A World of Interiors

This year's Liverpool Biennial is themed on the domestic. Not content, however, with the properly house-trained Tate Liverpool contribution, Cathy Lomax goes to the Old Blind School in search of something altogether less obedient.

The Old Blind School

There are two big group shows at the 2014 Liverpool Biennial, which has the banal biennial name of ‘A Needle Walks into a Haystack’, and an overarching theme of the domestic. Tate Liverpool has plucked work willy-nilly from its collection to put together a bunch of things that in some way refer to the domestic, but don’t really do much more. The group show at the Old Blind School is a very different proposition. It manages, by thoughtfully combining an eclectic group of artists whose works when placed together makes something that is bigger than the collection of its parts, to create an cohesive, atmospheric but also difficult show.

Space-Time: The Future at Wysing Arts Centre

Garageland reviewer Alicia Rodriguez visits the future (which turns out to be in rural Cambridge) and is satisfied to find that the world has been overrun by experimental female pop/rock bands.

Ravioli Me Away

Space-Time: The Future is almost like a fleeting glimpse into a micro-culture where the patriarchy no longer exists. That wound, shaped by male-dominated art events and music festivals, is transcended by a cosmic line-up of powerful women, leading us into a furious celebration.

What is so exciting about this year’s incarnation of Wysing Arts Centre’s annual music festival, curated almost flawlessly by its director Donna Lynas, is its confidence not to brand itself as a gendered event or defend its decision to feature only women. The sheer intelligence and quality of the performers is at the forefront of the festival.