Culture Diary w/c 05-05-2025
Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…
Monday – Exhibition Continues (until 12 May): Daniel Halsall: Beauty on Paper @ Hamilton Vault Studios, Birkenhead – FREE
Colour, line, and the female form converge, as minimalist painter Daniel Halsall exhibits works on paper, inspired by Schiele, Matisse, Picasso and others.
Tuesday – Lucrezia Zaina Bequest Lecture 2025 with Professor Marco Armiero 5.30pm @ Tung Auditorium, Liverpool – FREE
Bridging environmental humanities and political ecology, ICREA (Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies) Research Professor at the Institute for the History of Science, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Marco Armiero tackles fascism, its historical foundations and contemporary manifestations.
Wednesday – Björk: Cornucopia 8pm @ FACT Liverpool – £18
When is a concert film not a concert film? With Cornucopia, Icelandic superstar Björk transcends expectations of terminology, presenting an innovative tour de force combining immersive VR, stage production and, of course, her trademark virtuosic vocal range.
Thursday – Exhibition Opening: Josie Jenkins: Figuring the Boundary 5pm @ Editions, Cook Street, Liverpool – FREE
Paintings and works on paper from artist and Refractive Pool co-curator, Josie Jenkins.
Nosferatu (1922) + Live Score 7pm @ FACT Liverpool – £15
FW Murnau’s 1922 interpretation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula was the first time anybody saw a Vampyre on screen – one can only surmise it must have scared the bejesus out of any and all who saw it. That the image of lead Max Schreck’s silhouette is so enduring is testament to the impact on those early (and, of course, subsequent) audiences. Subject to homage, remakes and pastiche ever since, that Nosferatu is accompanied here with a live score (from soloist Hugo Max) makes it all the more alluring.
Further Reading: Vampire Cinema: The First 100 Years
Friday – Chester Photo Festival Opening 4pm @ Castlefield Gallery New Art Spaces, Chester – FREE
With more than 200 works from 85 photographers across six venues, this new festival – which sees photography as a creative practice to share stories, folklore, and myths – starts as it means to go on.
Anna Erhard 6.30pm @ The Rockin’ Chair, Wrexham – £23.10
Swiss-born Berliner Anna Erhard’s Botanical Garden, released in September 2024, has been on pretty regular rotation since I came across it early this year. It’s an album of wry observations and anecdotes drawing on the absurdities, pettiness and microaggressions we face daily in this frequently less than wonderful world. An indie-pop artist capable of weaving vivid vignettes of the day-to-day, catch Erhard tonight as part of Focus Wales.
Further Reading: Funny Ha Ha: Anna Erhard on Tour
Saturday/Sunday – B Beside the Seaside – International B Movie Festival @ Southport Bijou Cinema – £Various
Festival celebrating short- and longform genre filmmaking. A weekend well spent awaits.
Sunday – Last Chance to See: Joanne Masding; Rowena Harris @ the Bluecoat, Liverpool – FREE
Joanne Masding’s The Moveable Scene of the Page combines sculpture, fiction and typography in a multi-layered exploration of images, objects and words. In her film, Long Covid and the Culture of Disbelief, Rowena Harris draws on her experience of living with ME. The condition, compounded for Harris by the pandemic, has a long and complicated story – one, not dissimilarly from those suffering with long Covid, bound up with the wider world’s disbelieving its actual nature.
Further Reading: Reading the Gallery: On Art & Text
Christopher Kulendran Thomas + Bahar Noorizadeh 6pm @ FACT Liverpool – FREE
In 2019′s Ground Zero, Christopher Kulendran Thomas collaborated with Annika Kuhlmann to weave together fiction, documentary and history to address identity, the art market and the nature of power through the lens of his Sri Lankan-Tamil heritage. The pair team up once again for new body of work, Safe Zone (top), to unpick the political, economic and cultural factors that bleed into the quotidian. Complementing Safe Zone, Free To Choose is Bahar Noorizadeh’s immersive film work reflecting the artist, writer and filmmaker’s ongoing examination of the relationship between art and capitalism.
The Plant That Stowed Away @ Tate Liverpool – FREE
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.
Mike Pinnington
Images/media, from top: Christopher Kulendran Thomas, Safe Zone. In collaboration with Annika Kuhlmann. WIELS Centre for Contemporary Art Brussels, 2024. Courtesy the artist. Photo by Andrea Rossetti; Björk: Cornucopia trailer; Nosferatu (1922) still; Joanne Masding, The Moveable Scene of the Page, installation view, © Roger Sinek
