The Double Negative

The Big Interview: Kristján Maack’s Glacier Portraits, and a Disappearing World

thedoublenegative — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 11:31:20 +0000

We know that they are melting, never to return. We know that they are so intrinsic to Icelandic culture that there is grief around their loss; a funeral was held for Okjokull, Iceland’s first glacier to disappear, and which once covered six square miles of deep ice.

Kristján Maack is one of those grieving for these centuries-old bodies of ice. A commercial and landscape photographer, born in the capital city of Reykjavík in 1967, Maack has been documenting Iceland’s epic glaciers for over 40 years, exploring them as an adventurous teenager as soon as he learned to climb.

Maack is currently exhibiting a series of epic glacier ‘portraits’ at Reykjavík Museum of Photography. Entitled Sleeping Giants, the project has taken six years to complete, working around dangerous conditions and seasonal melts. The resulting exhibition is a stimulating, emotional showcase of these landmarks as alive and shapeshifting – ultimately, towards a man-made demise.

Having visited the show, I was left with an overwhelming sense of the once steadfast turned fragile. The timeline is shocking – it has taken just a few decades to destroy what takes hundreds, even thousands of years to create. The Sleeping Giants are now waking, as Maack says. I had imagined melting as a quiet act, not the cracking, noisy and treacherous metamorphoses shown here.

“I couldn’t be without Icelandic nature”

Maack’s evident love for the land comes across in sharp detail; ancient sediments carving black tiger stripes in ice cliffs; volcanic rock in a spectrum of pinks, purples and greens; sunlight illuminating the thin walls of ice caves; boulders slick with melted water and ready to crush anyone nearby. Field recordings play creaks and snaps of breaking ice floors.

A climber and skiing enthusiast, as well as volunteer mountain rescuer, Maack’s work reflects a deep respect for nature, and encourages others to see and reflect on the changes that are taking place in our time. Sleeping Giants displays glaciers and the connected landscape as undergoing radical transformations, in the here and now. “Something”, he comments, “our generation is only now beginning to fully realize.” He predicts that the glaciers will last no longer than two more generations; that his grandchildren will be among the last people to see them in person.

For UN World Day for Glaciers on 21 March 2026, Maack will host a symposium at the exhibition in collaboration with the Icelandic Glaciological Society, The University of Iceland and the Icelandic Meteorological Office. In its Northern location, crossing over into the Arctic Circle, Iceland is seeing alarming signs of rising temperatures (mosquitos have been recorded for the first time in its history). What – given the county’s popularity as a holiday destination – can be done to halt the melt? What can be done to counter, or wake up, audiences from a hopelessness, even apathy, regarding the relentless march of climate change?

Laura Robertson: As you recognize in your current exhibition, Sleeping Giants, people feel… Helpless towards climate change. They don’t even really know where to start.

Kristján Maack: Exactly, it’s a big task. But you can start with thinking about it, and you can start to educate your children, or the next generation in schools, and just slowly.

You’ve spent your life on the glaciers.

Part of my hobby and my other life, yes.

What it’s been like, from childhood, having a relationship with this special landscape?

It’s been a beautiful thing. My first plan was to live abroad when I studied photography 40 years ago in the US, and I was thinking, I need to be in a bigger market. But after five years in California, I couldn’t be without Icelandic nature. I had to come back.

Of course, there’s a beautiful nature everywhere, but it didn’t talk to me the same way. So, I moved back in 1994, I’ve been here ever since, and using the nature and the mountains and the backcountry to reenergize from my daily work, which is a commercial type of photography. In the later stages of my career, I decided, no, I want to focus on this, to use my experience and talent, you know, to speak to people above this place, and try to help it to survive.

We don’t know how it’s going to be in the future. But the graph is always showing, you know, it’s getting warmer. I didn’t see myself as an activist. Never. It wasn’t until I sat down and, focused. So, maybe that’s what people have to do. Sit down and focus. How do you respect the nature? Do you want to use it? What can you do?

“I believe that other mediums, like art, like physics, can persuade politics, and the general public, towards the right thing to do”

What are your views on the current dialogue on climate change?

Climate conferences, international conferences, COP… we have those here in Iceland, there’s Arctic Circle. It costs so much money to take part, and there’s a lot of politics, and I don’t know, it’s not about the nature, it’s about something else.

I don’t think that as a nation, or our policy, or politics, they cannot make changes towards or regarding those big companies. I don’t think that’s going to happen, because it’s all about money and business, and they find a way around whatever they need to do.

But things are changing regarding energy. Renewable energy sources are more common than they used to be, which I think is good, and I see that all around us here in the northern hemisphere, in Norway and Iceland, of course, and most of the Nordic countries are using more electricity that they produce in a kinder way than the fossil fuel. We can do that, because the technology allows it, and it’s good business, also.

I was recently reading about Uruguay. They hired a physics professor as Energy Secretary, five years ago, and now the country is operating on 99% renewable energy. So, it is possible for society to make huge change.

Correct, yeah, that’s what it takes, and that’s the reason I believe that other mediums, like art, like physics, can persuade politics, and the general public, towards the right thing to do. We have to use other mediums than just lectures, reports, news, and hard facts. They are not only tools in getting the message out.

I’m trying to open this window with photography, and have people, just normal people, talk about those things.

UN World Day for Glaciers on the 21st March – what a perfect moment to have an in-depth discussion about glaciers.

We’re opening up the Reykjavík Museum of Photography, and we’re planning a panel from the scientific community, people from the university, the weather office of Iceland, and The Iceland Glaciological Society, which is a union of volunteers that are interested in the health of the glaciers, since 1950. Every year they measure the glaciers. I’ve got people from the tourist industry also to participate, who are becoming the biggest users. Like, every day there are a thousand tourists on the glaciers.

“Who are the users today? They’re not farmers, not locals, they’re tourists”

Fumes from transport. Leaving rubbish behind.

And, so we need to take that in concern. Who are the users today? They’re not farmers, not locals, they’re tourists, who go there frequently, and we have to observe what their needs are, and make sure they’re safe. And make sure they’re not changing the way of the nature, which they are doing right now, because those smaller companies that take tourists there every day, have crews of workers with shovels and ice axes to chip out bigger doors to the ice caves. It’s going to melt anyway, you can think of that, but still, it’s…

Probably not helping.

No, it’s not helping, and it’s not… shouldn’t be like that. If we’re showing the nature, show the nature as it is.

Exactly. And, you know, tourism is a contentious point, isn’t it? Because some areas of natural preservation across thew world have fallow years when nobody’s allowed access.

Yes.

So, it has time to recover. I noticed on my recent trip, most visitors are being respectful, but some tourists are ignoring warning signs, jumping over barriers. My Instagram is full of video footage of tourists trampling all over delicate locations, ancient moss that will take a hundred years to grow back. One hundred years!

Yeah. The geothermal areas which have clay-like surfaces, and the clay is damp, and they just walk right across it and leave footmarks everywhere. So, the next person that comes there and wants to photograph it, like myself, it’s all footmarks you can see. We don’t have the infrastructure to market, to put more signs. We’re just struggling to get the toilets out to remote locations, you know?

The tourism is so enormous in Iceland and growing. I hear that the ratio of tourists to residents is really stark.

