particular interests in the intersection of grass-root movements, body politics, and independent publishing. Her reviews have been published in Ocula and The Double Negative, while her poetry has been featured in Little Red Tarot, Fist Zine, as well as her own self-published chapbook.

ellieandart.wordpress.com 

TW: @by_eleanorw 

What’s our plan and budget?

We need to raise £4730 in order to make the best book that we can! A limited edition book that is well-edited, well-designed, enjoyable to read, and pays everyone involved fairly. We’re very well prepared:

• our long-term collaborator and friend, Mike Carney, is the designer of Present Tense. You’ve already witnessed the book’s attitude from his bold visuals, above! Mike has been designing books, brochures, catalogues, newspapers, magazines, identities and logos for over twenty years. He worked with us on The Double Negative’s visual concept, as well as our first in-house book, On Being Curious. He’s amazing.
• we (Laura and Mike) have eighteen years experience between us in commissioning and editing writers, and writing articles for national and international magazines (print and online), culture guides, catalogue essays, gallery/museum interpretation and directly for artists. Meeting deadlines and copy editing (to a very high standard) are two of the things we do best.

We’re very confident that we’ll be able to deliver Present Tense if we can crowdfund the following:

• Printing costs (x 250 A5 books) = 37%
• Design fee = 32%
• Copyediting = 21%
• Kickstarter and payment fees = 10%
• Writers’ fees (got it covered) = 0%.

Any contribution you can make that will help us to reach our target would mean bringing this great collection of writing to life! Your support really is appreciated.

New to Kickstarter? How this all works

Funding on Kickstarter is all-or-nothing. No one will be charged for a pledge towards Present Tense unless it reaches its funding goal. This way, we’ll have the budget scoped out before moving forward. No one will be charged for a pledge unless Present Tense reaches its funding goal in 30 days time. If we don’t reach our goal by the end of the campaign date, you won’t be charged, and Present Tense won’t happen… If we DO reach our goal (like we hope to!), everyone gets their books, rewards and the project comes to life.

Shipping

We are shipping Present Tense worldwide! The Double Negative has international readers – from our core demographic in the British Isles, to LA to Berlin to Sydney – that we know are interested in contemporary art, culture and Liverpool. We don’t want anyone to miss out.

Select your reward option and your location, and Kickstarter will automatically calculate the shipping for you.

We’ve using tried and tested shipping methods (Signed For® 2nd Class, UK, and International Tracked & Signed) to make sure you receive your book securely and on time. Present Tense and special Kickstarter rewards will ship during August 2019.

CLICK HERE TO PREORDER PRESENT TENSE NOW ON KICKSTARTER… And help us to bring our book to life! 

Read more about the authors’ journey through The Double Negative Fellowship.

The Liverpool Biennial touring programme arrived at Leigh’s Turnpike gallery recently, with Mohamed Bourouissa’s Horse Day. Denise Courcoux assesses how a change of venue and star-billing can make all the difference to how a work is considered…

Hidden in plain sight, Horse Day was a gem in the last Liverpool Biennial. Spirited, engaging and sometimes funny, I spent a few minutes enjoying Mohamed Bourouissa’s film before the compulsion kicked in to ‘tick off’ the rest of the works at FACT, and then head off to get another venue ‘done’. This is the downside of art festivals for a completist. The sheer volume of stuff means some works get crowded out or underappreciated; not only physically but also in publicity, where the excitement of a new (and underwhelming) installation by Agnès Varda at FACT, as well as a new commission by Bourouissa, meant this pre-existing work from 2014-15 was a footnote.

It’s wonderful, then, to have the chance to revisit Horse Day at The Turnpike as part of the Biennial’s touring programme. At the end of a fly-postered corridor advertising a ‘Horse Tuning Expo’, the video installation documenting this curious event is projected onto two large screens. The reflection of the moving images on the dark painted floor, and an orange glow from an unseen source behind them, create a sense of immersion in an expansive space.

The film follows the inhabitants of the Fletcher Street district in Philadelphia. It is an impoverished area, bearing the signs of decades of neglect and unemployment: ramshackle housing, low abandoned buildings, stretches of parched wasteland. These bleak signifiers are gloriously interrupted by the sight of horses being ridden through the streets. Defying expectations, these American riders are not wearing cowboy hats, or even riding helmets; they are young black men in their everyday streetwear.

