Culture Diary w/c 12-05-2025
Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…
Monday – Last Chance to See: Daniel Halsall: Beauty on Paper @ Hamilton Vault Studios, Birkenhead – FREE
Colour, line, and the female form converge, as minimalist painter Daniel Halsall (below) exhibits works on paper, inspired by Schiele, Matisse, Picasso and others.
Exhibitions Continuing: Chester Photo Festival @ Various Venues, 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.
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.
Tuesday – The Best of Everything: Kit de Waal 6pm, Online – £3 / Exploring Modern Ireland: Diversity, Change and Challenges 7pm @ VideOdyssey, Toxteth – £5
WoWFEST 25 continues. At 6pm, author Kit de Waal discusses her latest, The Best of Everything, which Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo called: “A profoundly compassionate novel of devastating power.” IRL, meanwhile, at 7pm, a trio of authors, writers and editors – in the shape of Irish-Punjabi, Gabrielle Fullan, disabled activist and dancer Maryam Madani, and Black Studies lecturer, Philomena Mullen – are joined by NML’s Diversity and Inclusion Partner, Dr Rebecca Loy, to get to grips with what diversity looks like in today’s Ireland.
Wednesday – Exhibition Opening: What Makes Us 5.30pm @ Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool – FREE
Year 12 photography students (including Lily Jacks, below) from Whitby High School in Ellesmere Port, respond to the theme of Community, reflecting on their experiences of connection, memory, resilience, and change.
Thursday – Sense and Sensibility (until Saturday) 7pm @ Shakespeare North Playhouse, Prescot – £5-£30
New adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic debut novel.
Friday – Building Resistance in a Time of Crisis, with Gary Younge 7pm @ Victoria Gallery & Museum – £10
Award-winning author, broadcaster and a professor of sociology at the University of Manchester, Gary Younge argues that our hard-won rights are being threatened as never before. It certainly feels that way. In this timely talk, Younge, joined by fellow author Emy Onuora, offers his perspective on what we must do to safeguard what we’d thought of as democratic norms amid rising fascism – at home and abroad.
Saturday – Exhibition Opening: ALL THAT REMAINS: a curator’s choice @ Victoria Gallery & Museum – FREE
Rarely is a curator given the opportunity to make an exhibition marking their departure, but with ALL THAT REMAINS, VGM’s Dr Amanda Draper does just that. Drawing on the University of Liverpool collection, Draper has selected works by favourite and overlooked artists, including William Utermohlen (above), Euan Uglow, Victor Pasmore, and Adrian Henri.
Sunday – The Royal Tenenbaums 4.30pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8.50
“I always wanted to be a Tenenbaum,” says the wayward but loveable Eli Cash, played winningly by Owen Wilson in Wes Anderson’s 2001 classic, The Royal Tenenbaums. Dip into the fraught, idiosyncratic and, at times, bruisingly romantic goings on in the family Tenenbaum (which closely resemble the Glass’ of Salinger’s Franny and Zooey). It is one populated by high-functioning misfits and former child prodigies, Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), Richie (Luke Wilson) and Chas (Ben Stiller), all watched over by estranged heads of household, Etheline (Anjelica Huston) and, of course, Royal, played by the recently departed Gene Hackman. My favourite of Anderson’s highly mannered output.
Mike Pinnington
Images/media, from top: The Royal Tenenbaums trailer; Annie Pose Six, 2025, © Daniel Halsall; Lily Jacks, from What Makes Us; Trenchcoat by William Utermohlen, 1968 © Estate of William Utermohlen
