Liverpool Biennial 2025 locations announced
The Black-E and Chinatown’s Pine Court are among the locations for this year’s Liverpool Biennial it has been revealed.
Artists will also exhibit work at 20 Jordan Street in the Baltic Triangle for the first time, along with open air sites like Liverpool ONE, St John’s Gardens, Mann Island and the grounds of the Oratory at Liverpool Cathedral.
The 2025 Biennial runs from June 7 to September 14 and has the theme BEDROCK.
Thirty national and international artists and collectives will present work over the Biennial, with 22 new commissions on display and a total of 18 different venues to visit.
They include the Bluecoat, FACT, Liverpool Central Library, Open Eye Gallery, Tate + RIBA North and the Walker Art Gallery along with SEVENSTORE in Jamaica Street and locations in Berry Street.
There will also be a public programme of free events and performances over the 14-week run of what remains the UK’s largest free festival of contemporary visual art.
Among the outside work:
Anna Gonzalez-Noguchi Real Feel 90, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Canary Wharf, London. Photography by Sean Pollock.
Alice Rekab presents a multi-city billboard project in Liverpool and Edinburgh, in partnership with EAF25 (Edinburgh Art Festival). In Liverpool, the work is co-created with students from The City of Liverpool College through a series of workshops.
Displayed throughout Liverpool ONE, these collaborative works explore experiences of race, migration and belonging. Meanwhile at Bluecoat, the artist presents a multi-layered gallery installation titled Bunchlann/Buncharriag (Irish Gaelic for ‘Origin Family’ or ‘Bedrock’).
Anna Gonzalez-Noguchi presents a modular sculpture at Mann Island, inspired by the historical import of ‘foreign’ plants into Liverpool. The three towers, constructed out of metal and reflective materials, incorporate seating, spinning elements and tubular structures engraved with records of the city’s botanical collections.
Isabel Nolan presents a steel and concrete sculpture in St John’s Gardens, supported by Art Fund. The design is inspired by a drawing of a stained-glass window held in the St Nicholas Pro-Cathedral archive and the leadwork in the windows of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral’s Lutyens Crypt. Painting and textiles by the artist are also shown at the Walker Art Gallery.
And a selection from Petros Moris’ ALONE series of mosaic sculptures, referencing an abandoned playground and his parent's own mosaic studio, will be exhibited in the grounds of The Oratory at Liverpool Cathedral, as well as at Bluecoat and Walker Art Gallery.
Above: Petros Moris. Artist portrait by Stathis Marmalakis.
Biennial curator Mary-Anne McQuay said today: “BEDROCK as a title and holding space for the festival extends from the physical sandstone foundations of the city to become a metaphor for its distinctive civic values, that are haunted by its colonial past.
“While responding to these contexts, I asked the invited artists to present their own ‘bedrock’; to share the values, people and places that ground them, which here includes family and chosen family, ancestral cultural heritage carried across generations, and nature that nurtures and restores them. BEDROCK is the place we start from together.”
And Liverpool Biennial director Dr Samantha Lackey added: “BEDROCK will be an extraordinary moment which connects us deeply back to our foundations in the city, while continuing our collaborations with artists from across the globe.
“Marie-Anne is an exceptional curator who understands implicitly the local context we are working in, addressing some of the ways in which that has been formed over the past years.
“As always, we are delighted to be working with longstanding venue partners across the city and are excited to collaborate with organisations with whom we have initiated new partnerships. We’re grateful for the continued support and engagement from our core funders Arts Council England and Liverpool City Council for enabling us to bring exceptional art and artists to the UK.”
Above: Isabel Nolan, Deep Time Day, 2024. Image courtesy the artist and Kerlin Gallery. Photography Lee Welch.
The full list of participating artists is:
Alice Rekab (Ireland/Sierra Leone); Amber Akaunu (UK/Nigeria); Amy Claire Mills (Australia); Ana Navas (Venezuela/Ecuador/Netherlands); Anna Gonzalez Noguchi (Spain/Japan/UK); Antonio Jose Guzman & Iva Jankovic (Netherlands/Panama/Serbia); Cevdet Erek (Turkey); ChihChung Chang 張致中(Taiwan/Netherlands); Christine Sun Kim (USA); DARCH (India/Somaliland/Wales); Dawit L Petros (Eritrea/Canada/USA); Elizabeth Price (UK); Fred Wilson (USA); Hadassa Ngamba (Democratic Republic of the Congo/Belgium); Imayna Caceres (Peru/Austria); Isabel Nolan (Ireland); Jennifer Tee (Netherlands); Kara Chin (UK/Singapore); Katarzyna Perlak (Poland/UK); Karen Tam 譚嘉文(Canada); Leasho Johnson (USA/Jamaica); Linda Lamignan (Nigeria/Norway); Maria Loizidou (Cyprus); Mounira Al Solh (Lebanon); Nandan Ghiya (India); Nour Bishouty (Lebanon/Jordan/Palestine/Canada); Odur Ronald (Uganda); Petros Moris (Greece); Sheila Hicks (USA); Widline Cadet (Haiti/USA).
The 13th edition of the Liverpool Biennial runs from June 7 to September 14. More details HERE