Like, one resident to 5 tourists.

What will be the long-term impact of this intense tourism? How will Iceland proceed in the next 5 to 10 years with managing this?

It’s hard because we need time and, of course, money to build up the infrastructure and have people at those remote places to advise visitors how to behave. We simply don’t have enough people to work in the hospitality and leisure industry.

When you actually get out there, with all your kit, what is it like to be on the glaciers at night? Because it sounds dangerous.

It is scary, because the night brings in another element than the daylight. They break and they move. And, so if you come there a week later, it’s a totally different scene. Especially the noises.

“The glaciers are hostile, of course, because it’s dangerous to be very close when they fall and break”

The sound in your exhibition is astonishing. Sitting in the listening room, hearing the filed recordings of glaciers move… It sounds like the floor beneath you is about to split and break.

You cannot pinpoint the direction of the sound, even when you lose your eyesight because of the darkness. Your ears and your other senses start to work harder, to figure out what’s going on, placing those sounds, and you’ll start to look around. With your flashlight on your helmet or on your hand, and you start to figure out where’s the sound coming from. [In making this series of images for Sleeping Giants] I looked to the right, and I saw a figure looking at me, you know, ice structure to the right, and ice structure to the left, and that’s how the glacier was speaking to me.

And, so the sound is really important, and that was the only thing I was afraid of. I was not afraid of walking, because I feel comfortable. I’ve been teaching ice climbing and ice walking with equipment for many years, and doing a lot of traveling all over the world. But the noise, you never get used to that.

Nature’s warning? You can imagine how this was interpreted centuries ago. I went to see an exhibition of folklore at Reykjavík’s House of Collections, and one of the prints there depicted the story of a human accidently running into a troll – and if a troll says something to you, you must answer immediately or die! Like the glaciers, perhaps?

Yeah, that’s nice [laughs]. But, usually those stories, folk stories, they’re mostly about nice trolls, nice elves… so I consider those my friends [laughs]. The glaciers are hostile, of course, because it’s dangerous to be very close when they fall and break, but in a certain time of year, it is safer to approach them. Summer is the most dangerous season, especially if the weather is, like, very rainy and wet and not as cold.

So, I tried to go out on a mission, to photograph, when the weather was extremely cold, the wind was low, and that narrowed it down to maybe three weeks a year. That’s why it took six years to make Sleeping Giants, until I felt good about this project.

Can you tell me about the locations you shot Sleeping Giants in?

All of them are on the South Coast of Iceland. More prone to weather changes, because all the warmer climates come from the South to this island, so they are very fragile, and they change frequently. They’re very accessible from the roads, from the mountain to the shoreline. They are all part of volcanic systems: there are volcanoes underneath those glaciers.

It’s so complex, isn’t it? You would never think, from just looking at the extreme heat and cold, that these systems were connected underneath.

Exactly. And it’s quite a spectacle. It’s very beautiful to see when an eruption starts from underneath a glacier. I remember Grímsvötn Vantnajökull; it was a big eruption on the middle of a glacier. I went flying on a small airplane with my brother, photographing. And then, a few days later, we decided to drive on a big truck to top of the glacier towards the eruption. It was like a flat snow field towards it for many, many kilometres. We drove there for maybe, I don’t know, 12 hours.

And then we came to a scientific research hut, like a small cabin on top of the glacier. We stayed there overnight, but what happened during the night was the ash from the volcano, had spread all over the white snow fields. Everything was black, and all the tire tracks on the snow were white. Like a Double Negative.

“The colours in the volcanic stone come from minerals, iron ore, silica, and the whole spectrum of colour quality. It’s very unexpected”

Indeed [laughs]… Iceland is one of the countries where you can see these extremes of landscape, and geological violence, spectacle.

Another project I told you about a little bit in my lecture when you visited me at the Museum, is an old volcano that you can go into, Þríhnúkagigur. I photographed the whole interior of it. It’s quite colourful. It is, for me, pretty much the same as the glaciers, it’s just, different material. It behaves the same, a molten lava that solidifies and gets a certain texture, and all the minerals create the colours.

In the exhibition, I was struck by your many photographs of ice caves. I remember asking you, is that the actual colour? Because it showed an incredible range from white, to blue, to purple, to black.

Very surprising, and that you could see the sunlight through them as well. The light penetrates through many, many feet of ice.

Well, I thought it was artificial light that you’d brought to these night shoots, but of course it was the sun, shining through the walls, which is incredible.

Yeah, and it has to do with the photography technique, long exposure. It’s sometimes it’s not noticeable to the human eye. The colours in the volcanic stone come from minerals, iron ore, silica, and the whole spectrum of colour quality. It’s very unexpected.

It’s good to play with colour and provide a bit of dramatic tension in the shots, because it’s another tool to get people to think about what it is they’re really looking at.

I think, art or photography, are the perfect ways of communicating. Because it allows you to express so many things.

Laura Robertson

All images courtesy Kristján Maack

See Sleeping Giants the exhibition at Reykjavík Museum of Photography until 5 April 2026

The Symposium: UN World Day for Glaciers will take place from 2pm on 21 March in collaboration with the Icelandic Glaciological Society, The University of Iceland and the Icelandic Meteorological Office

Read more about the international UN World Day for Glaciers, which launches the new Decade of Action for Cryospheric Sciences with dedicated sessions and side events highlighting the vital links between cryosphere, water and gender equality

Setting Forth on a Voyage of Discovery with ChihChung Chang 張致中

thedoublenegative — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 11:17:47 +0000

“Exploring the work of ChihChung Chang is to better understand the slippage between stories we think we know and those as experienced by living, breathing places – and the communities calling them home.” Mike Pinnington digs into the artist and cultural researcher’s multi-site contribution to Liverpool Biennial 2025…

On the site of a former Chinese boarding house in Liverpool’s Great George Square there is a blue plaque commemorating the contribution to the city’s history by Chinese seafarers forcibly deported from the city in 1946. A shameful, underexposed chapter in the UK’s post-Second World War history, the policy separated thousands of seafarers from their families. That its unveiling, coming in July 2024, is so recent speaks to the complex, disproportionate relationship between Britain, this city, and the oldest Chinese community in Europe.

As if to reflect this complexity, there are many strands to Taiwanese artist and cultural researcher ChihChung Chang’s multi-site Liverpool Biennial contribution. To engage with the fruits of Chang’s research is not unlike prying off the thin though stubborn façade of place to get to the real, human stories beneath; at other times, it is more akin to setting forth on a voyage of discovery. Exploring the work of this cultural cartographer is to better understand the slippage between stories we think we know and those as experienced by living, breathing places – and the communities calling them home.

“The works speak to interwoven threads, allusions and tensions to unpick”

Across a satisfying multi-disciplinary installation at city centre venue, Bluecoat, an outside companion piece situated in Liverpool’s China Town, and a film in the nearby Pine Court Housing Association, the works speak to interwoven threads, allusions and tensions to unpick, consider and address. They each tell a part of the story in and of themselves, but – as with much of this Biennial – it is best to think of them as constituent parts. To experience each complementary aspect as parts of a whole is to see Chang’s research coalesce into a bigger picture.

