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

Monday – Exhibition Continues: Haunted Paper @ Dorothy, Baltic Triangle, Liverpool – FREE

Hot on the heels of author Jeff Young’s winning of the TLS Ackerley Prize for memoir, Wild Twin, comes this exhibition of collage and notebooks made during and to inspire its writing. Very much artworks in their own right, Young sees them as: “An archive of fleeting moments captured before they fade away.” They’re every bit as poetic and evocative as that sounds.

Further Reading: Sacred & Profane: Jeff Young’s Haunted Paper

Continuing: Liverpool Biennial 2025: BEDROCK – FREE

The 13th edition of Liverpool Biennial continues 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 days/times.

Further Reading: My Life in the Biennial with Ghosts; Liverpool Biennial: BEDROCK Review

Continuing: Independents Biennial 2025 – FREE

Running in parallel to BEDROCK is the well-established Independents Biennial which, this year, feels as ambitious as ever. Taking place in an astonishing 120 locations, expect degree show first-timers to the likes of Rebecca Chesney, Johnny Vegas, and Brigitte Jurack.

Further Reading: Another Dimension – On Contemporary Drawing; Caroline Gorick: After Hours – Reviewed

Tuesday – Brigitte Jurack: Rising Darkness, Floor Mosaic Workshops 1pm @ the Victoria Gallery & Museum –  FREE

During Rising Darkness, an exhibition exploring current affairs, literature, landscape and history, artist Brigitte Jurack has been leading workshops in making a co-created mosaic. Inspired by a floor found in a Roman villa, and updated to address some of the exhibition’s themes, this is the second-to-last opportunity to have a hand in the new work.

Wednesday – Exhibition Opening: The CASS Artists in Residence & Exhibition –  FREE

Accessible on foot from West Kirby, Hilbre Island has something of the magical, even folkloric, about it. As such, it is a seductive setting for art, artists and the wider public. This new group exhibition (which runs until Sunday) highlights the work of the CASS Centre for Art, Science, Sustainability, which foregrounds collaboration and exploration around the locale.

Thursday – Liverpool Biennial 2025: Drop-in Weekly Tea and Talk Tours 2pm @ 20 Jordan Street – FREE

This does what it says on the tin tour offers a way to ease yourself in to the Biennial if all those sites, artists and the theme itself prove a bit overwhelming – it can be a lot to take in. If our experience of this edition’s Biennial volunteers is anything to go by, you’ll be in safe, informative, hands.

Friday – The French Connection 8.30pm @ FACT, Liverpool — £9.35

William Friedkin’s classic, a winner of five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor, sees Gene Hackman as NY detective Jimmy ‘Popeye’ Doyle steal the show. He and his partner, Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider), are on narcotics detail, tailing heroin smugglers Sal Boca (Tony Lo Bianco) and his wife, Angie (Arlene Faber). Grimy realism, superb acting and a knock-out, high speed car chase combine to keep this in some ways of its time thriller feeling fresh.

Saturday – Bidston Observatory Open Days 1/2/3pm @ Bidston Observatory, Birkenhead – £5/£2

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

Last Chance to See: REITERATIONS: The Royal Standard Studio Members Exhibition / The Royal Standard Studio Open Day –  FREE

Your last chance to see this group exhibition considering 19 years of The Royal Standard, reflecting on the practice, process – and sustainability – of such spaces. While you’re there, you can check out more of what’s going on at the artist-led studios’ open day.

Further Reading: Back in 2016, C. James Fagan considered a decade of The Royal Standard, considering the many challenges and far-reaching achievements of the artist-led studios and gallery 

Sunday – Lynchspirations: Experiment in Terror 5pm @ FACT Liverpool – £9.35

Continuing the year-long exploration and celebration of director, David Lynch (who died in January), this 1962 neo-noir directed by Blake Edwards sees Ross Martin’s sadistic crim, Garland “Red” Lynch, terrorise Lee Remick’s bank teller Kelly Sherwood. Glenn Ford’s FBI man, John “Rip” Ripley, is on the case.

Mike Pinnington

Images/media, from top: Experiment in Terror trailer; Jeff Young film still, courtesy Matt Bell; Brigitte Jurack, install photography, VGM; The French Connection trailer; Bidston Observatory, courtesy Mathilde Grandjean; Northern Lights, situated in Cains Brewery Village, Liverpool. Image courtesy Pete Carr, 2018

“What would Liverpool be without it?” On the eve of Liverpool Biennial 2025, C James Fagan ponders his sometimes complex, on-going relationship with the UK’s largest festival of contemporary art…

It’s a Biennial year, folks! What does that mean, other than that for three months, Liverpool hosts the largest contemporary arts festival in the UK? Looking at what’s in store in this 2025 edition, themed BEDROCK, I find myself thinking about previous editions. In doing so, I realised that the Biennial – the first of which was in 1998 – coincided with my growing interest in and deeper engagement with contemporary art.

I have experienced the Biennial as a visitor, volunteer, and as a writer, having written reviews of previous editions, and having been commissioned by the Biennial. My writings on the subject have appeared on this very website. I’ve navigated several editions by now, so have seen its victories and its failures, and a lot of art.

I have to admit, this isn’t a critical piece; it’s more in the style of a rambling memoir. Apologies if there’s an ‘old man yelling at clouds’ vibe, that’s not my intent. It’s just, looking back, things get conflated, the details lose their definition. That also means that I jump around a bit. What I thought were pieces from different Biennials came from the same edition for instance. But each Biennial has a different effect on you. Unsurprising given the number of artists involved.

One of the first artists that sprang to mind was N.I.C.J.O.B. (from 2002), who created a series of videos featuring video clips edited to create music from the sound effects used in the original source film. A jingle if you will, because N.I.C.J.O.B.’s videos were in every Biennial venue, providing a crashing, banging welcome into each space. Perhaps its mix of repetition and ubiquity meant it sticks in the mind.

