Culture Diary w/c 01-07-2024
Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…
Monday – Jezebel 7.30pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8
“From the picturesque glamour of the old south!” comes William Wyler’s 1938 movie, Jezebel. Set prior to the coming American Civil War, Bette Davis plays the eponymous Jezebel, a woman straining at and challenging the social mores of the period. Davis, who won an Academy Award for the role. said later: “I think it was truer to the feeling of the South at that time than [1939's Gone with the Wind].” (Which isn’t to say the picture – or, indeed, Jezebel – was interested in addressing the slavery of the time.)
Tuesday – Heading North Fringe Festival: Chatterbox 7pm @ Shakespeare North Playhouse, Prescot – £5
The Heading North Fringe Festival, which showcases selected productions before they make their way to Edinburgh later this summer, kicks off at Prescot’s Shakespeare North tonight with Chatterbox. A semi-autobiographical comedy drama written and performed by Lubna Kerr, it explores the life of a Pakistani girl growing up in 1970s Glasgow, and ‘looks at the impact of the labels we are given as children, and how they persist into adulthood.’
Wednesday – Exhibition Continues: LOOK Photo Biennial 2024: Beyond Sight @ Open Eye Gallery – FREE
Building on LOOK Climate Lab, here, three separate projects are brought together for LOOK Photo Biennial. Mattia Balsamini’s Protege Noctum trains its lens on the ‘disappearance of the night’, documenting the effects of artificial light on the night sky; Erosion by Stephanie Wynne explores the structural waste of war via the rubble of WW2 along Merseyside’s shoreline; Melanie King’s other-worldly Precious Metals, meanwhile, considers the cosmic genesis, harmful extraction and use of silver and palladium in photography. “The artists,” says Open Eye curator Max Gorbatskyi, “use exquisite form and poetic subjects to firmly state the urgency of sustainable practices, whether in art or urban planning.”
Thursday – Exhibition Opening: R.I.P. Germain & Sara Sadik 6pm @ FACT Liverpool – FREE
Explore immersive installation and interactive film respectively in a pair of new exhibitions opening this evening at FACT, where hidden worlds, fiction and documentary collide. This is interdisciplinary conceptual artist R.I.P. Germain, who ‘seeks to unpick and analyse, and provide some cognitive space around the hyperobjects of Black culture’, and Sara Sadik, whose work is inspired by video games, anime, science-fiction and French rap.
Friday – Happiness! Curator Tour 10.30/11.30am/2.30/3.30pm @ the Museum of Liverpool – £10
Growing up in the 80s, my memory of Ken Dodd exists through the lens of my grandparents, who I loved spending weekends with round the corner from my house, watching variety shows on TV. In the ensuing years, however, Dodd had become a largely peripheral figure in my consciousness. That was, until, I visited Happiness!, an exhibition (which closes this week) celebrating the iconic entertainer. It’s a cockle-warming glimpse into a simpler time, one in which Dodd challenged the Beatles for chart superiority, had people rolling in the aisles and played Malvolio in Twelfth Night. A tip: if you want a good laugh, take a seat and spend some time under one of the sound showers for an injection of lols.
Saturday – European Poetry Festival: Liverpool Camarade 3pm @ Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool – FREE
Including poets from Norway, Czech Republic and Northwest England, this event with internationalism, creativity and collaboration at its heart, sees pairs of poets present brand new works, live.
One Minute 3.30pm @ Storyhouse, Chester – FREE
In One Minute, moving image artists respond to the constraints of working with a time limit of 60 seconds. Like composing the perfect paragraph, or Tweet, 40 artists – from recent graduates to award-winning filmmakers – take up the challenge here, with responses ranging from stop motion animation to the layering technique of superimposition.
Arena Studios X Summer Showcase 5pm @ Elevator Studios – FREE
If you missed the recent exhibition, Life at Arena (held at Bridewell Studios & Gallery in May), this summer showcase is a great excuse to survey the work of a diverse range of artists embedded in the Baltic Triangle and part of the fabric of the city’s creative community. Exhibiting artists include Sarah Leader, Century Foxx and Sophie Baskerville.
Sunday – Breathless 5pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8
Following Agnès Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7, and Francois Truffaut’s Les quatre cents coups, this week is the turn of fellow nouvelle vague director, Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (À bout de souffle) in Picturehouse’s ongoing Paris on Film season. Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo as small-time thief with a big problem, and Jean Seberg, the girlfriend to whom he turns in his hour of desperate need, has a film ever earned its name so thoroughly?
Mike Pinnington
Images/media, from top: Sara Sadik, Xenon Palace Championship; Mattia Balsamini; Happiness! trailer; Breathless trailer