At Bluecoat, you’ll find narratives of social history that reference family, community, biography, industrial decline, and cultural regeneration via post-modernity. In a Taiwan-set film of cultural histories told in three chapters, various objects relating to shipping (with a model vessel playing the role of anchor work) and a Chinese Arch come together to form Port of Fata Morgana. It situates art as both tribute – to home and family – and a self-portrait of sorts. This is the stuff of the artist’s life – the place, upbringing and people that have influenced him, one way or another, and inspired the research that lead him here.

“Port of Fata Morgana bridges historical, cultural and geographic gaps”

Pushing beyond those initial, substantial layers, Port of Fata Morgana (named for the mutable, inconsistent nature of once bustling port cities) instigates a process of identifying and interrogating the commonalities and differences shared by communities separated by language, history and thousands of miles (6,199 if we’re counting). Here, Chang bridges historical, cultural and geographic gaps, by putting his home of Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan in conversation with Liverpool, his artworks’ temporary home.

A multitude of resonances have surfaced in the process. Both Kaohsiung and Liverpool are declining port cities, whose busiest, most profitable shipping days are behind them; they have each been rejuvenated of late, through necessity, by a belief in and commitment to culture as a driving force. These resonances initiate a departure point from which we can dig deeper, and consider the impact on people and places when surroundings and their meaning shifts – planned or otherwise – and vice versa. What does it mean for a place to become a microcosm for a changing world?

“Keystone speaks to the strength and diversity within the community it reflects, and the components that make powerful meaning within it”

A work which gets to the heart of how the warp and weft of place and communities – especially ports – might be felt, is Keystone (2025), a collaboratively made paper mural found in Liverpool’s China Town (on Grenville Street South). Depicting a Chinese Arch, its title responds directly to the BEDROCK theme of Liverpool Biennial; an architectural keystone is structurally crucial. But it might also speak to and acknowledge the strength and diversity within the community it reflects, and the components that make powerful meaning within it.

With facilitation from Liverpool’s Pagoda Arts, whose mission it is ‘to introduce Chinese Culture to a wide and diverse community’, Keystone – artwork as connective tissue – is the manifestation of workshops in which residents were invited to share their stories of and relationships to Liverpool. Sparking these stories, participants were asked to bring along a meaningful object that they felt was important to them and their place in the city, from which they made rubbings in charcoal.

“This isn’t a picture or representation of any one unified story”

In an accompanying film of these workshops showing at Pine Court, it is clear that its contributors represent a spectrum of ages and backgrounds. Keystone, then, is both representation and in recognition of different generations of people who have helped develop this particular ongoing volume of the story of a city. In it, you can see images of items, text and people’s signatures, along with the artist’s own rubbings. You can pick out Mersey Docks signage; a plaque commemorating David Lewis, department store founder; and Liver Birds standing in for the traditional Chinese dragon – a creature representing power, prosperity and good luck. Taken from across the city, these rubbings link China Town’s communities and heritage to Liverpool at large, as opposed to the limitations of a specific setting.

A cross-section of the culture and society of which they are all part, this isn’t a picture or representation of any one unified story. Nor, I don’t think, is it meant to be. Instead it establishes a place for the many interweaving lives and narratives from the diaspora to be told. Memories, emotions, dreams of the city – these are literal imprints of the community embedded in Liverpool’s urban and psychological landscape.

Rendered in simple monochrome it may be, but Keystone is nothing less than a visualisation of the belonging and adding to that takes place therein, one layer of sediment atop another. It is a living rather than fixed monument, in a way that even the grandeur of the 44ft Imperial Arch that marks the gateway to China Town – a gift from Shanghai to celebrate the twinning of the cities 25 years ago – can’t be.

Mike Pinnington

Liverpool Biennial 2025: BEDROCK continues until 14 September at various venues across the city

Images, from top: ChihChung Chang, ‘Keystone’, 2025. Liverpool Biennial 2025. Photography by Rob Battersby; ChihChung Chang 張致中, ‘Port of Fata Morgana’, 2024. Liverpool Biennial 2025 at Bluecoat. Photography by Mark McNulty; ChihChung Chang, ‘Keystone’, 2025. Liverpool Biennial 2025. Photography by Rob Battersby

Culture Diary w/c 11-08-2025

thedoublenegative — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 10:37:10 +0000

Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…

Monday – Exhibition Continues: Haunted Paper @ Dorothy, Baltic Triangle, Liverpool – FREE

Hot on the heels of author Jeff Young’s winning of the TLS Ackerley Prize for memoir, Wild Twin, comes this exhibition of collage and notebooks made during and to inspire its writing. Very much artworks in their own right, Young sees them as: “An archive of fleeting moments captured before they fade away.” They’re every bit as poetic and evocative as that sounds.

Further Reading: Sacred & Profane: Jeff Young’s Haunted Paper

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.

Further Reading: Another Dimension – On Contemporary Drawing; Caroline Gorick: After Hours – Reviewed

Tuesday – Brigitte Jurack: Rising Darkness, Floor Mosaic Workshops 1pm @ the Victoria Gallery & Museum – FREE

During Rising Darkness, an exhibition exploring current affairs, literature, landscape and history, artist Brigitte Jurack has been leading workshops in making a co-created mosaic. Inspired by a floor found in a Roman villa, and updated to address some of the exhibition’s themes, this is the second-to-last opportunity to have a hand in the new work.

Wednesday – Exhibition Opening: The CASS Artists in Residence & Exhibition – FREE

Accessible on foot from West Kirby, Hilbre Island has something of the magical, even folkloric, about it. As such, it is a seductive setting for art, artists and the wider public. This new group exhibition (which runs until Sunday) highlights the work of the CASS Centre for Art, Science, Sustainability, which foregrounds collaboration and exploration around the locale.

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 – The French Connection 8.30pm @ FACT, Liverpool — £9.35

William Friedkin’s classic, a winner of five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor, sees Gene Hackman as NY detective Jimmy ‘Popeye’ Doyle steal the show. He and his partner, Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider), are on narcotics detail, tailing heroin smugglers Sal Boca (Tony Lo Bianco) and his wife, Angie (Arlene Faber). Grimy realism, superb acting and a knock-out, high speed car chase combine to keep this in some ways of its time thriller feeling fresh.

Saturday – Bidston Observatory Open Days 1/2/3pm @ Bidston Observatory, Birkenhead – £5/£2

Built in 1866, in-part, to establish the ‘exact time,’ today the wonderful Bidston Observatory Artistic Research Centre operates as a ‘self-organising study site for research, communality and experimentation’. Whether interested in its history, as an affordable place to contemplate and conduct your own research, or both, take a look around this weekend for free.

Further Reading: Field Trip: Bidston Observatory Artistic Research Centre – Bringing Forth Other Worlds

Last Chance to See: REITERATIONS: The Royal Standard Studio Members Exhibition / The Royal Standard Studio Open Day – FREE

Your last chance to see this group exhibition considering 19 years of The Royal Standard, reflecting on the practice, process – and sustainability – of such spaces. While you’re there, you can check out more of what’s going on at the artist-led studios’ open day.