Fletcher Street is home to long-established stables that have survived against the odds, and Algerian artist Bourouissa worked with these urban riders to create the celebratory Horse Day documented here. The dual-screen film presents different aspects of the community, often pairing scenes of purposeful preparation or conversation with fluid shots of riders in full, free flow.

The cultivation of individual appearance is a recurring theme in this short film. Elaborate and ingenious homemade costumes were created for the animals with great care by participants; old compact discs combine into a mirror ball-style cape, and a white horse’s prominent ribcage is outlined with the rest of its skeleton in black paint. The trophies awarded at the expo are similarly homespun from scrap metal, though taking part rather than winning is the spirit of the day; one rider wonders incredulously to his companion, “If everyone wins what kind of competition could it be?”

Men on horseback are synonymous with American iconography of the Wild West, but this community has created its own mythology around riding, entirely independent of the weight of history. One interviewee, visibly proud of his riding prowess, states emphatically, “I never dress like a cowboy, never […] I feel like a horse man.” He chooses his clothing to match the animal he’s riding; brown, silver, white. The gulf between these horse men and the cowboys of old is illustrated as one of the youths asks whether the swaggering Western movie actor John Wayne was white or black. As he struggles to control a pony, his friend shoots wryly back at him, “John Wayne don’t do shit like this!”

Bourouissa captures the camaraderie and resilience found in life on the margins. The value of community traditions in nurturing a sense of identity and place is clear, as is the resourcefulness and creativity needed to keep them relevant. The choice of The Turnpike for this new presentation of Horse Day is apt. When it reopened two years ago, its Director set out a vision of programming art that would chime with the residents of Leigh – a post-industrial town with its share of struggles and a resolutely independent, community-minded outlook. Horse Day undoubtedly benefits from the space and profile afforded it at The Turnpike but, more interestingly, it also gains an added layer of resonance here.

Denise Courcoux

Mohamed Bourouissa: Horse Day is at The Turnpike, Leigh, until 25 March as part of the Liverpool Biennial touring programme

Images courtesy Rob Battersby

Liverpool Biennial have announced today that curator and writer Fatoş Üstek has been appointed as their new director.

Born in 1980 in Ankara, Turkey, Üstek is currently Director and Chief Curator of DRAF (the David Roberts Art Foundation) in London, and was associate curator for the 10th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea (2014).

In prepared quotes, Üstek said: “I am thrilled to take up the role as Director of Liverpool Biennial. Through ten editions, Liverpool Biennial has gained a reputation for being one of the most important contemporary art events accessible to the large national and international public.”

Üstek is the third female director to be appointed to a Liverpool-based art organisation in recent months – following Helen Legg at Tate Liverpool and Dr Nicola Triscott at FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology).

Kathleen Soriano, Chair of the Board of Trustees of Liverpool Biennial, spoke of the selection as one that could “build on” what had been accomplished over two decades of the festival. She said: “Üstek’s rich experience across different art forms and her international connections will enable us to build confidently on the achievements of our two previous directors, Lewis Biggs and Sally Tallant. We are excited at the prospect of working with Üstek and are confident that she will lead with energy and artistic integrity on the delivery of future, ambitious biennials in Liverpool for our local, national and global audiences.”

Üstek replaces the outgoing Tallant (who takes up the role of director of the Queens Museum in New York later this year), who had been at the Biennial since the end of 2011 [read our first Big Interview with Tallant here].

Among the first items Üstek will no doubt find in her in-tray in May will be how the UK’s largest festival of contemporary visual art deals with any potential fall-out from Brexit – no deal or otherwise. Given its stock-in-trade of working with and commissioning international artists, the organisation will need to keep a firm grip on any changes regarding rules and regulations around freedom of movement, and of course, the shipping of artworks.

Closer to home, the Biennial’s relationship to its host city will also no doubt be among her immediate considerations. During Tallant’s stewardship in particular, instances of socially engaged projects as well as a focus on reaching out to communities beyond the city centre have increased. Üstek says that she will be “taking Liverpool as [her] point of reference” while also, of course, “reflecting on current global discourses and developments in the international arena”.

At this early stage, it’s nigh on impossible to gauge what a Fatoş Üstek biennial will look like, but we can refer to recent curatorial projects for clues. Last year, for instance, saw her curate Korean artist Do Ho Suh’s Bridging Home, who compressed a scale model of his childhood home and bamboo garden onto a bridge near Liverpool Street station in London. The artist was previously commissioned for Liverpool Biennial 2010, where he squeezed a similar model between two buildings on Duke Street, as if blown there by a tornado.

