Apparently the people who bought the old Whitehouse Pub, on the corner of Berry Street and Duke Street, are going to paint over the Banksy-painted rat that has adorned it for the best part of a decade.
Lewis’s fifth floor: a department story at the Conservation Centre
The shots of the staff, particularly, are wonderful portraits of proud employees, and the information on how long many of them spent working at the department store testament to how well Lewis’s treated its employees.
The Best of Liverpool 2009
I’ve asked a group of people well placed in media, music, arts and other general culture vultures to venture their high- and lowlights of Liverpool in 2009.
Flashback: Bridget Riley at The Walker
You’ll know Bridget Riley’s work, even if you think you don’t. Light, colours, shapes, lines… all combining to give you a headache or make you fall over.
Liverpool People by Stephen Shakeshaft at the Conservation Centre
I do like the Conservation Centre’s unfussy curation, and its current exhibition of Post and Echo photographer Stephen Shakeshaft’s photography, called Liverpool People, is no different.
The Long Night of the AND Festival…in pictures
I really love the semi-regular night in Liverpool when the city’s artistic buildings throw open their doors into the night. There’s a real festival atmosphere in town on these night, a little like the frisson on excitement on Halloween and bonfire night.
Calling Liverpool artists – design the new Top Shop/Top Man store
Any passing readers who happen to be artists (there are regular readers, right?) might be interested to know that the Liverpool branch of Top Man/Shop is offering the opportunity to decorate one of their walls.
Go Penguins
After the success of last year’s Go Superlambananas, which saw loads of superlambananas springing up around the city, this year will feature Go Penguins, which will feature lots of, er, penguins springing up around the city.
No, I’m a big fan of not fixing things that ain’t broke, but this strikes me as a little unimaginative.
However, it also opens up some intriguing possibilities for events around the city in the future.
Julian and Cynthia Lennon at press launch for White Feather: The Spirit of John Lennon
I’ve just returned from The Beatles Story’s White Feather: The Spirit of Lennon press launch at The Beatles Story Pier Head, where Julian Lennon gave the closest thing to an interview he’s provided in years.
Lennon and mother Cynthia were answering questions on the exhibition, created with mementoes and artefacts they’ve largely collected themselves over the years.
A such it’s an intriguing and invaluable insight into a man frequently described as ‘difficult’ and ‘infuriating’ – it’s hard not to come to the conclusion having read various accounts of John Lennon that these were not simply euphemism for ‘nasty piece of work’.
Of course, behind every nasty piece of work is often a rather vulnerable character, and the anecdotes and notes from the Lennons paint a portrait of John as man equally difficult and easy to love.
They go beyond what one might generally expect to see at an exhibition: beyond the Beatles memorabilia; beyond the obvious anecdotes; beyond myth and legend.
Sound & Vision: Francesco Mellina at the Conservation Centre
I was on the lig the other day at the Conservation Centre’s Sound & Vision exhibition of Francesco Mellina’s pictures of Liverpool during the birth of punk, new wave and new romanticism.
Francesco Mellina was Dead or Alive’s manager – a dubious honour, I’d've thought – and once asked a cricketer friend of mine to play bass for the band. Wisely, I think, he declined.
Mellina’s role in the scene at Eric’s and other bars with fantastically- ridiculous names between 1978–1982 was outlined by the always-entertaining Paul du Noyer.
The exhibition is a genuine visual record of the music scene at the time, with an impressively wide range of images – both in terms of their style and content.
The film grain that dates these kind of pictures lends a stylised filter to images like Mellina’s, as does the low-light high-contrast black and white tone.
Like the difference between vinyl and digital, they are technically inferior but have much more character.