Culture Diary w/c 21-07-2025
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; 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, expect degree show first-timers to the likes of Rebecca Chesney, Johnny Vegas, and Brigitte Jurack.
Tuesday – Directing Difference: RAWD Double Bill – £6
For more than a decade, RAWD (Random Acts of Wildness Disability) have supported, foregrounded and championed access to creativity for those with disabilities. This double-header of films from first-time directors, Sam Hooper and Alana Wadkin, marks their launch as a registered charity, and coincides with Disability Pride Month.
The Red Shoes 7.30pm @ FACT Liverpool – £9.35
Filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger produced an astonishing body of work, including three of my all time favourites – A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947) and 1948′s The Red Shoes. A tale of love, jealousy, obsession, and more besides, the duo’s tribute to the world of dance – and reflection on ambition – capped an incredible three years for their partnership.
Wednesday – Barry Lyndon 7pm @ FACT Liverpool – £9.35
“The extent to which Stanley Kubrick cared about producing quality films is made manifest in every frame of Barry Lyndon.” So said Rodney Hill in his essay on the film for Taschen’s excellent The Stanley Kubrick Archives. Something of an outlier in Kubrick’s oeuvre, Barry Lyndon (based on an 1844 novel by William Makepeace Thackeray and back in cinemas to mark its 50th anniversary) follows the rise and fall of farm boy and ne’er do well, Redmond Barry, via duels, the Seven Years’ War and espionage.
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.
Exhibition Opening: Broken Grey Wires: Who Wants Flowers When They are Dead? 6pm @ Williamson Art Gallery and Museum – FREE
One of the true universals of life is the inevitability of death – yours, mine, and everyone we will ever know. And, yet, almost as universal is the difficulty with which we find thinking and talking about the subject. As with so much else, it is left to art to help make sense of it. This new group exhibition is such an attempt. Exploring grief, loss, identity and community, Who Wants Flowers When They are Dead brings together works by more than a dozen artists to ‘offer a space to reflect, connect, and begin processing experiences of loss’. Includes work by Candy Chang (above), Ana Mendieta, Lizz Brady and more.
Friday – Aroma Cantonese Opera Troupe: Participatory Performance 1pm @ Pine Court, Liverpool – FREE
Part of Liverpool Biennial, artist and curator Karen Tam’s China Town-set Scent of Thunderbolts (2024), takes inspiration from Cantonese opera to provide the space for a community’s sonic memory. Manchester-based collective, Aroma Cantonese Opera Troupe, respond to Tam’s installation with this participatory performance highlighting and celebrating cultural heritage.
Saturday – Dear Othermother: Letter Writing Workshops with Amber Akaunu and Azena Baxter 1pm @ the Bluecoat, Liverpool – FREE
One of the most affecting works of Liverpool Biennial is Amber Akaunu’s touching and profound Dear Othermother, a film acknowledging and dedicated to deep bonds made beyond the family unit. This letter writing workshop inspired by the film and its themes opens a space for reflection around ‘othermothers’ in our lives.
Sunday – Walking Tour with Amayna Caceres and Andrea Ku 11am @ 20 Jordan Street, Liverpool – FREE
Join Liverpool Biennial 2025 artist Amayna Caceres and socially engaged ‘artist in disguise as a beekeeper, gardener and teacher,’ Andrea Ku, for this walk taking in Caceres’s 20 Jordan Street work, as well as green spaces nearby.
Do the Right Thing 1.15pm @ FACT Liverpool – £9.35
Did Mookie Do the Right Thing? I first saw Spike Lee’s 1989 film at uni. It was pretty formative. As well as the movie itself, I’ve never forgotten that our lecturer remarked that it was only ever white audience members who questioned the “right thing” of the title in a film that vividly explores rising racial tensions against the backdrop of a sweltering Brooklyn neighbourhood. Lee finally won his first Oscar (Best Adapted Screenplay, BlacKkKlansman) thirty years after the movie that he’s arguably best known for; many, myself included, would question its coming so late.
Chloe Foy 7.30pm @ Future Yard, Birkenhead – £12.50
Headlined by Chloe Foy (whose 2021 debut, Where Shall We Begin, garnered a slew of glowing reviews), this folk-filled line-up in Future Yard’s Garden screams hazy, halcyon summer evenings. Foy is joined on the night by Rachael Jean Harris, Grace Elizabeth Harvey, Maddie Lara & Catherine Bullock.
Mike Pinnington
Images/media, from top: The Red Shoes film still; Independents Biennial, The Old Fire Station; Barry Lyndon trailer; © Candy Chang, photo by Ahmed Alameri; Karen Tam 譚嘉文, ‘Scent of Thunderbolts 雷霆之息’, 2024. Liverpool Biennial 2025 at Pine Court. Photography by Stuart Whipps; Do The Right Thing trailer
