Culture Diary w/c 26-05-2025
Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…
Tuesday – The Third Man 1.30pm (and 5pm Wednesday) @ FACT Liverpool £9.35
Sitting in joint 63rd in the 2022 Sight and Sound Great Films of All Time poll, few would question The Third Man’s inclusion; in fact, I was surprised it wasn’t higher. Written by Graham Greene, Carol Reed’s noirish thriller starring Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton playing cat and mouse in a crumbling post-war Vienna remains peak cinema; great, then, that it is back on the big screen. I can practically hear the zither of Harry Lime’s theme now…
Wednesday – Exhibition Continues: Amartey Golding @ FACT Liverpool – FREE
Artist Amartey Golding’s work addresses themes of masculinity, nationhood, vulnerability and violence; themes he has, for the last two years, explored with men at Fazakerley’s HMP Altcourse. Together, they have created Silent Knight, a suit of armour that is the latest piece in Golding’s Chainmail series. It is both reflection on the tools men use to navigate life and, created over hundreds of hours, time spent that can never be reclaimed. Accompanied by a soundtrack and with pew-like seating, Silent Knight is both installation and space for contemplation.
Alan Sparhawk 7pm @ Arts Club, Liverpool – £26.72
2024 saw the release of Alan Sparhawk’s first new material since the death in 2022 of his fellow co-founder of Low, and wife, Mimi Parker. Loss, of course, looms large on White Roses, My God, but also experimentation (Sparhawk made the record having bought and played around with a synth and voice pitch changer). “I found myself secretly stabbing around at possibilities with the unfamiliar tools, improvising, turning knobs until something would hit and a song would form,” he’s said, concluding: “I can see now that it must have been what needed to come out of me.”
Thursday – The Resilience of Refaat: Honouring a Voice of Gaza 7pm @ The Black-E, Liverpool – £6.13/£11.55
Israeli imposed reporting restrictions have meant that rarely are Palestinian casualties properly identified in the news. Among the now more than 54,000 who have lost their lives, however, one name cut through the fog of the media clampdown: that of writer, editor, professor and poet, Refaat Alareer. His final poem, If I Must Die, has by now been read by millions. This event, with Gaza-based writer, translator, and editor of If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose, Yousef Aljamal; writer, translator, and fellow lecturer at the Islamic University in Gaza, Ahmed Nehad; and translator and editor of Palestine +100 and Palestine -1, Basma Ghalayini, remembers and reflects on his legacy.
Interview with the Vampire 7.30pm @ FACT Liverpool – £9.35
The last great elegant vampire about town to come out of Hollywood, Tom Cruise is perfect as the cruelly seductive Lestat. His performance even satisfied author of the source material, Anne Rice, who had initially baulked at the prospect of seeing Cruise in the role. He is joined (in leaden manner) by Brad Pitt as Louis – reluctant to embrace all vampirism requires – and a twelve-year-old Kirsten Dunst as Claudia, completing a strange family unit. A visual feast, Interview with the Vampire delivers, remarks doyen of the undead, Christopher Frayling, “a surprising amount of transgression”.
Friday – Dr. John Cooper Clarke 7.30pm @ Liverpool Everyman Theatre – £16
The Bard of Salford once again graces Liverpool with his socio-political punk poetry. Ground breaking, sardonic, and comfortably in the realms of poetry’s equivalent of rock star royalty.
Saturday – Last Chance to See: Ding Yi: Between Prediction and Retrospection; Vanessa da Silva: Roda Viva @ Mostyn Gallery, Llandudno – FREE
Llandudno’s Mostyn Gallery boasts a rich and varied programme to rival many a bigger, louder, institution. Their latest exhibitions, which close this weekend, continue that pattern. Brazilian artist, Vanessa da Silva, signs off this afternoon with a live performance. Read our reviews of Ding Yi: Between Prediction and Retrospection, and da Silva’s Roda Viva.
Last Chance to See: JMW Turner & his contemporaries @ Victoria Gallery & Museum – FREE
2025 has so far been a big year for fans of Turner. Marking the 250th anniversary of the painter’s birth, the milestone is being appropriately commemorated with multiple celebratory exhibitions. It allows for a variety of different takes and perspectives on Turner – his art, influences and legacy. This soon-to-close show at VGM looks at his work in the context of peers, including Thomas Girtin, John Sell Cotman, David Cox Snr, Samuel Prout and others.
Wax + Gears ft. Stealing Sheep 2-11pm @ Future Yard, Birkenhead – £16.80
An off-grid, one-day festival in which power is provided by dynamo-fitted bikes, Wax + Gears has its sights set firmly on sustainable practice in the music industry. Liverpool darlings Stealing Sheep headline, joined by the unconventional pop of Ruby Duff, alt rock from Clockwork Gibbons and more.
Exhibition Opening: Fractured Familiar 5pm @ 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’.
Camera Obscura 7pm @ Arts Club Liverpool – £25
Glaswegian indie-pop stars Camera Obscura return following an extended hiatus in the wake of the 2015 death of band member, Carey Lander. Their return, alongside last year’s critically acclaimed Look to the East, Look to the West, is cause for celebration.
Mike Pinnington
Images/media, from top: The Third Man trailer; Amartey Golding, Chainmail 4: Silent Knight (2025). Installation view at FACT Liverpool. Photography by Rob Battersby; Interview with the Vampire trailer; Vanessa da Silva: Roda Viva, Mostyn Gallery installation © Rob Battersby; Fractured Familiar exhibition ident