Was that the same year of a show in an abandoned church, or chapel? Was it the Biennial where one venue had a van hanging out of it? Which makes me think of Do-Ho Suh‘s house dropped between two buildings in 2010, somewhere on London Road; and the big red house that played ABBA on the riverfront. That was probably 2006 as I recall making a trip from university in Wales (where I was studying at the time) to see it.

One of the key elements of the Biennial is how it gets you to rediscover the city. Making you visit places you ordinarily wouldn’t. Finding lost spaces, or spaces about to be lost, given a stay of execution. Like the year it took over the soon to be demolished Post Office sorting office behind Lime Street station. My main recollection was that it was exhausting walking around those cavernous spaces; then seeing a huge black inflated pillow-shaped installation, and realising putting a big thing in a big space means a loss of a sense of scale.

Some of the abiding memories aren’t just of the artworks, then, it’s the spaces they occupy. Like the sorting office, for instance. Seeing the remains of strange equipment and of its former workforce – graffiti, work rotas, sheets of stamps left on the walls. Or, more recently, in that basement space where the glass panel on the door reads ‘Kommadant’ (the leavings of a film set – the city mediated by yet another narrative).

In 2010, it was the then recently vacated Rapid Hardware store. Walking past empty showrooms, past empty window displays, I recall finding a set of aeroplane seats in front of the hyperactive video work of Ryan Trecartin, echoing in the largely empty spaces. While one of the strengths of the Biennial is its use of such non-art spaces, the ratio between art and space can fall in the favour of the latter.

The willingness to trek between artworks and venues, though, is part and parcel of the Biennial. It is a city-wide event – walking the city is the way one engages with the Biennial, and vice versa. I remember trekking to a hotel on the edge of the city centre only to find the installation I was looking for never took place. Then there was the year I walked for about a mile along the river looking for a ‘light installation’ only to discover it was simply a huge question mark on the outside of the boat shed. The one I had been looking at for about twenty minutes!

Is this what the Biennial does: put contemporary art right in view? Like, when Yoko Ono, maybe one of the most well-known artists outside the – let’s remember quite narrow niche of the – artworld, showed her work, My Mommy Is Beautiful, across the city. Both artwork and promotion for the Biennial, it featured a breast and pubis on banners throughout the city. Does this work somehow reflect an element of the Biennial, that it’s at once highly visible and yet isn’t widely known, outside the usual places?

So much of the Biennial exists in the public realm. You have Ugo Rondinone’s Liverpool Mountain on the Royal Albert Dock. The brightly coloured rocks have become a favourite spot for a photo, but does it help raise the profile of the Biennial? Do people make a connection between the sculpture and the city’s art festival? Does it even matter if they do?

Is it engagement by stealth? Putting people in conversation with contemporary art without them realising it? Throughout the city there is evidence of the Biennial, and Biennials past. They’ve only recently taken down the Betty Woodman fountain; the binoculars which let you spy on the town hall are still there. Can you still see the circle cut into the side of a building that was a much-celebrated Richard Wilson piece?

Is this how the Biennial relates to the city? It’s long been a criticism of the Biennial that it doesn’t really relate to the city at all; perhaps it’s time, instead, to think about how it has become part of the city’s fabric in small and unexpected ways. Through this ramble across Biennials past, I’ve begun to consider my relationship with it.

While it’s hardly immune to criticism, then, what would Liverpool be without it? Certainly a little less exciting. Where else do you get an art festival on this scale with the time in which to see it? Where else can you be exposed to this many artists and not have to go to London – or further afield? Ok: given the amount of artists, it is always going to be a mixed bag. But the likelihood of seeing something you’ll remember (however vaguely), perhaps even love, is high.

Take Torkwase Dyson’s haunting and beautiful installation Liquid A Place, which formed part of Tate Liverpool’s 2023 Biennial display. How else, where else, would I have encountered such an artist and their work?

As the 2025 Biennial approaches, I look forward to seeing it. What – who – will I discover? What will make a mark on the city? What ghosts will be left behind?

C James Fagan

Liverpool Biennial 2025 runs 7 June–14 September

Read our Liverpool Biennial 2025 preview

Read more articles by C James Fagan

Images, from top: Turning the Place Over, Richard Wilson, 2007, courtesy Liverpool Biennial. Alexandra Wolkowicz; Copperas Hill; Liverpool Mountain, Ugo Rondinone, 2018; Liquid a Place, Torkwase Dyson, 2021. Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Tate Liverpool. Courtesy of Liverpool Biennial. Photography by Mark McNulty 

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 

On Being Curious: New Critical Writing on Contemporary Art From the North-West of England

Edited by Laura Robertson

ISBN 978-1-5262-0237-6

Paperback, 68 pages, illustrated, A4 portrait, uncoated paper, dust jacket by G. F. Smith Papers

Price: £5. We’ll deliver to anywhere in the world.

Published in May 2016 by The Double Negative on behalf of Contemporary Visual Arts Network North West (CVAN NW): a network creating opportunities for artists, organisations and professionals to develop their practice, share ideas, knowledge & resources, and cultivate relationships. Read more about their work here. With thanks to funders Arts Council England, Lancashire County Council, Manchester School of Art, and University of Salford

On Being Curious is also available in print at a selection of public and university libraries across the North-West and the UK, including at the British Library, and as a downloadable e-book

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Turner Prize winners, super slow canal culture, DIY art schools… On Being Curious is an essential snapshot of British contemporary art and art criticism outside of London.

Unique to the North-West region yet contributing to national and international debates around visual art, the award-winning artists, projects, exhibitions, art schools, agencies and artist-led venues featured in this book provide a peek into the art scene across Cheshire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Merseyside, over a prolific eighteen month period.

Read ten essays by ten North-Wes-based writers, about thirty years of Manchester’s Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA); Turner Prize winners Assemble and the Granby Four Streets; Super Slow Way culture along the Leeds-Liverpool canal; trials and triumphs at The Royal Standard studios; what artists need at Islington Mill Art Academy; and much more.

Featuring writers (from the Critical Writing Bursary & Workshop Programme, 2014-16) Liz Mitchell, Amelia Crouch, Katrina Houghton, Laura Harris, Jack Welsh, Sara Jaspan, Lara Eggleton, Lauren Velvick, C. James Fagan, and Sue Flowers.