Üstek concluded: “I look forward to inviting everyone to join me and the Liverpool Biennial team in the city of Liverpool in 2020 for the 11th Biennial.”

Mike Pinnington

Image courtesy Christa Holka

Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from around the North of England and the rest of the UK – and loads of it’s free!

Monday – Exhibition on Screen: Young Picasso 6.30pm @ FACT – £17.50/£15/£10

Recently in the running for BBC Icons: The Greatest Person of the 20th Century (as if such things can be measured), Pablo Picasso is generally considered, if not the person of that period, then at least its foremost artist. With Georges Braque he co-founded cubism, a movement which reverberated through disciplines and changed painting forever, but what of the man prior to the work and innovations that would make his legend? Working with Picasso museums in Malaga, Barcelona and Paris, this film explores these key cities, his formative years and experiences, before his name took on near mythical status.

Tuesday – Exhibition Opening: FREEPORT: Terminal MCR 11am @ University of Salford (MediaCityUK) – FREE

How does emerging tech impact our social, civic and working lives? Alongside a group exhibition (opening today) FREEPORT: Terminal MCR includes an afternoon of talks on Friday. Curated by Nathan Jones, Lecturer in Fine Art, Digital Media at Lancaster University, titled FREEPORT: Critical, discussions will respond to the exhibition, the aim being to explore “art, technology and citizenship in the age of the internet”.

Wednesday – Ecstatic Material: Beatrice Dillon & Keith Harrison 8pm @ MK Gallery – £10

Experimental and interdisciplinary, the Outlands network brings together musician and producer Beatrice Dillon and artist Keith Harrison. The fruits of the collaboration, says Dillon, involve “a sense of a physical, tactile presence through sound, one that bumps into and spills over into Keith’s sculptures”. Continuing tonight at MK Gallery, the tour will explore and respond to the constraints of each site in turn. As Harrison puts it: “We have an overall structure but have factored in a capacity to react to what’s happening each night.”

Thursday – Queering the Whitworth 6-7pm and 7.15-8.15pm @ the Whitworth, Manchester – FREE

There’s been a refreshing trend, of late, for galleries and museums to reveal the previously overlooked (or downright swept under the carpet) stories of artists who may or may not have been part of the LGBTQ+ community. Tonight, as part of LGBT History Month, the Whitworth does just that, using collection works to tell stories of those “implicated in the first public debate on homosexuality in the 1700s, and remember forgotten artists that were once celebrated in their time.”

Friday – Re-collections: Susan Hiller, Elizabeth Price, Georgina Starr 6pm @ Site Gallery, Sheffield – FREE

2019 marks the 40th year of Sheffield’s Site Gallery, which specialises in moving image, new media and performance. For Re-collections, they have delved into their archives to present an exhibition that “explores how histories are remembered, recorded and retold”, through the work of Susan Hiller, Elizabeth Price and Georgina Starr. Coinciding with Hiller’s recent death, it offers an immediate opportunity to remember and celebrate an artist whose practice, said Adrian Searle, was “driven by curiosity and an alertness to her surroundings”.

Ladytron Album Release

“You only really get one chance to have an eponymous record,” said Ladytron’s Daniel Hunt in a recent interview. “After such a long break,” he continued, “it makes sense. To us, this sounds like a Ladytron record.” Yes, after a long, but most amicable hiatus, the band returns with their self-titled sixth album, the first in more than seven years. It’s good to have them back. Listen.

Saturday – Exhibition Opening: Mohamed Bourouissa @ The Turnpike, Leigh

The Turnpike Gallery in Leigh welcomes the next of the Biennial’s Touring Programme of exhibitions, presenting Mohamed Bourouissa’s Horse Day, a film installation which was previously shown at FACT Liverpool. As ever, the change of location and how that impacts on install and reception will be a consideration, but Horse Day’s examination of societal structures and processes via the world of equestrianism is a powerfully fascinating one.

Sunday – Exhibition Closing: Wake Up Together: Ren Hang & Where Love is Illegal @ Open Eye Gallery

The run of Wake Up Together, which paired Ren Hang with Robin Hammond’s Where Love is Illegal, comes to a close. The name of Ren Hang may well already be known to you – shooting with the gloss of fashion and advertising, his works challenge and delight, while Hammond’s sensitive but searing photographs present the stories of people who identify as LGBTQI+. Catch Wake Up Together, which advocates for the right of people to exist in their own skin, on their own terms, while you can. More on Ren Hang.

