Press Release
Date of Issue: 7 July 2016
LIVERPOOL BIENNIAL 2016 OPENS
The ninth edition of Liverpool Biennial, the UK’s largest contemporary art festival, opens this Saturday 9 July, and will run until 16 October 2016.
44 international artists have created new work for the Biennial, alongside a showcase of ten associate artists working in the North of England. Artists from Australia, Belgium, China, France, Greece, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Palestine, Portugal, Russia and Taiwan, as well as the UK, are included in the Biennial. Works will be exhibited throughout the city in Liverpool’s museums and galleries, as well as unexpected and unusual sites such as the counter of a Chinese supermarket, the historic Cains Brewery, a terrace house in Granby, and outside the ventilation shaft of the Mersey Tunnel.
Conceived as a series of episodes, the Biennial draws inspiration from Liverpool’s past, present and future.
The episodes are:
The Children’s Episode, the Biennial’s first comprehensive commissioning programme for artists to work collaboratively with children; Ancient Greece, the inspiration behind many of Liverpool’s grandest buildings; Chinatown, acknowledging Liverpool’s heritage as Europe’s oldest Chinese community in Europe; Flashback, artists’ new interpretation of history; in Software, Biennial artists will open up new perspectives and interactions with technology; and Monuments from the Future, where artists have been invited to imagine what Liverpool might look like in the future.
The Children’s Episode includes a commission by British performance artist Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, who has created a film, Dogsy Ma Bone, which has been entirely cast, produced and directed by young people from Liverpool. Three double-decker Arriva buses have also been transformed into moving artworks by artists, one of which has been designed by schoolchildren in collaboration with design studio Hato.
Reflecting on Liverpool’s radical political history, Japanese artist Koki Tanaka revisits the scene of a huge protest in Liverpool in 1985. It involved around 10,000 children, demonstrating against the Conservative government’s Youth Training Scheme. Tanaka has produced a film on show at Open Eye Gallery, documenting a recreation of the protest’s route through the city, starting at St George’s Hall and featuring original participants of the strike.
Monuments from the Future sees sculptor Rita McBride transform a reservoir in Toxteth into a giant portal using laser beams, while Sahej Rahal has created a series of imagined fossilised artefacts from science fiction, and Russian artist Arseny Zhilyaev has transformed a terrace house in Granby into a futuristic museological display that pays homage to Liverpudlian astronomer Jeremiah Horrocks (1618-1641).
In Flashback, Merseyside-born artist Mark Leckey presents Dream English Kid, 1964–1999 AD. The film combines footage from TV shows, films and events to create a record of all the significant moments in Leckey’s life from 1964–1999. It is screened at the Blade Factory at Camp and Furnace. At the Grade II listed Art Deco ABC Cinema, Fabien Giraud and Raphaël Siboni present a new film, 1922 – The Uncomputable, which reflects on the attempts to create a giant weather-forecast factory by the British meteorologist Lewis Fry Richardson.
A floor of Tate Liverpool has been transformed into Ancient Greece. Drawing on National Museums Liverpool’s significant collection of classical Greek sculptures, originally amassed by Lancastrian antiquarian patron, Henry Blundell in the early 1800s, these sculptures are exhibited alongside new commissions by international artists including Andreas Angelidakis, Koenraad Dedobbeleer and Jumana Manna. Outside the Mersey Tunnel George’s Dock Ventilation Tower, the celebrated American artist Betty Woodman has created a large-scale bronze fountain made from Woodman’s characteristic vessels and fresco-like sculptural works.
Throughout the Biennial, echoes of China and Liverpool’s ever present Chinatown resound in spaces across the city, to be encountered in everyday settings such as the walls of the Chinese restaurant Mr Chilli and the counter of a Chinese supermarket, as well as in large spaces such as Cains Brewery. Work by 15 artists, from all parts of the world, are featured. Among these is a number of installations by Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, exiled in Dubai, who sent a shipping container by sea full of works from their art collection and artefacts from their home, which they have reassembled in Liverpool.