Further Reading: Back in 2016, C. James Fagan considered a decade of The Royal Standard, considering the many challenges and far-reaching achievements of the artist-led studios and gallery

Sunday – Lynchspirations: Experiment in Terror 5pm @ FACT Liverpool – £9.35

Continuing the year-long exploration and celebration of director, David Lynch (who died in January), this 1962 neo-noir directed by Blake Edwards sees Ross Martin’s sadistic crim, Garland “Red” Lynch, terrorise Lee Remick’s bank teller Kelly Sherwood. Glenn Ford’s FBI man, John “Rip” Ripley, is on the case.

Mike Pinnington

Images/media, from top: Experiment in Terror trailer; Jeff Young film still, courtesy Matt Bell; Brigitte Jurack, install photography, VGM; The French Connection trailer; Bidston Observatory, courtesy Mathilde Grandjean; Northern Lights, situated in Cains Brewery Village, Liverpool. Image courtesy Pete Carr, 2018

Sacred & Profane: Haunted Paper

thedoublenegative — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 09:37:54 +0000

On the eve of a new Liverpool exhibition, showcasing the notebooks and collages of 2025 TLS Ackerley Prize-winning author Jeff Young, Mike Pinnington considers memory, nostalgia, and the writer’s creative process…

In Yoko Ogawa’s allegorical The Memory Police, things – birds, calendars, maps – are arbitrarily ‘disappeared’ from the collective memory, fascistically stripped of meaning; in Apple TV’s Silo, objects from a ‘before time’ (including a Pez dispenser) are designated as relics, and forbidden; Georgi Gospodinov’s satire, Time Shelter, revolves around ‘clinics for the past’ as a method of treatment for those with Alzheimer’s. These prove so successful as to precipitate a ‘referendum of the past’ in which European countries opt to vote for a bygone decade they want to recreate and live in.

Truth often proves to be stranger than fiction: after Franco’s death in Spain in 1975, a Pact of Forgetting was proposed as a means of moving beyond the painful legacies of the Civil War. But memory is a powerful thing. Both sacred and profane, the past – like it or not – tears through the years and decades. Inevitably it catches up with us, and remains present. It shapes our world view, the way we think and, to some extent, act.

“Objects are the locus of remembrance”

Frequently, objects – as both Ogawa and Gospodinov demonstrate – are the locus of remembrance, voluntary or otherwise. Like the taste of a madeleine dipped in tea in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, some things (they needn’t be cakes!), are imbued with evocative, mysterious properties, and can flood us with memories and feelings long forgotten, or thought buried. They suggest, provoke, exhume and resuscitate; conjuring time, place and feelings, they are infused with a kind of magic.

The writing of author and playwright Jeff Young has been known to have much the same effect. The worlds he invokes feel so close as to brush up against us. Ghost Town – his alt. city symphony shortlisted for the 2020 Costa Biography award – builds a picture of Liverpool as “a living thing”, as he calls it, so successfully that you feel you could open the book and step onto the city’s streets, walk in his footsteps; maybe even grab a coffee with him. Certain of its passages prick your eyes and make the hairs on the back of your neck stand to attention. “I had the feeling – still have the feeling – that the city was a living novel and we were walking through its pages.”

“Memory is closely entwined with nostalgia”

His most recent act of writing time and place into fresh existence is 2024′s Wild Twin, for which Young has just been awarded the 2025 TLS Ackerley Prize for literary autobiography ‘of outstanding merit’. Here, as it inextricably must be, memory is closely entwined with nostalgia:

“I began to dream of places I had been to and could no longer go. And so I went to where I always go, into the shadowplay of memory where I might find an echo, a reflection, the wild twin that always runs on ahead over the edge, into the beyond.”

As we know, there is peril in nostalgia. It is tempting, seductive. It is a kind of warping as much as it is a yearning. What do we want? Who do we want? A younger, more vital and fearless version of ourselves? Had that person ever really existed? Are we remembering right? Sometimes, we can haunt ourselves. For Young, though, it seems nostalgia isn’t something to be wary of. This isn’t a place to wallow and hide, shutting out the world, denying the present and hope of a future like a latter day Miss Haversham, or a reclusive, gone-to-seed rock star well past their prime. It is neither a cul-de-sac, nor simple aide-memoire; it is a creative provocation.

“He excavates the stuff of life that we all must accumulate to become ourselves”

From it, Young excavates friends and lovers, old haunts, music shops, films, paperbacks, architecture, family gatherings, misadventures – the stuff of life that we all must accumulate to become ourselves – to produce something vibrant and alive in the here and now. Most obviously, this comes in the form of his lyrical, richly textured writing, which arrives with such warmth, and so fully realised, as to put us in the city, bar or living room he has reached back through time to vividly recall and present afresh.

The kindling for these works is provided in no small part by notebooks kept by Young, but also by companion collage and assemblage. Collectively, he describes these three-dimensional artefacts as ‘imagination batteries’, helping to invigorate, and provide the impetus and drive for the writing process. ”I see them as magic spells,” he has said. “An archive of fleeting moments captured before they fade away. They summon up ghosts, language, images, memories, ideas, incantations, hexes, ritual alchemy.” What he might not say, however, is that these are works of art in their own right, that beautifully complement the books they helped inspire him to write.

“These works amount to family portraits – and absences very much present”

Two such collages adorn the pages of Wild Twin, a book dedicated to his dad, Cyril, who had died in 2023. Unvarnished, Young writes on this in the book’s final chapter. He writes also about these works that amount, in some ways, to family portraits; absences very much present in the “vessels [that] would act as time machines, as portals to the past” built while his dad slept.

As rich with meaning and suggestion as his writing, these accumulations plucked from life’s flotsam and jetsam, include: “Thimbles, foreign coins, medals, brooches, holiday snaps, acorns, pebbles, seashells, door keys, lucky charms, earrings, lace handkerchiefs, spoons, poems, cigarette and tea cards, the broken heads of dolls, marbles, cufflinks, dried flowers, corks, buttons, chess pieces, teeth.”

“A place to wistfully visit on occasion, lest we get pulled down by the undertow“

Channelling, he says, Joseph Cornell’s boxes, “In tobacco tins and cigar tins I curated memories.” And, he explains: “I thought of memory as being in the present moment, rather than in the mists of whatever ‘The Past’ is. I imagined my tiny museums and tobacco tin machines were living engines of today and tomorrow as much as they were reminders of the past.”

Maybe this is the best way to think about memory – and its own wild twin, nostalgia – as much the driver of the present- and future-tense as it is a place to wistfully visit on occasion, lest we get pulled down by the undertow.

Mike Pinnington

Dorothy X Jeff Young: Haunted Paper previews 6 August, from 5pm @ Dorothy, Jamaica Street, Baltic Triangle, Liverpool

Read Ghost Town: A Liverpool Shadowplay – A Conversation with Jeff Young

Images, from top: Film still, courtesy Matt Bell; Ghost Town; Wild Twin Collage, by Jeff Young; film stills, courtesy Matt Bell

Culture Diary w/c 04-08-2025

thedoublenegative — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 12:23:56 +0000

Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…

Monday – Continuing: Liverpool Biennial 2025: BEDROCK – FREE

Further Reading: My Life in the Biennial with Ghosts; Liverpool Biennial: BEDROCK Review

Continuing: Independents Biennial 2025 – FREE

Further Reading: Another Dimension – On Contemporary Drawing; Caroline Gorick: After Hours – Reviewed

Exhibition Opening: Non-Stop Destruction 6pm @ Birch Studios, Hamilton Square, Birkenhead – FREE

Artists Ruth Dillon, Jill Eastland, Thomas Eastland, Idit Nathan & Sarah Wood come together for this group exhibition examining the continuing assault on Gaza and its people. Considering the erasure of a culture through the ‘disappearance of memories, relatives and neighbours’ – not to mention the homes which previously housed them – Non-Stop Destruction asks and responds to questions including: How can we create art in a genocide? And how can artists respond to the ongoing destruction of Palestine and the decimation of its people?’

