Culture Diary w/c 16-06-2025
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 continues 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 days/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 days/times.
Tuesday – Stitching Time: The beginning of the work 2pm @ Tate Liverpool + RIBA North – FREE
Programmed as RIBA’s response to Liverpool Biennial 2025 theme, BEDROCK, Where the Work Begins provides the departure point for thinking around the connections between art and architecture, by tracing the evolution of the artist’s studio. There, you will find archival photography of studios ranging from the likes of modernists Gluck, and Vanessa Bell, to contemporary artist, Antony Gormley (above). With the exhibition as setting and inspiration, Stitching Time: The beginning of the work, proposes the space as communal studio for sewing, creativity and chat.
The Handmaiden 7.40pm (and 4.40pm, Wednesday) @ FACT Liverpool – £9.35
Adapted from Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith, The Handmaiden is set in a 1930s Korea still under Japanese colonial rule. In the simplest terms, it charts a conman’s plot to defraud an heiress. But there is very little that is simple about this psychological, erotically charged thriller. Full of duplicity and heavy with intrigue, it is a delicious watch and, for many, the high water mark so far for its director, Park Chan-wook.
Further Reading: Park Chan-Wook – Six of the Best
Wednesday – Last Chance to See: Caroline Gorick: After Hours 6pm @ The Bridewell Studios & Gallery, Liverpool – FREE
At the intersection of abstraction and figuration, artist Caroline Gorick is inspired, she says, by “subjects found in my camera roll.” Part of the Independents Biennial, the exhibition – with themes including fear, memory, and fragility – is open 12-5pm Monday to Wednesday.
Thursday – Liverpool Biennial 2025: Drop-in Weekly Tea and Talk Tours 2pm 20 Jordan Street – FREE
This does what it says on the tin tour offers a way to ease yourself in to the Biennial if all those sites, artists and the theme itself prove a bit overwhelming – it can be a lot to take in. If our experience of this edition’s Biennial volunteers is anything to go by, you’ll be in safe, informative, hands.
Friday – Michael Robert Murphy 7.30pm @ Future Yard, Birkenhead – £11.20
Michael Robert Murphy (ex Wicked Whispers) celebrates the launch of new record, Chaos Magick. Self-described as “A Scouse lo-fi autobiographical psychedelic odyssey,” tonight’s performance features an array of local talent, including Edgar Jones, Mark Rice (The Heavy North), Matthew Gray and Gary Moonbirds, as well as a guest performance from By The Sea’s Liam Power.
Saturday – Exhibition Openings @ The Atkinson, Southport – FREE
A trio of new shows grace Southport’s Atkinson this weekend. The Magic of Middle-earth, brings together all manner of creative responses to Tolkien’s opus, including memorabilia, paintings, sculptures, and Lego. Chila Kumari Singh Burman’s I Love You Southport finds the Sefton-born artist showcasing new works; and the gallery’s collection marks its 150th anniversary with a new display bringing together works from the 17th century to the present day. Something for everyone.
From the Archive: Chila Kumari Singh Burman: Merseyside Burman Empire
Exhibition Opening: Carreg Ateb: Vision or Dream? @ Mostyn Gallery, Llandudno – FREE
This major new exhibition, commissioned by The National Gallery, takes as its inspiration the hiding of works of art for safekeeping during the Second World War in a disused Snowdonia slate mine. Featuring works and co-curated by Turner Prize-winning artist, Jeremy Deller, Carreg Ateb: Vision or Dream? also includes new commissions by early career Welsh artists, Esyllt Angharad Lewis, Gweni Llwyd, Lewis Prosser, Llyr Evans and Sadia Pineda Hameed. Led by Welsh language theatre company, Frân Wen, this weekend’s opening events include a procession through the streets of Llandudno.
An Inquest Concerning Teeth: Sound and Cockles with Sara Wolff 1pm @ Waterloo Sunset Café, Liverpool – FREE
Composer, songwriter and sound artist, Sara Wolff leads this workshop-cum-coastal walk along Crosby Beach. With a focus on attentive listening, note-taking and sketching, this Independents Biennial bit of programming sounds like just the trick to blow away the cobwebs.
Sunday – Wings of Desire 1.30pm @ FACT Liverpool – £9.35
A pair of angels – Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander) – invisibly observe, comfort and surreptitiously suggest the presence of something ‘more’ to us, Earth’s mere mortals, in Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire. The 1987 film, an almost instant classic, gives us cause to appreciate lives lived – the big, medium and small serendipities, miracles and unknowns that inject colour, making them what they are. It was, unwisely, remade a little over a decade later (starring Nic Cage and Meg Ryan). Take this opportunity to see the original as intended, on the big screen.
Mike Pinnington
Images/media, from top: Carreg Ateb: Vision or Dream?; Antony Gormley’s workshop and studio, Camberwell, London © RIBA Collections. Martin Charles 1989; Handmaiden still; Michael Robert Murphy; © Chila Kumari Singh Burman; Wings of Desire trailer
