Where to see Liverpool Biennial 2025 artwork across city

The Liverpool Biennial gets underway tomorrow with the theme of this year’s festival – BEDROCK – being described as “inspired by the physical and social foundations of Liverpool and the people, places and values that ground us.”

Biennial Curator Mary-Anne McQuay explains: “BEDROCK as a title for the festival extends from the physical sandstone foundations of the city to become a metaphor for its distinctive civic values, 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 includes family and chosen family, ancestral cultural heritage, and environments that nurture and restore them.

“All of these artworks and responses are now layered across the city and I'm so delighted to welcome everyone to experience Liverpool Biennial 2025 this summer.”

The UK’s largest free festival of contemporary visual art sees 30 national and international artists and collectives present work at locations across the city from June 7 to September 14.

Here’s what you can see where.

Tate Liverpool + RIBA North

The artists at Tate Liverpool + RIBA North map the grounding relationships and places they carry with them, which include intimate familial and chosen family connections, and the idea of homeland as a place of both comfort and loss.

Highlights include sculptural works by Cevdet Erek which measure the passing of time and relationships, photography and sculpture by Dawit L Petros (pictured above) and a new textile work by Antonio Jose Guzman & Iva Jankovic.

Hadassa Ngamba presents a work from her Cerveau series, exhibited for the first time in the UK, which is based on cartographic enquiries into Congo’s history and psychological mapping of the terrains that exist within us.

Mounira Al Solh presents works from her ongoing drawing and embroidery series I Strongly Believe in Our Right to Be Frivolous (above). The work from the Tate Collection, which includes three new drawings created for Liverpool Biennial 2025, records conversations Al Solh has had with displaced individuals, groups and families since 2012.

Other loans from the Tate Collection include works from Fred Wilson’s Flag series, in which the designs of African and African diasporic countries' flags are appropriated to create paintings drained of colour; Sheila Hicks’ Grand Boules created using garments belonging to her friends and family and often referred to by the artist as ‘memory balls’; and Christine Sun Kim’s infographic drawings which each consider how sound operates in society.

Liverpool Central Library

In the Hornby Library, Dawit L. Petros (Eritrea) presents a sprawling research project that aims to re-read a historic military expedition to the River Nile from 1884-1885 – a British-led expedition which included 379 voyageurs from across Canada and Quebec including French Canadians, Western Canadians and First Nations.

 The installation, which has been developed through a residency at Liverpool John Moore’s University, includes sound, video, books and archive material gathered and created in response to Liverpool’s own archives related to shipping and empire. 

Open Eye Gallery

Nandan Ghiya’s new sculptural work, co-commissioned with Public Arts Trust India, interprets the Samudra Manthana – a major episode in Hinduism that translates to ‘churning of the ocean’ in Sanskrit.

Drawing inspiration from the textiles and patterns of heritage buildings in both Liverpool and Jaipur, Ghiya creates ‘sculptural photographs’ to explore themes relating to the exploitation of natural resources, rising water levels and racial conflicts.

In Gallery 2, Widline Cadet presents an exhibition of photography works created between 2021 and 2024, centring around her family’s lived experience of emigrating from Haiti to the United States.

And upstairs, Katarzyna Perlak presents a new, collaborative film set in the bedrooms, hallways and ballrooms of Liverpool’s Adelphi Hotel.

Walker Art Gallery

Antonio Jose Guzman & Iva Jankovic present a new work as part of their Electronic Dub Station series, recently presented at the 60th Venice Biennale. Concrete Roots examines themes of resilience, migration, ecological consciousness and textile traditions through the duo’s renowned use of indigo textiles and dub music soundscapes.

Leasho Johnson presents a series of densely pigmented large-scale paintings in which he creates abstract characters that reference his own lived experience to disrupt historical, political, stereotypical and biological expectations of the Black queer body.

Through sculpture, photo-collage, drawing, and textiles, Nour Bishouty investigates the impulses of tourism and sightseeing, foregrounding questions around permission and the production of fantasy.