“This book provides ten smacks in the face to the idea that art criticism is dead.” – Oliver Basciano, International Editor, ArtReview

“The confident, clearly expressed articles in this collection provide an insight into contemporary art in the North-West, while also charting the development of new writing talent as it finds its voice.” – Chris Sharratt, Editor, a-n art news

“This is a book that encourages and celebrates new writing, contemporary art and curiosity, and as such, I applaud it.” – Jennifer Higgie, Editorial Director, Frieze magazine

Scroll down for a preview of the stories.

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Buy On Being Curious (UK addresses, Signed For 2nd Class delivery, add £3):

Buy On Being Curious (international addresses, Signed For 2nd Class delivery, add £9):

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 – WoWFEST: Mike Leigh: Peterloo Screening with Q&A 6.30pm @ Plaza Community Cinema, Liverpool – £10/£5

Addressing Brexit, class, climate change, gender and more, this year’s Writing on The Wall Festival asks: “Where are we now?” This screening of Mike Leigh’s Peterloo, retelling events leading to the massacre of protesters in 1819 Manchester, feels depressingly timely. Leigh is on hand for a post-screening Q&A.

Tuesday – AFTER LIFE 6pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8

Last week I went to see a certain franchise-closing (we can only hope) blockbuster. It was, to me, inexplicably well reviewed, and not only by those publications whose lives depend on it. Of course, such movies have their place, and people can choose how they want to spend their money, and time – though choose wisely if that means three hours+. The consequences of our choices loom large in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life. In it, the director poses a deceptively simple-sounding question: what memory would you take with you when you die? Eternity, presumably, hinges on the decision.

Contemporary Arts Writing: What Does It Do? 7pm @ Waterside Arts Centre, Sale – FREE

The relationship between art and writing is an old and storied one. Looking back at significant movements over the years, where you found artists, you also found their critic pals – or enemies. While the power of the critic to make or break careers has almost inarguably waned, there remains a plethora of interesting voices responding to art now. Sara Jaspan and our own Laura Robertson are two of them. Tonight the pair join curator Mario Popham and artist Phoebe Kiely for a tour of exhibition Sweet Debris, following which, they’ll be getting to grips with what constitutes contemporary art writing.

Wednesday – WoWFEST: Queer Are We Now? 7.30pm @ LEAF, Liverpool – £12/£6

For five nights in 1969, members of New York’s LGBT communities demonstrated a police raid on a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn in the city’s Greenwich Village. The events set in motion the Stonewall movement, and led to the Gay Liberation Front, Gay Activists Alliance and Gay Pride. 50 years on, WoWFEST uses the occasion to consider how and whether things have changed. Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell will deliver a keynote speech, following which, he will be joined in conversation by award-winning writer and director, Cheryl Martin.

Thursday – Un_bound Issue 1 Launch Party 6pm @ Static, Liverpool – FREE

When the seeds were sown for The Double Negative, it was in response to Liverpool’s fairly quiet critical backdrop. It has been with great pleasure that we have seen new publications with their own idea of criticality pop up and spring to life in the intervening years. “Thinking outside the boundaries of traditional art criticism”, it is with warmth and excitement that we greet Un_bound, whose own title and remit is suggestive of not being confined to current conventions and conversations. Tonight its team launches issue one, which you can pick up for free.

Friday – LightNight Liverpool from 5pm @ Venues Across the City – FREE

Every year, LightNight opens up the city – and art. Attracting people in their thousands to enter galleries and engage with contemporary art and artists, the free festival is back this Friday. With more than 100 different organisations involved, and new commissions revealed for the first time, you’re spoilt for choice. Design studio Dorothy launch global music mapping project ClubTogether, in the Baltic Triangle; marking the launch of bido100! is Sam Wiehl and Forest Swords’ audio-visual collab Ritual 2.0 in the tunnels of Moorfields station; over at the Bluecoat, artist anti-cool’s multi-screen video and sculpture installation Demolition Memorial Keepsake explores memorial ceremonies.

New Commission: Poulsen Arc Dream Radio 5pm @ Storyhouse, Chester – FREE

Filmmaker and artist Sven Werner’s new digital commission for Chester’s Storyhouse responds to the art-deco building’s architecture and the memories of people who have made the city their home but are not originally from there. Entitled Poulsen Arc Dream Radio, the work is an intimate one-person listening booth inspired by memory and place. “Chester is a city full of fascinating stories and communities,” said the artist. Hear them for yourself from tonight.

Saturday – Kitty’s Launderette Opening Party 6pm @ Kitty’s Launderette, Liverpool – FREE

Anfield’s Homebaked cooperative bakery has proved itself an enviable model for engaging communities in a business and watching it thrive. Setting up shop nearby is Kitty’s Launderette, successfully crowdfunded last year. “Reimagining the humble and well-loved launderette”, Kitty’s will be a space for social and creative activities, alongside the intention to provide affordable washing and drying facilities for people living in Everton and Anfield. Celebrate the opening tonight with music, drinks, and food provided – of course – by Homebaked.

Sunday – Exhibition Closing: Emma Smith: 5Hz & Euphonia @ Home, Manchester – FREE

Based on the musicality of social interactions, Emma Smith’s 5Hz & Euphonia invites visitors, says the web blurb, to “influence the soundscape”, and “learn a new alphabet that transcends language barriers”. When Smith showed Euphonia at the Bluecoat last year, our reviewer C. James Fagan encountered a work that, on the one hand “reacts and changes when a visitor to the gallery speaks or intones into a microphone”. On the other, he found a universal work attempting to address the self-consciousness and social judgements we’re all subject to.

Mike Pinnington

Images from top: Phoebe Kiely (Sweet Debris/detail); After Life (film still); ClubTogether/LoghtNight; Poulson Arc Dream Radio

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!