Tuesday – Moonchild Sanelly 8pm @ District, Baltic Triangle, Liverpool – £15

She’s guested on Beyoncé and Gorillaz tracks, but the time has well and truly come for South African rapper, Moonchild Sanelly, to step out of the shadows. New album, Full Moon, released earlier this year to glowing reviews, sees her take centre-stage.

Wednesday – Exhibition Opening: Haunted Paper 5pm @ Dorothy, Baltic Triangle, Liverpool – FREE

Hot on the heels of author and all-round renaissance man, Jeff Young’s winning of the TLS Ackerley Prize for memoir, Wild Twin, comes this exhibition of his collages (pictured, top) and notebooks, which he calls ‘energy batteries’ to aid the writing process. Artworks in their own right, however, Young says: “I see them as magic spells. An archive of fleeting moments captured before they fade away. They summon up ghosts, language, images, memories, ideas, incantations, hexes, ritual alchemy.”

Thursday – Liverpool Biennial 2025: Drop-in Weekly Tea and Talk Tours 2pm @ 20 Jordan Street – FREE

Friday – Exhibition Opening: REITERATIONS: The Royal Standard Studio Members Exhibition – FREE

Group exhibition considering 19 years of the storied artist-led studio and gallery, reflecting on the practice, process – and sustainability – of such spaces.

Saturday – Exhibition Opening: INSIDE//OUT 1pm @ Bridewell Studios & Gallery – FREE

Visitors to Bridewell’s recent Drawing (Paper) Show may well have got an early preview to Gareth Kemp exhibition, INSIDE//OUT, in the form of large-scale outdoor abstract mural in the studios’ courtyard, Sculptural Forms in a Liminal Space. This afternoon sees the official unveiling, alongside an exhibition of related works by the artist.

Further Reading: Monument Exhibition Review; Light Sensitive Area Ahead – Reviewed

Dylyfu Fest: Gruff Rhys All-Dayer from 2pm @ Future Yard, Birkenhead – £25

Gruff Rhys has always been around, it seems. From the heady 90s days of his rabble-rousing band, Super Furry Animals, to last year’s latest solo effort Sadness Sets Me Free and forthcoming Welsh language LP, Dim Probs (above), Rhys has maintained an incredible standard of output – via the odd bit of genre experimentation and tweak here and there – for more than three decades. This weekend sees him headline this Anglo-Welsh all-dayer, supported by British Birds, Pys Melyn, Gintis, Georgia Ruth, Zara Smile, and Trial Tapes.

Sunday – Last Chance to See: Amartey Golding @ FACT Liverpool – FREE

Amartey Golding’s work addresses masculinity, nationhood, vulnerability and violence; themes, he has, for the last two years, explored with men at Fazakerley’s HMP Altcourse. Together, they created Silent Knight, a suit of armour that is the latest piece in the artist’s Chainmail series. Both reflection on the tools men use to navigate life and, created over hundreds of hours, time spent that can never be reclaimed, today is your last chance to experience the installation.

VH-YES! 1pm @ VideOdyssey, Toxteth, Liverpool – FREE with mailing list sign-up (Booking Essential)

Promising ‘outlandish, nostalgic film fun in your local video store’, this new, free film club – whose thing, as the winning name suggests, is a wholehearted and wholesome commitment to analogue – gets underway this Sunday. With screenings kept secret, expect the programme to contain ‘nostalgic treats, B-movies and horror gems galore’. Sounds fab! Please note: this event is ticketed: sign-up to the VH-YES! mailing list essential (no walk-ups, guys).

Mike Pinnington

Image credits from top: Collage from Wild Twin by Jeff Young, 2024. Sanelisiwe Twisha – aka Moonchild Sanelly. Courtesy the artist. Gruff Rhys’ ninth album Dim Probs (No Probs), 2025. VH-YES!: secret film club, hosted by VideOdyssey

Another Dimension – On Contemporary Drawing

thedoublenegative — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:12:57 +0000

“Drawing deserves our consideration and attention. It always did.” Mike Pinnington on the ongoing elevation of a medium…

Drawing. It’s something we all do, until we don’t. When asked, all too early, to put aside so-called childish things – fairy tales, toys, play in general – art, and often drawing specifically, goes with them. It is the sensible few that continue beyond the age such things are thought reasonable. As we get older, of course, a few realise that, in jettisoning such things, something important was lost, and so trickle back to pencil and paper for the pure enjoyment of it. Or, as we might put it today, mindfulness.

Perhaps this universality of experience – drawing as something we all share in childhood – and the idea of it as a hobby, is why it has been so long thought of as ‘less than’ painting, sculpture, and other mediums. That, and the fact it is also seen, even or especially within the art sector, as preliminary, preparatory – merely a step along the way to what might become the ‘actual’ finished artwork. Even when drawing, in one form or another, is the intended end point, it has to be given a specific collective artsy term to elevate the results; so, we call them works on paper.

“Recent years have seen drawing’s status raised”

But, recent years have seen drawing promoted, its status raised from a secondary, supporting role, to that of primary medium in and of itself. This is due, perhaps, to a number of circumstances: people picking up pencil and sketchbook (either for the first time, or first time in years) during the lockdowns; or it being a symptom of the post-internet age, a reconnection with more tactile, analogue methods – and a growing malaise, even unease with, digital platforms. As noted by Ed Krčma, “art historian Michael Newman suggests [that] the meaning of drawing’s specific qualities is conditioned by the field of other visual technologies with which it shares a space at any one time.”

For all of these reasons and less quantifiable ones, it can be said that drawing, one of the oldest forms of artistic expression, is having a prolonged moment. This has been evidenced by a marked upturn in discussion of the medium, manifested by major publications and exhibitions dedicated to its immediacy, versatility, and the sheer freedom of expression it allows. One such notable champion, called Drawing Paper, emerged in Liverpool in 2010. Created by artists Mike Carney and Jon Barraclough, it has proved a much-loved space for drawing in all its forms, and has sprouted an occasional exhibiting element, The Drawing (Paper) Show.

“An eloquent demonstration of the medium’s flexibility”

Barraclough remains involved. Joined by Colette Lilley and Sarah Jane Richards, this year has seen the Drawing Paper publish its 10th edition (alongside a parallel exhibition as part of the Independents Biennial). Selected and curated by Barraclough, Lilley, Richards, and guest Curtis Holder, its pages represent an impressively wide and sometimes surprising variety of work by more than 50 artists. It makes for an eloquent demonstration of the medium’s flexibility, and the possibility for innovation it – perhaps uniquely – offers.

