Makoto Shinkai’s Weathering With You (Credit: Official Facebook page)
As we launch ourselves into a brand new year and plenty of new art Getintothis’ Rick Leach heralds the creative delights on offer this January and points you in the right direction.
Well, here we go again.
Happy New Year.
Happy New Decade.
Welcome to the Roaring Twenties (Part Two).
And welcome to another Arts Diary highlighting but the merest smidgen of hopefully the best and most interesting arts on offer in Merseyside during the next month.
Every month all we can do at Getintothis is give you a glimpse of the myriad of events, exhibitions, films, concerts and more that are out there.
It is staggering that not only do we have a such a high quality of arts right on our doorstep but also with such diversity and world-class quality as well.
If we had space and time we could readily pick something from Liverpool, Merseyside and the wider North West for each and every day each month, 12 months of the year and no doubt for the rest of the decade.
We can only apologise that space precludes us from doing that.
Having said that, it should be recognised that everything that’s on offer for us as viewers and audiences does not fall like artistic magic from the skies. There is no cultural fairy scattering inspirational dust around.
All of what is open to us and all of what we can pick and choose from is the result of hard work, careful thought and imagination by many people, be they artists, performers, producers, writers and many more.
All the unsung working in galleries, theatres, cinemas, concert halls, performance spaces – we should salute you and be grateful for what you do in enriching our lives in these turbulent times.
Thank you.
Here’s to another great decade of art.
Rick Leach, Arts Editor
Getintothis’ 2019 Year In Review: best gigs, event, albums, venues, festival, label, hero and more
Visual Rights (Credit: Open Eye Facebook page)
Visual Rights
Open Eye
January 16 to
How do we visualise power? What does it look like, and for whom is it visible?
Launching on January 16 2020, Open Eye Gallery’s new exhibition Visual Rights looks at how images can expose uneven distributions of power, and shape the way we understand a place’s geography.
From early attempts at mapping the world, to modern satellite imagery, territories – and people’s right to inhabit them – have continually been established and redrawn, contested or removed.
This process often becomes concentrated in areas of conflict and geographical contest: in recent history, this has included Ireland, Kashmir and Ukraine.
Curated by Gary Bratchford, a photographer and sociologist, Visual Rights presents work from artists in Israel, Palestine and the UK to examine this process.
Visual Rights brings together different methods of revealing how power subtly operates and affects the fabric of everyday life.
The perspectives include surveying underground water pipelines that allow non-native plant life to flourish, photographing areas that have their electricity supply cut off at night, and the view from drones – a view that has become synonymous with modern conflict.
Jah-Mir Early (Credit: Everyman’s Facebook page)
A Lovely Word with Jah-Mir Early
Everyman Bistro
January 9 7.30 pm
A Lovely Word is an open spoken word poetry night that takes place on the first Thursday of the month in the Everyman Bistro.
Whether you’re a first-timer or a practised poet, you’re invited to sign up for a five-minute slot on the night and read a poem or two before the headline act.
It’s a new year and a new decade. Maybe now’s the time to take a step forward and try something different. Alternatively, you can simply sit back and listen.’
January’s headliner is Washington D.C-born Jah-Mir Early. Identified as dyslexic at the age of three, Eary has been telling stories and poems for most of his life, as he says, “sometimes even to other people”.
The poet and storyteller has performed at BeSpoken and BBC Fringe Slam at the Edinburgh Fringe as well as The Book Club in London, Small World Festival and Fling Festival.
Weathering With You (Credit Official Facebook page)
Weathering With You & Your Name
Picturehouse at FACT Liverpool
January 15 6.15 pm
Ahead of the release of Weathering With You, Picturehouse at FACT along with a limited number of cinemas nationwide, will be showing an exclusive preview together with Makoto Shinkai’s previous film, Your Name.
The presentation will begin with Your Name and include a short interval before the screening of Weathering with You.