Jennifer Tee exhibits collages from her ongoing Tampan Tulips series which draw inspiration from the colourful, geometric aesthetics of the traditional tampan textiles. Created using dried tulip petals, these works highlight the delicate and fleeting nature of life.

Other highlights include cast resin works of Dream Stones by Karen Tam 譚嘉文, a new, large-scale textile and embroidery work by Katarzyna Perlak (pictured) wall-based works by Cevdet Erek inspired by football stadia layouts, paintings and tapestries of fictional landscapes by Isabel Nolan and a mosaic work by Petros Moris presented in the Sculpture Gallery.

Bluecoat

The Biennial takes over the Bluecoat galleries with works from a quartet of artists.

Amy Claire Mills presents an interactive, sensory installation in the form of a brightly coloured hydrotherapy pool with giant inflatable kickboard and larger than life embroidered hand towel co-commissioned with Liverpool-based disability and Deaf arts organisation DaDa, supported by Paul Hamlyn Foundation. The Australian advocates for creating inclusive, adaptive ‘third spaces’ that prioritise disability representation, access and care.

Also on the ground floor, Ugandan multi-disciplinary artist Odur Ronald presents his most ambitious installation to date, involving a vast collection of hand-stitched aluminium passports, to address the conditions of forced and voluntary migration of African people to Europe throughout history.

The third gallery space holds work by Dublin-based Alice Rekab which focuses on intergenerational experiences of Irish, Black and multi-heritage family life.

Then upstairs, ChihChung Chang 張致中 restages his Port of Fata Morgana installation. The work, centred around a model ship created by the artist’s father, explores family histories, alongside the history of naval architecture and the parallels between Liverpool and the port city of Kaohsiung.

The Bluecoat also hosts a new film, Dear Othermother, by Amber Akaunu and Petros Moris’ ‘ready-made’ mosaics.

FACT

In the foyer gallery, Singapore-born Kara Chin presents an interactive, multimedia installation which draws on repeated motifs such as seagulls, parking meters and the invasive Buddleia plant often found in cities.

Co-commissioned by FACT Liverpool and inspired by aesthetics from Manga and apocalyptic video game graphics, Chin explores themes of rage, grief and nuisance. The project extends to the streets of Liverpool with intricate ceramic tiles appearing on routes between venues.

Meanwhile in Gallery 1, British-based duo DARCH produces an earth, ceramic and sound installation in collaboration with residents in Sefton, who have contributed stories about their connection to the land and bedrock – physical and spiritual – of Merseyside. Co-commissioned with At the Library, elements of the project will also be available digitally on biennial.com and in-person at Bootle Library.

And also in Gallery 1, Linda Lamignan questions the different ways in which humans treat and value the natural world, whether for profit or as something to be respected and protected.

A new film work references the Norwegian artist’s own ancestry and traditions, the knowledge systems of animism and geology, and the long history of palm oil and petroleum extraction in Nigeria’s Delta State area, including how those materials were traded with Liverpool.

The Black-E

Liverpool's pioneering arts and community centre hosts Turner Prize-winning artist Elizabeth Price who presents a major single channel film, supported by RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects), centring on the architectural history of Catholic Modernist churches in post-war Britain.

The artist considers how their particular architecture manifests traces of trauma and anxieties of the time, while also telling a story of 20th century migration.

Pine Court – Nelson Street

Next door to the Black-E, in Liverpool’s Chinatown, find work by two artists.

Karen Tam 譚嘉文 presents a multimedia installation Scent of Thunderbolts (above), which addresses Chinese diasporic sonic memory in the form of a Cantonese opera.

First created for Toronto Biennial 2024, the work draws inspiration from archival materials and conversations with community members, integrating reimagined elements from Cantonese opera including props, stage settings, backdrops and furniture.

