Event type: Exhibition

The Tree of Authenticity

Nestled in Africa’s largest rainforest lies one of the many graves of the West’s efforts to control nations and nature – one of the world’s largest tropical agricultural research centres. Located on the banks of the Congo River, the Yangambi INERA Research Station was a booming scientific centre in its heyday. Today, it is a mix of jungle and ruin, where questions of knowledge, power over it, and access to it linger.

The Tree of Authenticity is a film by Tate collection artist Sammy Baloji. It recounts the story of two scientists, Paul Panda Farnana and Abiron Beirnaert, who worked at Yangambi between 1910 and 1950. Through their voices, the film looks at how colonialism harmed both people and the environment, and how that damage is still felt today.

Please note that this film screening is at FACT Liverpool.

Doors open at 17.00. The screening starts promptly at 17.30 and will be followed by a Q&A with the artist.

Biography

Artist Sammy Baloji (b. 1978, Lubumbashi, DR Congo) lives and works between Lubumbashi and Brussels. Since 2005 he has been exploring the memory and history of the Democratic Republic of Congo. His work is an ongoing investigation into the cultural, architectural and industrial heritage of the Katanga region, as well as questioning the impact of Belgian colonisation. His critical view of contemporary societies serves as a warning of the ways in which cultural clichés continue to shape collective memory, allowing social and political power games to continue to dictate human behaviour.

Film details

Spoken languages: French, Dutch

Subtitles: English

Length: 89 minutes

Completion: February 2025

Congo-Liverpool Routes Project

This event is part of a research and engagement project called Congo-Liverpool Routes developed through a collaboration between Tate Liverpool and the International Slavery Museum. The project engaged with museum collections and archival material that attest to the historical and present-day connections between Congo and Liverpool. It was developed with Congolese communities in Liverpool in rethinking the legacies of past exploitation while imagining roadmaps for different futures.

In the Window: Meet the Maker – Corinne Price

The Bluecoat Display Centre and Liverpool Irish Festival are delighted to announce our 2025 maker: Corinne Price; continuing our annual In The Window partnership. This event provides visitors with the chance to speak with the artist directly, about their work, general practice, ambitions and achievements. Centred on Corinne’s ceramics, which layer pigment into the clay itself, visitors will benefit from a guided question and answer session, being able to ask additional questions. Refreshments will be provided on arrival.

Friends of the Bluecoat Display Centre will receive a 10% discount on all purchases during the event.

Booking is needed. Please call +44(0) 151 709 4014, to book a place, or stop by the gallery to reserve a space with a member of staff. This event has a recommended donation price of £10 per ticket, providing a speaker fee for Corinne. See our exhibition listing for more details about Corinne.

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Review at the Rathbone: Private view

A private view to open a new show: Review at the Rathbone. Visitors can speak to the artists and meet the makers.

In 2024 Liverpool Irish Festival recruited several artists to work with citizen groups across Merseyside to create art works responding to Liverpool Irish Famine Trail sites. The resulting work can be seen in our app, but this exhibit provides an opportunity to see the original art works close-up, with some works on show for the very first time.

The Rathbone family – William IV (b.1757-d.1809), William VI (b.1819-d.1902) and Eleanor (b.1872-d.1946) especially – were key figures in the abolition of slavery, nursing and Ireland’s land league, harking back to their Irish connections. Being in an eponymously named gallery feels fitting.

Read more in the exhibition listing.

Image credit: Tadhg Devlin (detail only).

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Celebrating Irish Craft

Having partnered with the Liverpool Irish Festival, over years, to celebrate and share the work of Irish makers Bluecoat Display Centre hosts a retrospective of those artisans, including more that are seen through their annual portfolio of creatives. With silver, ceramics, glass, paintings, textiles and more besides, there is something to suit every budding creative, interest and price point. Whether you’re just looking for the sheer fun of it or searching for a unique gift, this is an exceptional display of contemporary talent in one of the longest serving display centres in the country. 

A private view will be held at the Centre from 4.30pm-7.30pm on Thur 18 Sept 2025.

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In the Window: Corinne Price

As part of Liverpool Irish Festival 2025, the artist Corinne Price will display their incredible ceramics at Bluecoat Display Centre. A Northern Ireland based ceramicist, Corinne grew up under the ​open skies of the Dee Estuary in Northwest England. 

Using pigmented porcelain, Corinne creates colourful and sculptural vessels that trace the time and movement involved in their making. Integrating pigment into the clay body, rather than applying it afterwards as a decorative surface, allows Corinne to effectively build in colour. Inspired by the expression of movement in water and air, sunrises and sunsets and the flow of energy in and around bodies and objects, ripples of colours become suggestive of rock strata, waves flames, or wisps of smoke. Drawn to the versatility and sometimes unpredictability of clay, embracing imperfection, Corinne’s work endeavours to infuse spaces with joy and optimism through the presence of colourful forms. ❤️??