Mike Pinnington

Media and images from top: Ladytron album trailer; FREEPORT Critical; Re-collections; Horse Day film still

Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from around the North of England and the rest of the UK – and loads of it’s free!

Monday – Why Rachael Low Matters 6.30pm @ BFI Reuben Library, London – £6.50

It’s a fact impossible to ignore that cinema suffers from a gender imbalance issue, with female actors, writers, directors and other film workers perennially short-changed compared to their male counterparts. Tonight, the BFI foregrounds a largely forgotten figure responding to early British cinema, historian Rachael Low, co-author of the first volume of The History of the British Film (published in 1948). Low’s overlooked contribution is discussed by Ian Christie, Luke McKernan and Sarah Street.

Tuesday – Victorian Ghostly and Theatrical Tales 9.45pm @ Liverpool Playhouse – £4

From Dickens to M. R. James, the Victorian ghost story remains a great Christmas staple, doesn’t it? Thrill seekers, mark Tuesdays leading up to the holiday in your diary, as the Playhouse celebrates seasonal (mild) terror. Using the venue as a character in its own right, we are invited to partake in “cautionary tales about the strange things that lurk in the dark corners of our theatre and beyond”.

Wednesday – Sounds and Silence Cinema: The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) 7pm @ Jacaranda Records Phase One, Liverpool – £10

Winter seems a suitable time to screen Robert Wiene’s 1920 expressionist classic The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, and its striking, highly stylised visuals, full of dark shadows and dread – a reflection of 1920s German angst. In 2014, the film received a sumptuous restoration (described by critic Philip French as “probably the best version of the film anyone alive has seen”). Accompanied tonight by a live score from composer and improvising pianist Tony Judge, audiences could well be in for an atmospheric treat.

Thursday – Queen Zee 8.30pm @ 24 Kitchen Street, Liverpool – £7

Self-described “local punk weirdos”, Liverpool’s Queen Zee announced their arrival with last year’s debut single, Sissy Fists. Since then they’ve recorded a session at Maida Vale for Huw Stephens’ Radio One new music show, and come to the attention of Iggy Pop no less after a dispute over a sample of I Wanna Be Your Dog on the song Lucy Fur (geddit?). Pop has since described the band as “strange, weird & crazy.” See – and hear – for yourself this Thursday, as Queen Zee give a first play of their debut long-player ahead of its release next year.

Friday – The Fernweh 7pm @ Arts Club Liverpool – £8

Back-to-back gigs supporting debut albums this week as obstinately under-the-radar folk combo The Fernweh bring in the weekend with this Arts Club show. Despite themselves, the trio have increasingly come to the attention and gleaned the support of the likes of Cerys Matthews, Guy Garvey, and Gideon Coe of BBC 6 Music. Citing influences as far ranging as Fairport Convention and Joy Division, their sound is a refreshing palette cleanser; in the face of ubiquitous Christmas-themed dross, and much else besides.

Saturday – Exhibition Opening: ARTIST ROOMS: Robert Mapplethorpe @ The Atkinson, Southport – FREE

“You drew me from the darkest period of my young life, sharing with me the sacred mystery of what it is to be an artist.” So said Patti Smith in a letter written to Robert Mapplethorpe, whose 2010 memoir Just Kids documents the pair’s relationship, and perhaps brought Mapplethorpe to the attention of new audiences eager to discover his work. The Atkinson’s presentation of the ARTIST ROOMS collection – which includes his iconic portraits of artists, writers and musicians (Smith among them), and his documenting of the New York S&M scene – will be a feast for fans old and new.

Sunday – One World Pop-Up Football Giveaway! 12pm @ Chavasse Park, Liverpool – FREE

Proof that art and football can co-exist, One World is a commission by artist Mark Wallinger, which marks this year’s centenary of the First World War. Riffing on the famous Christmas truce football matches between those on opposing sides of the trenches, the project is manifested this weekend in an 90-minute event giving away limited edition footballs designed by Wallinger.

Mike Pinnington

Images, from top: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920); Queen Zee; Robert Mapplethorpe, Patrice #2, 1977 (detail)