In Your Name, Mitsuha and Taki are total strangers living different lives. But when Mitsuha makes a wish to leave her mountain town for the bustling city of Tokyo, they become connected in a bizarre way. She dreams she is a boy living in Tokyo while Taki dreams he is a girl from a rural town he’s never visited.
What does their newfound connection mean?
And how will it bring them together?
In Weathering with You, and during the summer of his high school freshman year, Hodaka runs away from his remote island home to Tokyo and quickly finds himself pushed to his financial and personal limits.
The weather is unusually gloomy, it rains every day as if to suggest his future. He lives his days in isolation, but finally finds work as a writer for a mysterious occult magazine.
Then one day, Hodaka meets Hina on a busy street corner.
This bright and strong-willed girl possesses a strange and wonderful ability: the power to stop the rain and clear the sky…
Vasily Petrenko talks classical music, ice fishing and death metal
Vasily Petrenko (Credit: Liverpool Philharmonic Facebook page)
Petrenko’s Mahler 1
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Hall
January 23 7.30pm
Vasily Petrenko starts a year-long voyage through Gustav Mahler’s symphonies at the beginning, with a first symphony that opens with the dawn of time itself and ends by practically blowing the roof off.
Meanwhile, Mahler’s disciple Anton Webern evokes the sweetest of dreams in the blissful Im Sommerwind.
In between, Vasily Petrenko welcomes back Benjamin Appl – unforgettable in Britten’s War Requiem last season – to explore the tender, deeply romantic songs of Franz Schubert.
Before this concert, Petrenko will provide an introduction from the stage.
This is just the beginning of 12 months’ worth of incredible music with Petrenko running through all Mahler’s symphonies and it is something not to be missed.
Family Weekend:Take P-Art at the Bluecoat
Family Weekend: Take P-Art!
Bluecoat, Liverpool
January 25 and January 26 1.00pm to 4.00pm both days
New Year’s resolutions: be more creative! We’ve all had these and now the Bluecoat is opening up that chance to the youngest artists everywhere.
On Saturday 25 and Sunday 26 January the inspiration will be taken from the Bluecoat’s latest exhibition, It’s My Pleasure to Participate, with a carousel of child-friendly activities inspired by Alexis Teplin’s various artworks.
On January 25, you can join the artist in residence Emily Motto for a fun creative workshop inspired by her current work in her studio: build a maze-like structure, using lots of found and recycled materials to build walls and pathways together.
This follows on from The Obstacle Course which she developed with communities at Contemporary Sculpture Fulmer, and explorations in mark-making through spaces.
This is a free activity and open to all.
Why not give it a go? What have you got to lose!
Edge Hill (Credit: Museum of Liverpool Facebook page/Merseyside Police)
Blitzed: Liverpool Lives
Museum of Liverpool
Until summer 2020
This exhibition at the Museum of Liverpool reveals the devastation the Blitz brought to the lives and city of Liverpool in photographs taken by Liverpool City Police between 1940 and 1941. The photographs are accompanied by personal accounts, which bring to life the impact of the war through the eyes of those directly affected by the bombings.
The port city of Liverpool and surrounding areas were key targets for German bombers during the Second World War (1939-45). In Merseyside more than 4,000 civilians were killed, 10,000 homes were destroyed and 70,000 people made homeless during air raids, which peaked in the Blitz of May 1941.
Liverpool itself suffered the second-highest number of civilian deaths in air raids in the country and due to censorship, press reports often didn’t tell the whole story.
“They tried to wipe us off the face of the earth. They nearly did but they didn’t quite, did they?” Mrs Dorothy Laycock, a child during the Liverpool Blitz.
At the heart of this exhibition is the people of Liverpool; those affected by the Blitz – their memories, struggles with the aftermath and how they rebuilt their lives in the face of a terrible onslaught.
Sensory elements enable visitors to experience wartime aromas and hands-on tactile images.
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