Author: Desmond Bullen
Art Review: The Estate Of Hermione, The Whitworth, Manchester
Hermione Burton, one hopes, would have loved it.
Read the full story..Book Review: A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers
“You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.”
Read the full story..Review: British Pop Archive, John Rylands Library, Manchester
It’s about time. Popular culture may have fragmented, broken up into TikTok-sized soundbites and time-shifted downstream from communal viewing, but it’s still at the heart of everyday living.
Read the full story..Art Review: Kunichika: Japanese Prints, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Wirral
Toyohara Kunichika was, by any standards, something of a character.
Read the full story..Theatre Review: Hedwig and the Angry Inch, HOME, Manchester
From its underground conception in the drag bars of 90s New York where its name spread by word of mouth from lips as unlikely to lock as those of early admirers Barry Manilow and David Bowie, to its ill-starred incarnation in a film that opened then faded in the debris of 9/11; from slow-burning reappreciation through a second life on DVD to providing an early plot point in Sex Education, the cult of Hedwig has swollen in proportion across the decades, gathering disciples devoted to its singular subject.
Read the full story..Music Review: Red Guitars, Night & Day, Manchester
In 1983, the last time the Red Guitars performed in Manchester, they played at The Haçienda.
Read the full story..Book Review: Deceit by Yuri Felsen, translated by Bryan Karetnyk
Potentially, at least, the author is a time traveller, and the novel their time machine, one which – Tardis-like – contains the whole of their fixed point in history while being simultaneously their means of stepping outside of it and into the future.
Read the full story..Music Review: The Psychedelic Furs, Manchester Academy
There have been considerable developments since The Psychedelic Furs last commanded a Manchester stage.
Read the full story..Exhibition Review: Don’t You Forget About Me, British Music Experience, Liverpool
At its best, pop resists the definitive. It side-steps the constraints of those who try to pin it down and restrict it to a dull litany of the usual saints, the Dylans and the Lennons, the Whites and the Sheerans, those who are dead and those who might as well be, desiccating them into relics and museum pieces, suitable for endless resale.
Read the full story..Exhibition Review: altered by Tony Heaton, Bury Art Museum & Sculpture Centre
It depends on how you look at things: what you see, what you notice, what you take heed of.
Read the full story..Editor's Picks
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