Tuesday – Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story + Q&A with Steve Sullivan (and TDN editor Mike) 6pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8

Growing up, Frank Sidebottom seemed to be ubiquitous, appearing on loads of Saturday morning kid’s shows and regional TV. In 1992, he even played Reading Festival. I was young, and didn’t know what to make of the nasal, Mancunian man-child wearing the papier-mâché head. But he was a figure of fascination. Now, director Steve Sullivan has made documentary Being Frank, a film about the mercurial Sidebottom and the man behind him, Chris Sievey. Join me (Mike P) and Steve tonight for a post screening chat about this warm and gently revelatory biopic.

Virginia Wing with Deep Throat Choir and Mich Cota 7.30pm @ the Southbank Centre, London – £12.50

Historically speaking, it’s not easy to place Virginia Wing: mid-80s avant-garde synth-pop, allied to contemporary considerations, theirs is a sound honed over the course of three records. Joined here by Deep Throat Choir, Mich Cota, sound artist Rachael Finney, dancer Maria Malone and (Liverpool-based) audio-visual artist Sam Wiehl, the collaboration explores themes around gender, digital spaces, reality and perception.

Wednesday – The Liquid Club #3: The Posthuman by Rosi Braidotti 6.30pm @ Liverpool Central Library – FREE

The Liquid Club discussion group has been inviting “collective thinking” to help drive the development of Liverpool Biennial 2020. Tonight is its third edition, and topics up for discussion will be subjectivity, individualism and the role of Europe-centric humanism. Using an extract from philosopher and feminist thinker Rosi Braidotti’s book, The Posthuman (2013), conversation will focus on how we might move away from “self-centred individualism and instead into a model that locates us in what Braidotti calls ‘an affirmative flow of relations with multiple others’”.

Ambit Magazine – A Potted History 7pm @ the Bluecoat, Liverpool – £6/5

This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of Ambit, a magazine that foregrounds poetry, prose and art. Perhaps best known by some as the magazine formerly edited by British pop artist Eduardo Paolozzi, today poet, editor, producer and social activist Briony Bax is at the helm. Bax is joined this evening by Ambit contributors Chris McCabe, Tony Dash, Jennifer Lee-Tsai and Brian Wake as they look at the evolution of the magazine through readings and, no doubt, reminiscences.

Jerwood/FVU Awards: Going, Gone @ Jerwood Space, London – FREE

This exhibition premieres two new moving image works by artists Webb-Ellis and Richard Whitby, each recipients of this year’s Jerwood/FVU Awards. Filmed over the course of summer 2018, artist duo Webb-Ellis’ work captures the excitement and uncertain, hopeful energy of youth, but also the sense – as these young people begin to come of age – of its inevitable end. Richard Whitby’s The Lost Ones, meanwhile, addresses the bureaucratic limbo faced by those waiting to have their residency status assessed. The title of the show – Going, Gone – was chosen to mark the UK’s departure from the European Union, but now takes on even greater, painfully ironic significance.

Thursday – Literary Evening: The Other 6.30pm @ Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool – FREE

Gear up for an inclusive reading group tonight, as The Other responds to Open Eye Gallery’s current exhibition, 209 Women: portraits of female MPs shot by female photographers. The format places writers in pairs – including our contributing editor Laura collaborating with poet and researcher Janaya Pickett – to read each-other’s work in response to this show. Expect new poetry, essays, fiction and non-fiction from brand new writer-duos (and a free bar).

Friday – Exhibition Opening: Emma Smith: 5Hz & Euphonia 6pm @ Home, Manchester – FREE

Based on the musicality of social interactions, Emma Smith’s 5Hz & Euphonia invites visitors, says the web blurb, to “influence the soundscape”, and “learn a new alphabet that transcends language barriers”. When Smith showed Euphonia at the Bluecoat last year, our reviewer C. James Fagan encountered a work that, on the one hand “reacts and changes when a visitor to the gallery speaks or intones into a microphone”. On the other, he found a universal work attempting to address the self-consciousness and social judgements we’re all subject to.

Saturday – Open Haircutting 10am-6pm @ Humber Street Gallery, Hull – FREE

How many times have you heard your friends compare hairdressers to theraperists? You’re feeling pampered, relaxed, and prepared to tell a complete stranger your life story. In Cut, artists Richard Houguez and Graham Jones are exploring the very same phenomena: combining haircuts with client interviews to create sound and sculptural artworks. Pop down for a free cut – all you have to do in return is talk. Expect to be asked what you think about art, your community and your city.

Sunday – Remember Imagine @ Tate Liverpool – FREE

Writers often think: what if walls could talk? If they could, it’d make our job a hell of a lot easier. Think of all those stories held in the bricks and mortar of the Royal Albert Dock, for instance… Once the epicentre of the industrial revolution, the docks had thousands of workers shipping coffee, cotton, rum, sugar and tobacco all around the world. It was also built on the shameful remnants of the transatlantic slave trade – just 13 years after the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. Looking ahead to the Royal Albert Dock’s 175th birthday, discuss the fate of the people who stood here before us, and imagine what the area’s future could look like.

Mike Pinnington and Laura Robertson

What histories, memories and hopes does a place hold? And how can what we do now shape the future? C. James Fagan ruminates on performance piece TORCH… 

I’m travelling to St Helens in order to review a performance piece entitled TORCH. I haven’t delved deeply into what the piece is about, preferring to be surprised by what I could encounter tonight. In pragmatic terms, and using the description on the Heart of Glass website (the programmers of this piece): “The show is an immersive promenade production in non-traditional performance spaces.”

That’s the form of it. I’m no stranger to this style of performance or theatre. I think the difficultly I have in writing about it stems from a desire not to give away too much. Not to mark anyone’s expectations of the piece. To avoid spoilers, as it were.

The nature of what is about to unfold means so much of this is drawn from memory. No notes. No handy reference sheet to refer to.

Where does it start? Well, TORCH is the result of two years’ development and research into the history of St Helens.

For me, however, it starts in St Helens Central train station. Or did it start with the journey here? I arrive in St Helens hours before the performance begins; in a place I’ve not visited in nearly twenty years, despite living just over ten miles away. Walking around the town, I feel a strange dislocation, it is at once familiar and yet alien.

