Culture Diary w/c 09-06-2025
Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…
Monday – Continuing: Liverpool Biennial 2025: BEDROCK – FREE
The 13th edition of Liverpool Biennial eases into its first full week 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 times.
Further Reading: My Life in the Biennial with Ghosts
Continuing: Independents Biennial 2025 – FREE
Running in parallel to BEDROCK is the just-as-well established Independents Biennial which, this year, feels as ambitious as it ever has done. Taking place in an astonishing 120 locations across Liverpool, Wirral, Sefton, Knowsley and St. Helens, it boasts 22 new commissions of its 64 exhibiting artists. From degree show first-timers to the likes of Rebecca Chesney, Johnny Vegas, and Brigitte Jurack, there’s much to look forward to from this year’s showcase of grassroots art and artists. Check individual venues for opening times.
Tuesday – Last Chance to See: Fractured Familiar @ 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’.
Wednesday – Sink Presents: Ben Vince 7pm @ Lost Art, Liverpool – £10 (no one turned away for lack of funds)
Saxophonist, producer and collaborator with, among others, Mica Levi, Ben Vince rocks up in the Baltic Triangle’s Lost Art, showcasing new works ahead of the release of his latest record. In a packed midweek line-up, Vince is supported by Grey Streak & ELIJAH RIGHT?, Ria Bagley, and Kepla.
Bound 8.10pm @ FACT Liverpool – £9.35
Before The Matrix, siblings Lana and Lilly Wachowski made their directorial debut with this hard-bitten, sexy, 90s updating of the film noir. Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon star as Violet and Corky, who simmer as they plot the former’s escape from her mobster boyfriend, and find love amid a scheme to relieve the mafia of $2million.
Thursday – Exhibition Opening: Caroline Gorick: After Hours 6pm @ The Bridewell Studios & Gallery, Liverpool – FREE
At the intersection of abstraction and figuration, artist Caroline Gorick (above) presents new paintings inspired, she says, by “subjects found in my camera roll.” Part of the Independents Biennial, the exhibition – with themes including fear, memory, and fragility – runs until 18 June.
Friday – Semay Wu & Branton/Kelly 7.30pm @ Metal Liverpool, Edge Hill Station – £7/£5
An evening of atmospheric, innovative composition awaits at Edge Hill train station-based Metal Liverpool this Friday. With electroacoustic composer, improviser and cellist Semay Wu joined by experimentalist duo Nick Branton (reeds) and David Kelly (drums), expect the unexpected.
Friday the 13th 8pm @ FACT Liverpool – £9.35
An absolute no-brainer of programming, check in with Jason et al at Crystal Lake for a stone-cold genre classic, this Friday the 13th…
Saturday – The Lord of the Rings Trilogy: Extended Editions 11am @ FACT Liverpool – £25.85
With a combined running time of 727 minutes, this special screening of Peter Jackson’s TLotR trilogy (the extended versions, no less) practically approaches a durational art happening in its scope. Marking the 20th anniversary of The Return of the King, make a day of it with Mr. Frodo, Gandalf and pals.
From the Archive: Nik Glover takes an in-depth look at on-screen fantasy
Liverpool Biennial Guided Tour – FREE
Don’t know where to start with this year’s Biennial? Each week, guided tours will take place from 2pm. Check the Biennial website for details.
Sunday – The Night of the Hunter 4.30pm @ FACT Liverpool – £9.84
Writing about the film in 2014, George Jepson called Charles Laughton’s 1955 film The Night of the Hunter (starring Robert Mitchum as so-called preacher Harry Powell) “a twisted amalgam of Southern Gothic, a terrifying fairy-tale and vaudevillian slapstick comedy.” Adapted from a 1953 novel of the same name, it follows Mitchum’s psychopathically cruel ex-convict weedling his way into the unfortunate lives of a former cellmate’s family, in the name of hidden loot.
Further reading: Adam Scovell on The Night of the Hunter
Orchestra Baobab 7.30pm @ Liverpool Philharmonic Hall – £31/£26
I had one of those sit up and take notice of what’s on the radio moments recently, when Cerys Matthews played Senegalese dance troupe, Orchestra Baobab, on her 6music show (the song that grabbed my attention was Ray M’bele). Formed in the 1970s, they’re currently touring their winning blend of Afro-Cuban, pop and Griot (a West African oral tradition of music and storytelling) in venues across Europe. This Liverpool date is programmed in partnership with festival supremos, Africa Oyé.
Mike Pinnington
Images/media, from top: The Night of the Hunter still; Independents Biennial, The Old Fire Station; Ben Vince, Don’t Give Your Life; Cast, 2025, by Caroline Gorick: Friday the 13th trailer; Orchestra Baobab poster, Toucan Tango