Review at the Rathbone

In 2024 Liverpool Irish Festival recruited several artists to work with citizen groups across Merseyside to create art works responding to Liverpool Irish Famine Trail sites. The resulting work can be seen in our app (accessible via liverpoolirishfaminetrail.com), but this exhibit provides an opportunity to see the original art works close-up, with some works on show for the very first time. 

Comprising films, embroidery, banners, cyanotypes, mixed media canvasses and rediscovered stories, the artworks help to connect people today with the legacy of The Great Hunger, considering its impact here on Merseyside. 

Just around the corner from the Liverpool Irish Famine Trail’s plaque on Price Street, the gallery sits in Birkenhead where many of the Irish Famine poor arrived for refuge, just south of where tragedy struck The Sea Nymph and The Rambler in the Mersey in 1846.

The Rathbone family – William IV (b.1757-d.1809), William VI (b.1819-d.1902) and Eleanor (b.1872-d.1946) especially – were key figures in the abolition of slavery, nursing and Ireland’s land league, reflecting their Irish connections. Being in an eponymously named gallery, therefore, feels fitting.

The work was funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and is presented here in partnership with the Rathbone Ceramic Studio and Gallery. The Festival would like to thank Tadhg Devlin, Lydia O’Hara and Nicola McGovern for their efforts – over and above the call of their original commissions – and the many individuals that contributed to the art works on show, especially Jean Maskell and Richard Orritt who worked hard to get the exhibition on show. 

Visitors to the exhibit might also be interested in the Festival’s new book, which documents some of this work — Reveal — available from our online shop: www.liverpoolirishfestival.com/shop

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RIBA presents Home ground: the architecture of football

Go behind the scenes of the beautiful game and explore how football stadiums have shaped cities, local neighbourhoods, and communities for over 125 years. 

Home ground celebrates the stadium as a cultural landmark and a place of weekly pilgrimage, where thousands gather in hope, pride, and passion. From early terraces to today’s bold arenas, stadiums reflect the identity of the places they belong to.  

Inspired by Everton Football Club’s new Hill Dickinson Stadium, the exhibition features more than 50 stadiums from around the world. Through architectural models, photographs, film, and archive material, you will see how stadium design has evolved, and why it matters.  

Alongside material from club and city archives across Europe, highlights in the exhibition also features works of leading contemporary architecture practices. These include Herzog and de Meuron who designed the Allianz Arena in Munich which is the first stadium in the world with a fully colour changing LED exterior as well as Meis/BDP; gmp von Gerkan, Marg and Partners Architects; Populous; and more.  

See how architects have shaped the stadium, solving complex challenges to create shared experiences, and designing spaces that unite fans. 

Whether you are a lifelong supporter or a curious visitor, our Home ground exhibition at RIBA North and Tate Liverpool invites you to see football stadiums as more than sports venues, as unique expressions of place, identity, and design. 

RIBA presents Hill Station: architecture and the altitudes of Empire

 

See how the city of Freetown, Sierra Leone, was shaped by health, architecture, and empire. 

 

Hill Station: architecture and the altitudes of Empire explores the architectural history of colonial-era health segregation in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and its entanglements with the expansion of the British Empire and the emergence of tropical medicine.

 

RIBA’s new exhibition at RIBA North + Tate Liverpool explores the architectural history of colonial-era health segregation in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and its entanglements with the expansion of the British Empire and the emergence of tropical medicine.

 

In 1899, the newly established Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine sent an expedition to Freetown to investigate malaria prevention. Among its recommendations was the construction of an exclusive enclave of “houses for Europeans” on a plateau overlooking the city.

 

Combining architectural model work and film, this new installation by Killian O’Dochartaigh and Edward Lawrenson — part of a wider research project Salone Drift — explores architecture, colonialism, and health segregation, and the complex links between the two port cities, Liverpool and Freetown.

 

Hill Station: architecture and the altitudes of Empire is supported by: 

 

Project by Killian O’Dochartaigh and Edward Lawrenson 

Curatorial support and exhibition coordination by RIBA 

Film directed by Edward Lawrenson, produced by Edward Lawrenson and Killian O’Dochartaigh, featuring Ibrahim Abdullah. Sound design by Philippe Ciompi

Image by Luciano Piazza and Edward Lawrenson

Model designed by Killian O’Dochartaigh

Fabrication by Killian O’Dochartaigh and Richard Collins 

 

 

Welcome Home/Fáilte Abhaile

Irish people have made homes all over the world and Liverpool is no exception, being known as East Dublin, East Belfast and the 33rd county! Taking this year’s theme of ‘arrivals’, the George Ferguson Irish Dance School and Merseyside’s Melody Makers have collaborated to produce a welcoming programme, celebrating what it is to arrive. Whether home is new or old, arriving there can be full of anticipation, expectation and nostalgia. We’ll also welcome new guests to the stage.

This engaging two-hour programme features over 50 musicians and dancers from across Merseyside. The performance takes place in one of Liverpool’s most emerald spaces: the ever-magnificent Sefton Park Palm House.

Liverpool Irish Festival is proud to present this thematic collaboration, building an ongoing series of bespoke programmes, and becoming a firm fixture of the Festival. Grab your tickets whilst you can. 

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