Like there are massive gaps in my knowledge, like I’ve forgotten something.

In retrospect I can see this reflected in TORCH, as it contains themes of remembrance, memory and history. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to the start of the performance, back to the train station. I’m placed in a very specific location of the waiting area, paired with a stranger. We’re an audience of two.

The piece begins, subtly – there’s no real way to differentiate between the real and performed. A stranger approaches and asks for change for the vending machines, not uncommon. Soon after this another woman turns up frantic, looking for someone; without truly questioning it, we follow this woman and her task in locating a lost asylum seeker and dealing distantly with her daughter’s Christmas party.

Stranger still, we are driving around town in a stranger’s car.

We arrive at a house, unmarked for reasons of security. We enter and it’s in darkness as our guide looks for a fuse box. Through a window I glimpse a figure, a young woman performing a manual task (hammering). An apparition, it disappears as quickly as it appeared.

Lights come on.

Our guide, a social worker, care worker, cheerfully informs us that this is the house she grew up in. Personal, social histories are colliding.

Things change. Another player enters: the apparition. She quickly and secretively leads me to an upstairs room. To another history. Dreamily she tells me her story. Of her freedoms offered to her by the Second World War, experiences previously unopened to her. She embraces them.

But not without a sense of guilt, given the circumstances these opportunities have arisen from.

Then it’s a return to the living room, and another shift in time. It’s Christmas 1984. The audience has doubled and we’re all caught in a domestic argument. Recriminations, pain and loss stemming from the recent past, the lines drawn up and crossed during The Miners Strike.

There’s a slanging match between our guide and an older woman. There’s a third woman devastated by the removal of her children curled up on a coach. Her story is a separate narrative not totally known to me.

My role in all of this is both observer and participant. I sit there on a small footstool, awkwardly. Not unlike a small child watching parents fight, involved yet removed. This is what this small audience is like. On the edges, like time travellers sent here to watch – observe, but do not interfere.

This scene is broken up when my companion and I are whisked into the kitchen to watch the Queen’s Speech on a black and white portable TV. An older woman, in her Christmas best, tells us her story. The heart break of being unable to see members of her family, despite living a few streets away – a political and ideological divide is in place. A domestic Cold War. During this, images of Charles and Diana and their young family play, almost mockingly, on the TV.

There are points where you want to offer something. Some kind of comfort, even if it’s just platitudes. This comes of course through the performances and also through the heightened sense of intimacy. There is no fourth wall to hide behind.

Still you have to tell yourself, not to interfere, not to break the flow.

Flow we do, back into the living room/dining room. Seated at the dinner table. The woman who we were searching for back at the beginning is there on the coach. Looking lost, disjointed. I mean, if someone like me who comes from the same society and same place can feel dislocation, then how much must that be amplified for anyone who must leave so much more behind?

The sense of physical and mental dislocation is expressed through movement. She moves frantically, desperately through the space, between the audience. As if these spaces and people can be remoulded by her movements.

It’s too much for her, this space and its history. She flees. We set off after her only to collide with another narrative. Almost literally: as I’m about to step out of the door, someone whizzes past. Outside we are greeted by the woman from the war again (the one I had an individual performance with). She is enthusiasm and joy, she talks about her love of the cinema, of work, of her own abilities and stamina (she’s still going after a 19 hour shift).

We’re on the way to the Hippodrome, where we move through the Saturday night punters, there for bingo. Who is ignoring who? We arrive at a tea bar, her second job; here she speaks of the future. Elegantly placing cups and saucers on the counter as if they were the elements of her life, as if they were the future. This is where the performance ends on a downbeat, yet hopeful, note. There is pathos but promise too. The future is still unwritten, still contains hope.

After this there is a coda. We are offered a cup of tea and the chance to have our fortunes read. Our fortune teller speaks to us about the paths life can take. The ‘sliding door’ moments, how this shapes us and how we have a say in shaping the future. I like this part; it offers a chance to reflect, to decompress. Often in other performances in this style you can be ejected from it. Here we are enabled to talk our experiences through with other members of the audience.

Though it’s not quite over yet. On returning to the train station, I’m able to catch the start of the next performance. From platform two I witness the events I was once a part of unfold. Again it’s like I’ve jumped back in time. Though on this occasion I get a different perspective. The woman who fled the house has arrived, she dances in front of an information screen then disappears to find her audience.

I turn around to see if any of my fellow passengers saw this. They appear not to have. I almost wonder if I did myself. Like a memory, like the stories of all the women I met tonight, it merges into the now, into the noise and travel of a Saturday night.

C. James Fagan

Performances of TORCH run until Saturday 1 December 

What does it mean (and take) to speak or sing into a microphone in front of other people? C. James Fagan speaks up about a new and experimental sound installation at The Bluecoat, Liverpool…

I’ve wanted to experience an Emma Smith artwork for some time now; ever since reading about her near-mystical exploration of energy and the voice, in a piece called Change in Energy = the Work. Unfortunately, neither me or her work were in the right place at the right time.

So naturally, I’m glad someone has done what I couldn’t do: brought her unique practice to Liverpool. Smith’s latest solo show, entitled Euphonia, is in The Bluecoat’s main galleries, and it is an investigation into how the human voice is central to the creation of social space and interaction.

When I enter The Bluecoat, both the Hub and galleries are full of babble and chatter. This seems to suggest a ghost or echo of the concerns that underpin Euphonia and Smith’s work in general.

But what is Euphonia? To put it simply, to the point of glibness, Euphonia is sound piece which reacts and changes when a visitor to the gallery speaks or intones into a microphone. This microphone is suspended within the main, ground floor space. In turn, it is surrounded by speakers and large screens of curving, smoky Perspex.

I think they act like baffle devices: there to reverberate and control the sounds. Visually, these screens appear to represent sound passing through space, as well as our own movement through that space.