From the resolutely traditional to what we might call expanded understandings of drawing – and everything in between – it provides an international insight into its state and status today. Simultaneously, it challenges the viewer to question what can be categorised as drawing.

“Reassuringly, traditional landscape and portraiture figure”

Reassuringly, traditional landscape and portraiture figure. Yuxuan Hou’s Keston Ponds (2024) richly renders the lakes of Keston Common in graphite on paper. The haunting ruin of a territory depicted in Chris Shaw Hughes’ Gaza – Welcome Home (2025), speaks for itself, and demonstrates drawing’s aptitude for widescreen, coruscating reportage. Emotionally charged portraits by Kaye Hodges (The Rejection Letter, 2025) and Cristina Celestini (Metamorphosis (dreaming after Veronese) 2025), capture their sitters so that we might assume they had been made in another era altogether (even as the mood of the latter’s subject subtly transitions in echoes across the picture plane).

If Belinda Yee’s striking Graphic Profile (fold 1, 2023), looks as though it harks back to the peak Op-Art of Bridget Riley, it is in fact a kind of portrait itself, made, says the artist, “by tracing rock faces around Sydney Harbour and using those profile lines as templates.” A meditation on deep time and the body – Yee uses her own breaths to guide her mark-making – it takes us way beyond the dimensions of the folded paper on which it is presented.

“Kelly Cumberland’s Helix Silicium v0.1 pushes drawing into kinetic sculpture territory”

Now firmly in expanded drawing territory, Kelly Cumberland takes us further still, with Helix Silicium v0.1 (2025). Made with etched silicone rubber and looking like a warped ship’s propellor, suspended from the ceiling in a gallery setting, it introduces a third dimension to proceedings, pushing drawing firmly into kinetic sculpture territory.

If such works ask whether or not we can think of them as ‘drawings’ at all, the inclusion of Caroline Gorick’s Evening Light (2024), made using oil paint, may prove a bridge too far for some. In a recent review of Gorick’s exhibition, After Hours, which featured this very work, I never once used the term drawing. Time and again, I referred to this and other works in the show as paintings. And, yet, here it is. This brilliant small-scale work – be it drawing, painting, or both(?) – adds a frisson of controversy to Drawing Paper 10. A talking point among many others.

But let us not get too hung up on such things – we’re in the realms of contemporary art after all. We’re meant to disagree occasionally. What I think we can agree on, however, as demonstrated by the artists mentioned here, and many others besides, is that drawing deserves our consideration and attention. It always did.

Mike Pinnington

A full list of Drawing Paper 2025 artists can be found here; Drawing (Paper) Show 2025 was on display at Bridewell Studios & Gallery 11 July – 31 July, 2025

Images, from top: Gaza – Welcome Home (2025), Chris Shaw Hughes; Drawing Paper #1; The Rejection Letter (2025), Kaye Hodges; Graphic Profile (fold 1, 2023), Belinda Yee; Evening Light (2024), Caroline Gorick. All works courtesy the artists and Drawing(Paper)Show 25

Culture Diary w/c 28-07-2025

thedoublenegative — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 10:22:28 +0000

Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…

Monday – Continuing: Liverpool Biennial 2025: BEDROCK – FREE

Further Reading: My Life in the Biennial with Ghosts; Liverpool Biennial: BEDROCK Review

Continuing: Independents Biennial 2025 – FREE

Last Chance to See: The Drawing (Paper) Show 2025 @ The Bridewell Studios & Gallery – FREE

Drawing – so often seen merely as a preliminary step before getting down to the ‘real’ work of making art – is, quite rightly, celebrated in and of itself here. Featuring more than 50 artists from around the world, this latest iteration of the Drawing (Paper) Show, running until 31 July, both challenges our expectations of and celebrates the medium. Artists in the exhibition (including familiar names Caroline Gorick, Penny Davenport and Tomo) also appear in Drawing Paper, marking the publication’s 10th edition.

Barry Lyndon 3.40pm @ 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.

The Matrix 7.30pm @ FACT Liverpool – £9.35

Pre-millennial angst and bleak but not too far off the mark future-casting from the Wachowski’s game changing actioner.

Tuesday – The Beaches of Agnès 8pm @ FACT Liverpool – £9.35

Autobiographical essay film from the late, great Agnès Varda (1928–2019). Looking back over her life, the then octogenarian Varda employs footage from her richly textured back catalogue to punctuate and illustrate her story. We’re lucky to be able to join her.

Further Reading: The Big Interview: Agnès Varda

Wednesday – Exhibition Continues: 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, Ana Mendieta, Lizz Brady and more.

Thursday – The War of the Worlds 1.30pm @ FACT Liverpool – £9.35

It is 130 years since the first publication of H.G. Wells’ source material, and this 1953 adaptation was the first to bring the marauding aliens from Mars to the big screen. A questioning of the validity of ongoing British colonialism wrapped in a brilliant story, it is more than simply ‘scientific romance’ as Wells termed his output; a box office success, Byron Haskin’s cinematic outing, including some great special effects, does it justice.

Liverpool Biennial 2025: Drop-in Weekly Tea and Talk Tours 2pm @ 20 Jordan Street – FREE

Friday – Last Chance to See: Dorothy X Hot Grls Watch Sports: EURO SUMMER @ Dorothy, Baltic Triangle, Liverpool – FREE

On the back of another international triumph for the Lionesses, this exhibition – a celebration and also questioning of how far the women’s game has come – feels like required viewing. Curated by Hot Grls Watch Sports founder Nali Simukulwa, it features photography and more from Caitlin Marie Sullivan, Jacqui McAssey (GIRLFANS), Ufuoma Art, and Simukulwa.

Jules et Jim 6pm @ FACT Liverpool – £9.35

The famed 1962 love triangle drama, Jules et Jim, stars Henri Serre and Oskar Werner as the titular lifelong friends, each besotted with Jeanne Moreau’s Catherine. More an analysis of the complexities of love and friendship than traditional romance, and as tragic as it is effervescent, the iconic film is, perhaps not, the date movie people might imagine.

Saturday – Pulled Apart By Horses Loserpalooza IV 1pm @ Future Yard, Birkenhead – £20

Two stages and nine bands make up Loserpalooza IV, Society of Losers’ all-dayer headlined by shouty alt-rock from Leeds’ Pulled Apart by Horses. They’re joined by, among others, local punks Crapsons, feminist alt-punk from Two Tonne Machete, and Riot Grrrl-inflected grunge from Petrichor.

Sunday – Exhibition: (M)other Collective: (M)other Wild: artists working across the island from 10am, Hilbre Island – FREE

Accessible on foot from West Kirby, Hilbre Island has something of the magical, even folkloric, about it. As such, it is a seductive setting for art, artists and the wider public. This new exhibition from (M)other Collective makes good use of this context, with a series of outdoor works exploring ‘the balance of natural life cycles endangered by modern society’.

Common Thread 1pm @ Birch Studios, Hamilton Square, Birkenhead – FREE

Workshop focused on making, mending and community building in the face of fast fashion. Held at artist-led Birch Studios, who are in the middle of an incredible show a week run during the Independents Biennial.