And following a series of workshops with Liverpool residents supported by Pagoda Arts, ChihChung Chang 張致中 has created a collective, temporary public artwork made of charcoal rubbings, arranged together to depict the city’s Chinese Arch with the resulting film documenting the process exhibited at Pine Court.

Eurochemist - Berry Street

Informed by her cross-cultural heritage Anna Gonzalez-Nogouchi removes, relocates and reconstructs objects in different geographic territories— renegotiating memory and investigates our capacity to anchor experience in tangible forms.

Hand-crafted objects, industrially finished surfaces, prosaic artefacts and images are layered, and through this a shift in meaning and purpose is acquired. 

Liverpool Cathedral

Ecuadorian Ana Navas presents a series of ‘glass collages’ in the Lady Chapel, which draw inspiration from the colours and forms found in the clothing and objects within portraits of women from throughout art history.

Among them, a newly commissioned work draws inspiration from the embroideries made by generations of women from Liverpool that are held in the Cathedral’s archives.

Meanwhile Limassol-based Maria Loizidou creates a large-scale, crocheted installation which hangs from the Dulverton Bridge and which responds to the architecture of the building; a tapestry of hand-embroidered migratory birds that can be found on Merseyside.

Co-commissioned by Liverpool Cathedral, Loizidou’s installation invites us to consider our relationship with nature and explores themes of migration, coexistence and survival in a constantly changing world.

SEVENSTORE – Norfolk Street

Award-winning multi-disciplinary visual artist Odur Ronald uses aluminium printing plates by exploring its possibilities, one technique at a time by not only painting on the aluminium sheets, but also dents, burns, layers, stitches and weaves the shiny metal thus achieving texture, color, shape and character.

The playful No Hurry, being shown at SEVENSTORE, recreates a pair of battered trainers which are found on display among the shop’s new stock.

20 Jordan Street

At 20 Jordan Street, the artists explore foundational references from the city including football stadia and naturally occurring materials such as plants and clay.

Istanbul’s Cevdet Erek presents a new large-scale sculptural and sonic installation that replicates the atmosphere, aesthetics and spatial arrangements of football stadia. Incorporating energetic musical rhythms, it explores division and belonging through the lens of football.

Then in an installation comprising objects created using clay from local beaches and riverbeds, drawings and moving image, Vienna-based Imayna Caceres explores the concept of ‘lifer’ (mud full of life), as one of the possible meanings behind the word ‘Liverpool’.

The work invites visitors to think about the worlds that lay out of sight in the ground beneath us, and the natural beings whose lives and labour have contributed to forming the city.

Outdoor Works

A series of outdoor sculptures and installations have been commissioned, celebrating Liverpool’s architecture and public spaces, which are being sited at various locations around the city centre.

Catch Alice Rekab’s Bunchlann/Buncharriag (above) at the Sugar House Steps at Liverpool ONE. Rekab’s artistic practice takes a mixed-race Irish identity as a starting point from which to explore experiences of race, place and belonging.

Bunchlann/Buncharriag translates from the Gaelic as Origin Family/Bedrock, and Rekab has collaborated with students from the City of Liverpool College through a series of workshops which investigated and celebrated notions of identity. 

Athens-based Anna Gonzalez-Noguchi brings her work (above) to Mann Island for the Biennial, inspired by the historical import of ‘foreign’ plants into Liverpool.

Dukinfield Street, outside the Liverpool John Moores’ John Lennon Art & Design building, is the location for an installation by Isabel Nolan which has been inspired by stained glass windows.

Nolan’s practice is materially expansive, matching the scope and scale of her varied interests and encompassing architectural, steel, sculptures, handmade objects, tapestries, water-based oil paintings, pencil drawings or texts.

Singapore-born, Newcastle-based Kara Chin works across animation, ceramics, sculpture and installation. Look down as you walk along Berry Street to find her Biennial artwork.

And Petros Moris, who is also based in Athens, presents a quintet of works from his ALONE series of mosaic sculptures at The Oratory at Liverpool Cathedral.