I don’t want to spend too much time on describing the physical aspects, though it’s clear that the visual environment has been given as much thought as the aural environment. Equally, I wouldn’t want to spend too much time in attempting to describe the sounds that swim from the speakers – which ping into your brain and registers as beautiful.

What actually makes Euphonia work isn’t solely its physical presence within the gallery. Like Smith’s previous work, this is a continuum, part of a development of a collective language. The thread that runs through Smith’s work is the notion that language binds us. That within language, there is something that goes beyond syntax, beyond grammar, and acts directly with our brains, and that is what binds us. Smith is looking for a utopian language.

Now, some may draw parallels between this and Esperanto. Esperanto is language that is built from pre-existing languages, still using multiple grammars. While 5hz (the name Smith uses to refer to this language) comes from interaction and improvisation, it is formed from the people who take part in workshops and installations. It is language that is formed from intuition.

This new language is, hopefully, free from notions of correctness. The way you talk does instantly identify you. Your accent and the particular words that you use come preloaded with expectations regarding your background, who you are, and even what you’re capable of.

5hz would appear to be an attempt to circumvent all of this. To reset the presets and put communication back to a mother tongue. To have it straight from the horse’s mouth.

In the case of Euphonia, is travels directly from the microphone suspended in the gallery. That microphone, hid behind its soundproofing shell, is there to enable visitors to have a direct effect on the environment around them. Speak, sing, or intone into the microphone, and the sound around you should react; adjusting itself to the timbre of your voice.

Of course, during very busy periods in the gallery it’s difficult to determine the changes. Maybe my ears aren’t quite acute enough.

This brings me to my strange reaction to the piece. Faced with the microphone, I clam up. Even though I’m under no obligation to perform for this thing hanging there, just thinking about its presence and its reason for being there makes me feel very self-conscious. I know  if I speak into the microphone then the galley and everyone around will hear my voice.

Even though I know my voice would become tone, somehow I fear that that tone would become unpleasant. That it would disturb and interrupt the collective voice. I can feel my whole mouth becoming rigid.

This may sound like a negative criticism of Euphonia. It’s not. Rather, it should be seen as an affirmation of the need for this project. For those self-conscious feelings are born in part of external, social judgements about my voice and your voice. Through our lives, we’ve been told to speak up, be quiet, speak properly, you can’t sing.

These are the problems which Euphonia, and Smith’s work as a whole, are attempting to address. To overturn. Hopefully we can all add our voice in time.

C. James Fagan

See Emma Smith’s Euphonia  at The Bluecoat, Liverpool, until Sunday 24 June 2018 — FREE

Images courtesy The Bluecoat and Robert Battersby

How can Denis Villeneuve’s new Blade Runner 2049 live up to Ridley Scott’s original? A film that took Philip K Dick’s famous source novel, and went on to spawn its own mythology, as well as shape science fiction in its wake — including Cyberpunk and Black Mirror? C. James Fagan takes a nostalgic look back at the 1982 film and its sprawling, heady impact…

Me, Replicant?

You’ve probably noticed that the long awaited sequel to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) has been released. Blade Runner 2049 has long been wished for, and what do they say about getting what you wish for? I’ve never had a mixture of excitement and nervousness like this in anticipation of a film. Not even the new Star Wars.

Despite having confidence in Oscar-winning director Denis Villeneuve (Arrival), I — unfairly perhaps — have already formed an opinion of Blade Runner 2049; in that it will be a good film, but it won’t be Scott’s Blade Runner. How can it be?

It’s got a lot going in its favour: Villeneuve, its BAFTA-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins (James Bond, Coen Brothers), and, until recently, its composer Johan Johansson (who collaborated with Villeneuve on Arrival and two other films). Johansson and his score have been replaced last minute by score veteran Hans Zimmer (Inception, The Lion King), which sets off alarm bells – the director being quoted in IndieWire as saying: “I needed to go back to something closer to [Blade Runner’s original composer] Vangelis. Jóhan and I decided that I will need to go in another direction”.

My misgivings may also spring from the fact that any Blade Runner follow up comes with a major disadvantage: it doesn’t have the mythos of the parent film. Not only does Villeneuve have to contend with Scott’s influence on the original, but also the series of conceptual symbols that he wove throughout the original (eyes, looking, owls, etc.) and are now so synonymous with the film. Plus, there’s Scott’s core narrative of whether the main character is human or Replicant, and the gossipy production mythology – stories of on-set rivalries, tensions, and various edits which remain firmly fixed in the minds of its fans.

I know it’s common for sequels to fail to match the original, but Blade Runner isn’t just a film. The influence Blade Runner had on subsequent films could be classed as a genre in itself. It’s one of four works which marked a shift in the idea of how science fiction could be presented on screen: Star Wars (1977-present), Alien (1979-present), Mad Max: Road Warrior (1981) and Blade Runner. Of course, these films didn’t spring from a vacuum. Each of the production teams were influenced by popular culture — samurai films, French comics and weird Swiss artists – taking elements from different sources and putting them together in a way which stirred the imagination. To create worlds which recreate the effect and sensation the likes of Ridley Scott experienced when viewing that original material for the first time.

Blade Runner’s entrance into my imagination happened at an early age, while I was still at primary school. Though it wasn’t with the actual film, rather it was with a publicity still in a magazine given away free when you hired a video. The image was of one of Los Angeles’ rain sodden streets in 2019. In the foreground was parked a strange looking car. The car, which I would later learn was one of Syd Mead’s designs, was somewhere between exotic and ordinary. Something that was recognisably a car, but one that was as exciting as a Lamborghini Countach, and yet as familiar as an Austin Princess.

Looking back, Blade Runner drew you into its future-set world by drawing, in turn, from the familiar and recognisable. A lot of the look and feel of Blade Runner came from Scott’s experiences of growing up in the North-East of Post-War Britain. Blade Runner’s opening scenes featured a landscape completely colonized by industry, and was, in part, a homage to the refineries Scott saw on walking to and from art school. This imagery struck a deep chord with me, and many others; growing up in Runcorn I was familiar with the ethereal beauty of chemical refineries of ICI and BoC at night — complete with flaming towers.