Mike Pinnington

Images/media, from top: The Matrix trailer; Brigitte Jurack, install photography, VGM; The Beaches of Agnès Varda trailer; BEDROCK/Liverpool Biennial; Jules et Jim trailer; Pulled Apart by Horses

Carreg Ateb: Vision or Dream? Reviewed

thedoublenegative — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 14:26:06 +0000

Continuing a run of superb exhibitions, Mostyn Gallery in Llandudno hosts Jeremy Deller’s ode to Welsh culture. Laura Robertson finds echoes of and reverie in many versions of the past, a playful and critical tribute to art and selfhood…

Carreg Ateb: Vision or Dream? ‘Carreg Ateb’, translated from the Welsh for answering stone, or echo stone; a rock to cause a call to action, or a reverie, as the phase suggests? An echo, a solution, or a firm resolution? The original Carreg Ateb is a capstone from a prehistoric burial chamber, situated on the Pembrokeshire coast, which the local Abbott would strike in order to bless fishing boats going out to sea, and to protect those souls going out to dangerous work, wild weather, and for the unknowable catch.

The title of Jeremy Deller’s new exhibition at Mostyn Gallery in North Wales throws up a barrage of thoughts before you even cross the threshold. The exhibition title is immortalised in a patchwork banner by Deller’s long-term collaborator, Ed Hall, who’s been making trade union campaign and exhibition banners with the artist for 25 years. The political tone of Carreg Ateb: Vision or Dream? points, in a fittingly dreamlike way, to Welsh culture today and yesterday, and the repair of culture after a slow, insidious oppression by English power or powers.

“What the artistic self might mean, given the tools, materials and subject matter specific to nation”

The show is a gentle drip-drip of these ideas. As usual, Mostyn Gallerys’s natural light and vaulted ceilings make for a space that allows art to breathe, crucial in allowing visitors to observe craft pieces, heirlooms, artefacts, and new work by young Welsh artists that poke and prod at what the artistic self might mean, given the tools, materials and subject matter specific to nation.

Here are many objects that rouse curiosity and awe: including Astronomical Slates (1837) carved by brothers Thomas and William Jones, of Bryn Twrw, Tregarth, quarrymen and farmers: the cosmos and its meanings depicted with tremendous care on a material prone to shatter. A decorated horse jaw, originally and accidently unearthed by Thomas Kendrick as he was digging in his garden on the Great Orme cliffs (1880); Kendrick’s cave, as it came to be known, contained the jaw as well as flint, bear teeth, and human bones, believed to be from the Upper Paleolithic era. The famous Wrexham Tailor’s Quilt by James Williams (1842-1852): 4,525 pieces of felted woollens and military uniforms, meticulously sewn offcuts depicting an array of Biblical stories, including Adam with exotic animals in the Garden of Eden, and Jonah and the Whale.

“Little legs dance underneath uncanny giant basket heads”

Here, also, are very recent stories: a film installation with poster, Llwyfan Beca (2025) by Esyllt Angharad Lewis, or Beca’s Stage, portraying a young girl in cockle bonnet and dress, performing the past, alongside other schoolchildren. The poster reads ‘Cyfiiawnder a charwyr cyfiawnder ydym ni oll’, meaning, Justice and the lovers (holders) of justice we all are; alluding to the Justice and the Lovers tarot cards, a combination that indicates clarity, honesty and self-discovery. Lewis Prosser’s buff willow baskets, mace, urns and collars (2025) are another unexpected way of channelling historic procession; civic regalia for today made with a skill he taught himself in Lockdown. At first glance, they could be on loan from local museums and collections.

Later, Prosser’s wicker costumes, and those by artist and filmmaker Edith Morris, are worn by local children from the Frân Wen theatre company in a carnival-esque march along the promenade and through the streets – little legs dance underneath uncanny giant basket heads, and little heads shake fringed animal masks, to the beat of a brass band playing Daft Punk.

“In opposition, there are items on display that rouse and shame”

In opposition, there are items on display that rouse and shame: a Welsh Not wooden board, a tool of punishment and humiliation, hung around schoolchildren’s necks if caught speaking Welsh; old school books of British history rooted in Crown and Empire, where the Welsh ‘people belong to a different race from the English’; Ian Campbell’s appliqué banner, asking ‘A OES HEDDWCH?’, Is there peace?

Strangeness and joy connect performance to exhibit. Deller’s Folk Archives show raves in the mines, the ribboned horse-head of Mari Lwyd riding in a taxi, and, again unexpectedly, his collection of fan art about Caerphilly’s best rock band, Manic Street Preachers. Relationships emerge with broader legends, as in Manod quarry, which housed the nation’s art during WW2 on Churchill’s insistence, and whose archives were inspiration for this show; in Welsh mythology, The Mabinogion, and in the in-between realms; to Bryn Celli Ddu Burial Chamber on the Welsh island of Anglesey, which we visited the next day to see Frân Wen continue their revelry for the summer solstice. In the driving rain, children bounce up and down the burial mound, singing, arms reaching to the sky, welcoming the return of light to the land.

It is a complex and hypnotic version of the Carreg Ateb, or answering stone, that is presented, if you are open to receive it. Truth is underlined by folklore. The show builds layers of meaning until the tensions of old and new, of pretence and play, reach a climax; echoes of a sort, of mismatched expectations, of what the Welsh culture actually is in the minds of the Welsh, as opposed to the English, who have historically corralled them into the social and cultural categories of ‘other’.

Laura Robertson

See the exhibition Carreg Ateb: Vision or Dream? at Mostyn, Llandudno, until 27 September 2025 – free entry

Presented by Mostyn and Frân Wen’s Young Company as part of a celebration commission curated by Jeremy Deller to celebrate The National Gallery’s bicentenary. With Storiel Bangor, Llandudno Museum, the CARN network, and Cadw, the Welsh Government’s historic environment service

See live performances, The Triumph of Art: A free party in Trafalgar Square, 11am-4pm, Saturday 26 July in London’s Trafalgar Square

Image credits: installation shots by Rob Battersby; live performance shots by Mark McNulty. 2025. With thanks

A Singular Vision: Powell and Pressburger

thedoublenegative — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 08:46:50 +0000

With their celebrated masterpiece The Red Shoes currently showing on the big screen, Mike Pinnington considers the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger…

When I think about the moments of movie magic that have stayed with me well beyond the first viewing of a film, few can compete with the flights of fantasy conjured by filmmaking duo, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Each subsequent viewing of certain of their films (and there have been many) is accompanied with an anticipation of a warm, comforting hug; but, also, and as if for the first time, to be touched in head and heart with something of the ineffable-verging-on-the-miraculous.

The partnership of Englishman Powell and Hungarian émigré Pressburger is one of the most fruitful in British cinema history – they would work together (under the name, The Archers) between 1939 and 1972 on more than 20 features. I feel it is worth noting here that even a relatively minor P&P movie is better than much of what we might see at the multi-plex today, but they truly hit their stride with a phenomenal run during the 1940s in a perfect marriage of creativity and execution; that run produced no less than four masterpieces, beginning with 1943’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.

