Culture Diary w/c 22-07-2024
Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…
Monday – Last Chance to See: Nancy Holt: Sun Tunnels @ Tate Liverpool + RIBA North – FREE
From Richard Serra’s Qatari monoliths to Donald Judd’s concrete works in Marfa, Texas, there is something both mythic and elemental about our need to commune with the landscape. Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels places us in similar territory, as the artist’s 1978 film situates us in the Utah desert. Framing the sun as it rises and sets during the summer and winter solstices, the work poses questions about human experience – and our ecological footprint.
Tuesday – Exhibition Continues: Let Your Ideas Come Back As Children @ the Bluecoat, Liverpool – FREE
What will the future look and feel like? And what is our place in it? Weird Futures, a new season of exhibitions and workshops at Bluecoat, seeks to explore such questions. Artists Roxy Topia and Paddy Gould have collaborated with children on the evocatively titled exhibition Let Your Ideas Come Back As Children.
Wednesday – Last Chance to See: Beyond Van Gogh @ Exhibition Centre Liverpool – £13.20-£26.40
‘Witness over 300 masterpieces, including instantly-recognizable classics such as “The Starry Night”, “Sunflowers” and “Café Terrace at Night”, now freed from their frames’ goes the blurb for Beyond Van Gogh, at Liverpool’s dockside exhibition centre. When I was a kid, I didn’t appreciate the depth and wonder of his paintings until seeing them, framed (as opposed to in postcard form), in Amsterdam’s dedicated Van Gogh museum. Can this immersive, mediated experience of his work ‘flowing across multiple surfaces’ offer the same depth of engagement as witnessing first-hand the glorious texture and thickness of paint? Today’s your last chance to find out.
Thursday – POSTPONED DUE TO ILLNESS: Private View: Summer Lovin’: Dorothy X Joël Penkman 5pm @ Dorothy, Baltic Triangle, Liverpool – FREE
From tributes to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and John Carpenter’s They Live to reflections on loss and grief by way of Annie Frost Nicholson‘s interdisciplinary works, Dorothy have staged some thoughtful and memorable exhibitions in recent times. Currently showing at the design studio’s dedicated bijou gallery space are Joël Penkman’s very summery indeed photorealistic works, including ice creams, lollipops and cocktails. Tonight’s private view to be rearranged due to illness.
Friday – Studio/Lab co-working open day @ FACT Liverpool – FREE
Desk-hopping around various cafes and bars proving tiresome and expensive? Can you no longer differentiate your home from your place of work? If you answered ‘yes’ to those questions, you could do worse than give today’s Studio/Lab open day at FACT Liverpool a go, where you can meet other creatives and take advantage of the free-flowing tea and coffee, gratis.
Exhibition Opening: The Town is The Gallery, Convenience Gallery Open Exhibition 4pm @ Former M&S, Birkenhead – FREE
When stores such as M&S desert the high-street, worse things can happen than their premises being taken over by art and artists. Such is the case with Convenience Gallery’s The Town is The Gallery. Rather than a closed husk of a building, from this afternoon, the space will be occupied by 60 artists showing as part of this open exhibition.
Saturday – Last Chance to See: Going to the Match @ Williamson Art Gallery and Museum, Birkenhead – FREE
Like England’s recent run in the Euros, all good things must come to an end, including LS Lowry’s painting Going to the Match (above) calling the Williamson home. A snapshot of mid 20th century fans streaming into Bolton Wanderers’ Burnden Park, it speaks to what has changed and what has stayed the same in the world of football. Unlike the extortionate cost of seeing your club play these days, you get to view the painting for free. The painting’s next destination is The National Football Museum, Manchester (19 August-1 September).
Sunday – The Princess Bride 5pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8
We don’t know about you, but many an hour of our lives has been wiled away in front of Rob Reiner’s magical and knowing fairytale, The Princess Bride. With a cast of memorable characters and handfuls of unforgettable scenes and quotable lines, it’s a childhood favourite that endures to this day. Now, if you’ll indulge us: “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
Recommended Read: From the archive: The Princess Bride Reissued… Inconceivable!
Mike Pinnington
Images/media, from top: Nancy Holt Sun Tunnels 1978. Film still © Holt/Smithson Foundation; courtesy Holt/Smithson Foundation and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York; Roxy Topia and Paddy Gould, 2022; Fabs, Joël Penkman, 2011; LS Lowry, Going to the Match
