BIENNALS:Liverpool Biennial 2016
Liverpool Biennial 2016 unfolds through the landscape of the city. It is organised as a story narrated in several episodes: fictional worlds sited in galleries, museums, pubs, unused spaces, stations, hotels, parking lots, shops and supermarkets. For the first time children work together with artists and the Biennial team to develop ambitious exhibitions, projects and publications specifically for young audiences.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Liverpool Biennial 2016 Archive
For the 9th edition of the Liverpool Biennial, 42 artists are invited to create new works for locations across the city, alongside a showcase of ten associate artists working in the North of England. The Biennial exhibition has been conceived as a series of episodes, drawing inspiration from Liverpool’s past, present and future. The episodes are: Children’s Episode, the Biennial’s first comprehensive commissioning programme for artists to work collaboratively with children, Ancient Greece, Chinatown, Flashback, in Software, the artists 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 Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, who created the film, “Dogsy Ma Bone”, entirely cast, produced and directed with young people from Liverpool. Liverpool’s fleet of Arriva buses will include three double-deckers transformed by artists, of which one will be designed by schoolchildren. Reflecting on Liverpool’s radical political history, Japanese artist Koki Tanaka revisits the scene of a huge protest in Liverpool in 1985. It involves around 10,000 children, demonstrating against the Conservative government’s Youth Training Scheme. In Flashback, Mark Leckey will presenst “Dream English Kid”, a film inspired by events in his life from the ‘70s to ‘90s. A floor of Tate Liverpool is transformed into Ancient Greece. Drawing on National Museums Liverpool’s significant collection of classical Greek sculptures, Tate Liverpool presents these sculptures alongside new commissions by artists including: Andreas Angelidakis, Koenraad Dedobbeleer and Jumana Manna. Outside the Mersey Tunnel George’s Dock Ventilation Tower, Betty Woodman created a large-scale bronze fountain made from Woodman’s characteristic vessels and fresco-like sculptural works. Chinatown resounds in spaces across the city, to be encountered in everyday settings such as the supermarket, and in large spaces such as Cains Brewery. Works by 15 artists from all parts of the world are on presentation. Among these are works by: Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, exiled in Dubai, who are sending a shipping container by sea full of works from their art collection and artefacts from their home, to be reassembled in Liverpool. Carlos Cruz-Diez was commissioned to work with the idea of ‘dazzle’ camouflage in partnership with National Museums Liverpool using a historic pilot ship, the “Edmund Gardner”, the ship is situated in a dry dock adjacent to Liverpool’s Albert Dock and this is a new public monument for the city. Sir Peter Blake, dazzled a Mersey Ferry in partnership with Merseytravel and National Museums Liverpool. Sir Peter’s design entitled “Everybody Razzle Dazzle” covers the Mersey Ferry “Snowdrop” with a distinctive pattern in monochrome and colour, transforming the vessel into a moving artwork as it continues its service. This is the third in the series of Dazzle Ship commissions and the first to be a working vessel.
Info: Curators: Sally Tallant, Dominic Willsdon, Francesco Manacorda, Raimundas Malasauskas, Joasia Krysa, Rosie Cooper, Polly Brannan, Francesca Bertolotti-Bailey, Ying Tan, Sandeep Parmar, Steven Cairns, Liverpool Biennial 2016, Duration: 9/7-16/10/16, Various Locations, www.biennial.com
