Culture Diary w/c 30-06-2025
Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…
Monday – Exhibitions Continue: @ The Atkinson, Southport – FREE
A trio of shows currently grace Southport’s Atkinson. 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
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; Liverpool Biennial: BEDROCK Review
Continuing: Independents Biennial 2025 – FREE
Running in parallel to BEDROCK is the well-established Independents Biennial which, this year, feels as ambitious as ever. 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 – Exhibition Continues: Carreg Ateb: Vision or Dream? @ Mostyn Gallery, Llandudno – FREE
This major 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.
News From Home 5.50pm @ FACT Liverpool – £9.35
When Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles was voted Sight & Sound magazine’s greatest film in its 2022 poll, it marked a major shake-up for not just the poll, but also those names synonymous with the award. A welcome turn of events, it opens the door to programming that brings audiences into contact with a, perhaps, less familiar name. Such is the case with this week’s screening of News From Home, Akerman’s avant-garde documentary, which finds the director ‘exiled’ in New York, reading letters sent to her from her mum back in Europe.
Wednesday – Shallow Grave 8pm (and 5.45pm Thursday) @ FACT Liverpool – £9.35
A trio of flatmates (baby Ewan McGregor, Kerry Fox and Christopher Eccleston) come into an unexpected windfall in director Danny Boyle’s 1994 debut Shallow Grave – and come face to face with the consequences of greed and betrayal.
Thursday – Opening: Manchester International Festival 2025: Dream Differently @ Aviva Studios/Venues across the city – £Various
Framed this year as a ‘leap into the unknown’, 2025′s MIF is, nevertheless, the usual reliable mix of family friendly and aficionado-centred visual art, performance, spectacle, music and more. Everyone will be talking about Eric Cantona, whose artistic collaboration with Ryan Gander features in the huge group exhibition, Football City, Art United. Our highlights include contemporary ballet reimagining Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man (starring John Grant and Ed Watson); and the first international solo exhibition of indigenous northern Peruvian artist and activist, Santiago Yahuarcani, whose narrative paintings are “rooted in the legacy of my ancestors, those who saw the universe not as something to conquer, but to revere.”
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.
Moolakii Club: Silent Film Soundtracks 7pm @ Future Yard, Birkenhead – £7
Obscure, avant-garde early silent and experimental film set to contemporary electronica. A compelling proposition.
Friday – Exhibition Opening: Hollywood, New York, Colwyn Bay @ Oriel Colwyn, Colwyn Bay – FREE
Championing photography in Wales since 2012, Oriel Colwyn’s latest opening, from sometime Tatler photographer Dafydd Jones, coincides with American Independence Day. Working in the US with the likes of Vanity Fair, Jones captured the best – and worst – of US society, from Hollywood to Wall Street and beyond. Catch Jones in conversation at the gallery on Saturday @ 1pm.
More photography from the Big Apple
Saturday – Apocalypse Now: Final Cut 12.30pm @ FACT Liverpool – £9.35
Francis Ford Coppola’s reimagining of Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness, now has a Final Cut – restored from the original negative by the man himself. Coppola’s preferred version of his Vietnam War epic, this edit pushes its run-time over the three-hour mark and can be considered definitive. Want to make a day of it? Documentary Hearts of Darkness, chronicling Coppola’s on-set travails, follows at 4.30pm.
Sunday – The Piano Teacher 4.15pm @ FACT Liverpool – £9.35
Even if you’re somewhat familiar with the challenging, mercurial oeuvre of Austrian director, Michael Haneke, his 2001 film, The Piano Teacher, could well catch you unawares. Adapted from Elfriede Jelinek’s 1983 psychosexual novel of the same name, it stars Isabelle Huppert as the repressed, hemmed in music professor of the title. A brutal, fascinating, and ultimately destructive character study of a woman pushing for sexual agency.
Mike Pinnington/Laura Robertson
Images from top: Football City, Art United. MIF25. Matt Fox, The Magic Of Middle-earth 2025, The Atkinson, photo by Dave Jones. Carreg Ateb: Vision or Dream? at Mostyn Gallery. Ewan McGregor, in director Danny Boyle’s 1994 debut Shallow Grave (still). Dachshunds fighting over doggy canapés. Iris Love (holding Just Desserts) and Brooke Astor (holding Dolly Astor) at a dachshund party, Barbetta restaurant. Manhattan, 12 February 1990: Dafydd Jones, Hollywood, New York, Colwyn Bay exhibition, Oriel Colwyn 2025