“These were bold, even subversive, experimentations with style, form and more”

But it was their following trio of phenomenal films that I can’t separate, either in terms of their resounding excellence or, indeed, which I saw first. (Whichever, it would most likely have been on an old black and white TV set during a happy weekend spent at my nan and granddad’s.) Chronologically, it begins in 1946 with A Matter of Life and Death, followed by Black Narcissus (1947) and, rounding out the perfect hattrick, 1948’s The Red Shoes. These were bold, even subversive, experimentations with style, form and more.

If I can’t place them in any kind of hierarchy, what this superlative triumvirate have in common are themes that ran like life blood through the best (and much of the rest) of The Archers’ oeuvre: identity, morality – ‘They aren’t poor, they just haven’t got any money,’ says Roger Livesey’s Torquil in 1945’s I Know Where I’m Going – romantic and platonic love, and the human condition.

“A Matter of Life and Death focusses not on the indomitable allies, but rather on the indomitable, unpredictable power of love”

Set during the Second World War, P&P delivered A Matter of Life and Death – hardly your typical propaganda film, it focussed not on the indomitable allies, but rather on the indomitable, unpredictable power of love. At its centre is the blossoming romance between David Niven’s seemingly doomed airman and Kim Hunter’s radio operator, with whom he shared what were anticipated by all to be his final moments. But, bailing out of his irreparably damaged aeroplane sans parachute, Niven’s Peter Carter, lost in the fog, somehow – initially at least – escapes the ultimate fate, only to be summoned to the afterlife, where a case must be made to ascertain the life or death of the title.

With scenes of life shot in glorious Technicolor and those in heaven a resolute monochrome (but one of a number of daring and effective aesthetic decisions), here Powell and Pressburger tell us that life, in all its visceral glory, is worth – and for – the living. In a sense hopelessly romantic, at no point during its 104 minutes does it lapse into cheap sentimentalism. The Archers had amassed a skilled team; with cinematographer Jack Cardiff and incredible sets – not least the still-impressive stairway to heaven – from production designer Alfred Junge, the film is a feast for the eyes as well as the soul, and looks as astonishing today as it must have when seen for the first time almost 80 years ago.

“Having your film hinge on a male sex object in short shorts was not, back then, an everyday occurrence”

In the following year’s Black Narcissus, we find Deborah Kerr’s Sister Clodagh corralling a group of nuns into establishing a Himalayan convent. Trouble emerges in the form of sceptical, antagonistic Mr. Dean, another colonialising Brit abroad played by David Farrar, with whom Kathleen Byron’s psychologically tormented Sister Ruth becomes increasingly, dangerously infatuated. For the mid-twentieth century, having much of your film hinge on an open-shirted male sex object wearing short shorts was not, as you might imagine, an everyday occurrence.

Again, colour plays a significant role, often setting the tone and signalling the real and implied danger to come. When Sister Ruth throws off the habit, swapping it for a red dress and lipstick to match, the effect is almost one of delirium – in both her and the viewer. A psychosexual tour de force, Black Narcissus continues to stir the senses. Redundantly remade for TV in 2020, it didn’t hold a candle to the original.

“The Red Shoes is a triumph of Powell and Pressburger’s shared belief in the power of art”

The duo arguably reached their apogee with The Red Shoes, an innovative and daring demonstration of filmmakers at the very height of their powers. Using Hans Christian Anderson’s fairytale – in which the wearer of enchanted shoes cannot help but dance until death – as the basis for a story about the dynamic between an ambitious young dancer (played by real-life ballerina, Moira Shearer), her composer lover, and a kingmaker impresario, The Red Shoes is a triumph of Powell and Pressburger’s shared belief in the power of art. Powell said of it that “We had been told for 10 years to go out and die for freedom and democracy… Now the war was over, The Red Shoes told us to go out and die for art.”

Technically stunning, it is the product of Powell’s reaching for what he termed ‘composed film’, a cinema that could draw you in and hold you, rapt, in a heightened state. A total work of art that brought together choreography, theatre, music, set design, innovation and the performers themselves, it is an unequivocal singular vision.

It is also an emotionally charged study in ambition, love, obsession and the complexity of the human condition. And, of their films that featured in 2022’s Sight and Sound poll of The Greatest Films of All Time, The Red Shoes sits pretty in joint 67th place, an honour it shares with Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev, Chris Marker’s La Jetée and Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners and I. Other films of theirs that make the cut are, in ascending order, A Canterbury Tale; The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp; I Know Where I’m Going!; Black Narcissus; and A Matter of Life and Death.

“By the close of that decade, momentum – and success – began to fall away”

But, as the duo’s films regularly tell us, all good things must come to an end (they rarely delivered a straightforward, so-called happy ending). While they weren’t finished as a creative force (they would make a further nine films together), by the close of that decade, momentum – and success – began to fall away. After splitting from long term studio, Rank, a relinquishing of The Archers’ name and a catastrophic failure of the subsequent relationship with David O. Selznick (resulting in legal action), Powell and Pressburger would, via some missteps and an inability to ever truly match their golden years’ output, go their separate ways.

The afterlife of The Archers is mixed; by this time, they had been all but written off by a British film industry that they had given so much to. They were mothballed, dismissed as almost anachronistic in the face of the emergent angry young men of kitchen sink dramas such as Look Back in Anger, and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. In parallel came Powell’s deeply misunderstood solo outing, Peeping Tom (1960). It has since been largely rehabilitated and is frequently put in conversation with Hitchcock’s Psycho, made the same year, but on release it was met with blanket critical vilification. The ensuing years saw them become marginal figures at best.

“Rehabilitation and vindication came from a surprising source”

It seemed the game was up. That is, until, their rehabilitation and vindication, which came from a surprising source – not from the UK, but the US. A new generation of filmmakers, men who would come to be in the vanguard of the so-called New Hollywood (including Francis Ford Coppola, Brian de Palma and Martin Scorsese) had seen, just as I later would, Powell and Pressburger’s films on TV in the living rooms of their youth, and lionised them. Citing their influence, Coppola would go on to invite Michael Powell – who would marry long-time Scorsese editor Thelma Schoonmaker – to be ‘senior director in residence’ at his Zoetrope Studios.

Powell and Pressburger have since been rediscovered many times over. Subject to various retrospectives (most recently with BFI’s Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds of Powell and Pressburger), their films – frequently shown on the big screen – are reaching, and, I expect, thrilling, new audiences all the time.

Contemporary Western Cinema is, sadly, addicted to remakes and the rehashing of old tropes; it could do worse than to take a leaf out of the Powell and Pressburger playbook, filmmakers whose commitment to their art is rightly remembered and celebrated so enthusiastically today.

Mike Pinnington

The Red Shoes screens today @ FACT Liverpool; Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger (Martin Scorsese, 2024) is currently available on BBC iPlayer

Culture Diary w/c 21-07-2025

thedoublenegative — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 10:46:58 +0000

Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…

Monday – Continuing: Liverpool Biennial 2025: BEDROCK – FREE

Further Reading: My Life in the Biennial with Ghosts; Liverpool Biennial: BEDROCK Review

Continuing: Independents Biennial 2025 – FREE

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

Thursday – Liverpool Biennial 2025: Drop-in Weekly Tea and Talk Tours 2pm @ 20 Jordan Street – FREE

Exhibition Opening: Broken Grey Wires: Who Wants Flowers When They are Dead? 6pm @ Williamson Art Gallery and Museum – FREE

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