It’s this stark imagery, coupled with Scott’s insistence on details, which goes to create a living, breathing world. The city serves as another character in the film. The sensation that you can leave the main characters and explore the city is palatable. Maybe have some noodles or a drink at Taffy’s Bar. It’s this level of detail which makes Blade Runner a high water mark for film design. It fixed an idea of the future in the popular imagination that still has a hold. It has informed the visual style of many a future world to varying degrees of success. It inspired a series of bank adverts.

Blade Runner even effected future Philip K Dick adaptions and book covers; a recent radio adaption of the author’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) — the source novel for Blade Runner — took its cues from the film, presenting the hero as a gruff private eye like Scott’s adaptation, rather than the dweeby admin assistant of the book. Ironically, the first episode of Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams TV series drew criticism for being a cross between Blade Runner and Black Mirror.

It just goes to show how powerful the visuals of Blade Runner have been; how much it chimed, and still does, with the times. Through it, you can see an expression of the concerns of the time: global war, pollution, over-population, and industrialisation. It was part of the zeitgeist, and it defined the zeitgeist. Blade Runner become a blueprint, if indirectly, for the Cyberpunk genre. Even though author William Gibson was already in the process of writing the Neuromancer novel (released 1984), the visual style of Blade Runner was an easy fit for the world of The Sprawl: his huge urban sprawl development that spawned a trilogy. That Blade Runner aesthetic had already become a shorthand for the meeting between low life and high tech. And technology would have a hand in projecting the Blade Runner mythos.

After originally failing at the box office, Blade Runner found an audience with the newly emerging home video market. Here, you could gain access to 2019, if very crudely. By rewinding and pausing, you could engross yourself in that world, making Blade Runner something other than a movie. Directors Cut in 1992, Fans would spend hours decoding Cityspeak (the film’s street language), trying to discover what that music drifting from the blimp was, or the brand of cigarettes smoked by everyone.

Of course, they would learn that the version of Blade Runner they’d seen wasn’t the Blade Runner Ridley Scott intended you to see. News of a fabled “workprint” came to the surface: versions without Harrison Ford’s bored narration, and a radically different ending. Eventually, this would be released as the Directors Cut in 1992, though a Final Cut wouldn’t be released until 2009. There are seven different versions of Blade Runner in all.

It shows that this thing we call Blade Runner is more than a movie: it is part of contemporary culture. This is what Blade Runner 2049 is up against. 35 years of myths, 35 years of influence. Villeneuve is an ambitious director to want to enter that world. But if anyone could make a successful attempt at becoming part of that mythos, it could be him. After all, this isn’t and shouldn’t be about me and my like reliving the sensations of watching Blade Runner. It’s about ensuring that the Blade Runner myth can live long beyond its inception date and inspire a new generation. Given the very positive reviews already filtering through, that maybe the case. It won’t be long until we can all get down to the cinema and see for ourselves. Until then, have a better one!

C. James Fagan — from an appropriately rainy city

See Blade Runner 2049 at cinemas nationwide 

Images, from top: a still from Denis Villeneuve’s new Blade Runner 2019, and in contrast, a similar scene from Ridley Scott’s Final Cut of Blade Runner in 2009. One of Syd Mead’s original designs from Blade Runner (1982). A still from Ridley Scott’s Director’s Cut of Blade Runner in 1992. Blimp, from Blade Runner (1982)

He’s an artist responsible for drawing some of popular culture’s most iconic characters, including Batman, The Watchmen, and Judge Dredd. But why does the satire of Dredd still sting? When did he start to make a living from drawing? And who decided what shade of blue Dr Manhattan should be? C. James Fagan quizzes John Higgins…

40 years ago, an object appeared. An object which would affect the minds of everyone who came in contact with it. This object would offer a less utopian, more dystopian view of the future: one that was darker, grittier, funnier, more violent. Less Star Trek, more, well… British. This object was the comic 2000 AD.

Entering the weekly orbit of its readers from 1977, 2000 AD was a heady mix of robots (Ro Busters) time-traveling cowboys (Flesh), alien resistance fighters (Nemesis​ the warlock). And from the second issue, a no-holds-barred future lawman called Judge Dredd.

2000 AD would become a hotbed for the best in British comic talent. Many influential writers and artists would make their mark in 2000 AD: including Dave Gibbons, Alan Moore, Chris Cunningham. Those names would fill paragraphs, and they changed comics, film and music industries.

Some of artists who would spark the imaginations of its readers didn’t go on to gain that level of same recognition. For me, those influential, lesser-known people include Ron Smith, Ian Gibson, Steve Yowell. It was by looking through the pages of 2000 AD that my young mind first understood that​ images were created by humans putting pen onto paper.

In essence, it was an introduction to art. Which leads me here, to a major retrospective of Walton-born artist John Higgins at the Victoria Gallery and Museum (VGM), in his home city of Liverpool. Higgins worked on some of the most important comics of the 1980s; his most iconic characters included Batman and Judge Dredd.

Upon entering the VGM’s galleries, the first pieces to strike me are prints of the Watchmen characters The Comedian and Silk Spectre, as well as a wall full of lush paintings. This is Higgins’ work for a six issue mini series entitled World Without End, written by Jamie Delango (Hellblazer) and published by DC Comics in the ‘90s.

I meet Higgins in the gallery. Speaking about this mini series, he says it offered him a chance to do something unique: “something I dreamt about all my life! To produce a fully painted comic strip. Because that’s what  I grew up reading. The Frank Hampson Dan Dare (from the Eagle) and the Trigan Empire in Look and Learn.”

The Dan Dare and Trigan Empire strips (drawn by Don Lawrence) featured at least two pages of fully painted artwork; a process of creating comics which is time consuming and expensive. Though the results are often worth it.

In a nearby vitrine, I see Higgins’ work as a colourist for Watchmen – quite possibly the most important comic of the ‘80s. A yardstick to which other comics are judged. Higgins is, rightly,proud.