In 2016, Liverpool Biennial extends beyond the physical world as part of the Software episode. For Minecraft Infinity Project, people from all over the world are invited to collaboratively build the largest virtual sculpture ever made and create a digital portrait of the Biennial exhibition, using the computer game Minecraft. This project, as well as a series of digital projects by Oliver Laric, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Dennis McNulty and Marcos Lutyens, are available to access and download from the Biennial website: www.biennial.com/online
There is also an extensive performance, film and talks programme as part of Liverpool Biennial 2016. Highlights include performances by artist and choreographer Michael Portnoy, and a promenade performance by artist Dennis McNulty during the opening weekend, while in October, Coco Fusco will present Observations of Predation in Humans: A Lecture by Dr Zira, in which the artist gives a lecture dressed as Dr Zira, the chimpanzee psychologist made famous by Planet of the Apes. Full details of the performance programme are available to view on the Biennial website: www.biennial.com
Among the locations for Liverpool Biennial 2016 is the historic Cains Brewery building on Stanhope Street; the art deco ‘palace’, the former ABC Cinema; the Oratory; streets, buses, hotels, restaurants, supermarkets and all the key visual art venues in the city including Tate Liverpool, FACT, Open Eye Gallery and Bluecoat.
Liverpool Biennial 2016 commissioned artists are:
Lawrence Abu Hamdan (Jordan/UK/Lebanon), Andreas Angelidakis (Greece/Norway), Alisa Baremboym (USA), Lucy Beech (UK), Sarah Browne and Jesse Jones (Ireland), Mariana Castillo Deball (Mexico), Yin-Ju Chen (Taiwan), Ian Cheng (USA), Marvin Gaye Chetwynd (Australia/UK), Céline Condorelli (Italy/Switzerland/France), Audrey Cottin (France), Koenraad Dedobbeleer (Belgium), Jason Dodge (USA), Lara Favaretto (Italy), Danielle Freakley (Australia), Coco Fusco (USA), Fabien Giraud and Raphaël Siboni (France), Hato (UK), Ana Jotta (Portugal), Samson Kambalu (Malawi), Oliver Laric (Austria), Mark Leckey (UK), Adam Linder (Australia), Marcos Lutyens (UK), Jumana Manna (Palestine), Rita McBride (USA), Dennis McNulty (Ireland), Elena Narbutaite (Lithuania), Lu Pingyuan (China), Michael Portnoy (USA), Sahej Rahal (India), Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh & Hesam Rahmanian (Iran), Koki Tanaka (Japan), Suzanne Treister (UK), Villa Design Group (UK/USA), Krzysztof Wodiczko (Poland), Betty Woodman (USA), Arseny Zhilyaev (Russia).
Liverpool Biennial Associate Artists are:
Simeon Barclay (Leeds), Jacqueline Bebb (Chester), Lindsey Bull (Manchester), Robert Carter & Lauren Velvick (Manchester), Nina Chua (Manchester), Matthew Crawley (Leeds), Frances Disley (Liverpool), Daniel Fogarty (Manchester), Harry Meadley (Leeds), Stephen Sheehan (Birkenhead)
Partner exhibitions showing during Liverpool Biennial 2016 are:
John Moores Painting Prize, Walker Art Gallery
Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2016, Bluecoat
There is also a Biennial Fringe.
Liverpool Biennial is developed by a team of international curators working alongside key visual arts organisations in the city.
The curators are:
Sally Tallant, Director, Liverpool Biennial
Dominic Willsdon, Curator of Education and Public Practice, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Francesco Manacorda, Artistic Director, Tate Liverpool
Raimundas Malasauskas, curator and writer
Joasia Krysa, Head of Research, Liverpool Biennial and Director, Exhibition Research Centre
Rosie Cooper, Head of Programmes, Liverpool Biennial
Polly Brannan, Education Curator, Liverpool Biennial
Francesca Bertolotti-Bailey, Head of Production and International Projects, Liverpool Biennial
Ying Tan, Curator, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA)
Sandeep Parmar, Co-Director, Centre for New and International Writing
Steven Cairns, Associate Curator of Artists Film and Moving Image, ICA
Liverpool Biennial 2016 is realised in collaboration with exhibition partners Tate Liverpool, FACT, Open Eye Gallery, Bluecoat, Liverpool John Moores University and CFCCA, in association with the Walker Art Gallery.
Liverpool Biennial 2016 is supported by commission and project partners Liverpool BID, Casino Luxembourg, Arriva North West and Wales, University of Liverpool, Frieze Projects, CFCCA, The Showroom, ICA, Metal and the Studio School.
Liverpool Biennial is principally funded by Arts Council England, Liverpool City Council and founding supporter, James Moores.
Liverpool Biennial 2016 is sponsored by Ted Baker and Bloomberg.
Liverpool Biennial 2016
9 July – 16 October 2016
www.biennial.com
#Biennial2016
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