“It’s in Time Magazine’s 20 best-selling novels of the 20^th century”, he beams. “That’s novels, not just graphic novels. So you have it on a list with the likes of Catcher in the Rye, or the Grapes of Wrath.”

I ask him, maybe flippantly, how do three people (Alan Moore as writer, Dave Gibbons as artist and Higgins himself) agree on the right shade of blue for a character like Dr Manhattan? This leads to a conversation about the collaborative nature of the Watchmen and comics in general.

Higgins’ preferred method of working, he explains, is through collaboration. Giving him the chance to work with new talents and form friendships. It’s no surprise, then, that Dave Gibbons spoke at the opening of the exhibition. Higgins joined the Watchmen relatively late, after Moore and Gibbons had sold the idea to DC Comics. Once all this was done, the three of them understood that a character like Dr Manhattan could effect his environment; this was shown through the use of colour. In answer to my question, there wasn’t a right shade of blue for Dr Manhattan. The shade of blue depended on the actions he was undertaking in the story.

On the overall process, Higgins tells me: “The great thing was working with [Moore, Gibbons] very, very early on [in my career]. It made me realise that it was not the normal approach. The way I was employed, they wanted my input. They wanted my creativity in a way I hadn’t been asked to do before.”

Higgins was a part of the British Invasion of American comics of the ‘80s and ‘90s. This put him amongst fellow comic peers, like Neil Gaiman, and 2000 AD alumni Mark Millar and Grant Morrison. What, does he think, is the stand-out influence that UK creatives have had on this slice of American culture?

“It’s writing, which is driven by education and culture. The British writers went to America, they had influences other than comics. When I got into comics in America, I found that 90% of the people who wrote comics, read comics; and ​were basically rewriting those comics. But because of our cultural approach we changed things, we made those superheroes real and relevant.”

It was while he was working on Watchmen that Higgins felt his professional comic artist career occurred. When dropping off work for another project in 1986, he decided to visit the then editor of 2000 AD, Steve MacManus; who offered him the chance to draw a Dredd strip. Dredd, as a character, had already been around for about 10 years. I wonder how interested Higgins was in working for 2000 AD, seeing as he sought out the editor?

“Oh yeah!”, Higgins enthuses; “I’m a huge fan! I’ve got the fan’s perfect job! I’m doing what I would of dreamt of doing if I wasn’t doing it. Just to be a fan, and be working on your favourite character Judge Dredd. Who is my favourite character; second is Batman; after that, John Constantine [the gone-to-seed magician of the Hellblazer comics].”

Technically, this wasn’t the first time Higgins had produced work for 2000 AD, having​ previously worked on a few Future Shocks (2000 AD’s Twilight Zone-esque strip) with Alan Moore. It wasn’t until 1986, however, that he actually made enough money to live – perhaps not a surprise to anyone who works in the creative industries.

Higgins, we discuss, joined the Dredd team at a quite important time; during a shift in the direction of the strip. Over the next few years, a number of stories under the collective title of Democracy, the character of Joe Dredd would face questions about who he is and the right of his actions.

This is one of the strengths of the Dredd strip. It’s ability to explore different facets of its own world; to move from a serious story, like Democracy, to stories where an orangutan is elected major. Part of the joy on working on Dredd must have been the flexibility it offered, to both artist and writer. Higgins agrees:

“What Steve MacManus, Brian Holland and, of course, Carlos Ezquerra [Ezquerra being the first artist to work on Dredd] did was create an almost perfect template. The uniform Ezquerra created is so perfect for a totalitarian judge. You see that in any contemporary riot officer’s outfit: knee pads, shoulder pads, fire-proof leather. That’s what Dredd’s been wearing since 1977.”

Another element in Dredd’s armoury is the relative simplicity of his personality. This is a man who has binary view of the world; a concrete integrity about the letter of the law. He IS he law. Higgins sees Dredd’s rigidity as something you can “bounce things off and show the absurdity of totalitarianism.”

This might paint a picture of a grim character. But if this where true, then he and 2000 AD wouldn’t have lasted for 40years. Higgins points towards another element of Dredd’s staying power: humour. Often this is a kind of hangman’s humour, and usually it leads to a satirical point.

“Judge Dredd stories are the funniest stories ever”, Higgins says. “He’s not a funny character but everything around him is wonderful, absurd, poignant, entertaining, satirical. Making political points better than the editorial pages of The Guardian.”

And it still does pack a punch; I defy visitors to this show to look at the Dredd strips and not be able to see some biting commentary on contemporary politics. Through the guise of exciting stories, and of incredible things in far away places, a generation’s politics were moulded, without being harangued. This message didn’t have to picked up by every reader, but it was there. On newsagent stands across the land, and in the grubby mitts of children and adults alike. And in this way, Dredd is still important.

“People don’t realise they’re being educated”, continues Higgins. “Education isn’t the be-all-and-end-all. The point is entertainment. The fact you can be educated and entertained is the best form of entertainment.” This is, of course, something that science fiction does so well. “Science fiction has always been the best way to say: ‘Look at this, ain’t it mad!’”

What Higgins is able to illuminate is the magic of comics; a medium that allows people to create worlds, that can be complex in thought and deceptively simple in execution. A medium which softens the boundaries of creator and participant. As I said earlier, it was a comic that helped me to make the connection between the movement of pencil on paper, with the creation of a thing called art.

At the centre of this exhibition at the VGM, and through its accompanying book, is the potential to inspire others to take up pen, pencil or brush. To create new worlds.

C. James Fagan

@CJamesFagan

See Beyond Dredd & Watchmen: The Art of John Higgins, until 3 February 2018 at the Victoria Gallery and Museum, Liverpool — FREE

@RazorJackRealm @VictoriaGallery #BeyondDredd

Images, from top: exhibition installation view from Beyond Dredd & Watchmen: The Art of John Higgins at the VGM. Original artwork made for the VGM exhibition, referencing the gallery and Liverpool. Higgins outside the VGM, © McCoy & Wynne, 2017. All images of Judge Dredd®. © 2017 Rebellion A/S. All rights reserved. Judge Dredd is a registered trademark