The Biennial festival, titled ‘BEDROCK’, takes place 7 June – 14 September 2025, curated by Marie-Anne McQuay. ‘BEDROCK’ draws on Liverpool’s distinctive geography and the beliefs which underpin the city’s social foundations. It is inspired by the sandstone which spans the city region and is found in its distinctive architecture. ‘BEDROCK’ also acts as a metaphor for the social foundations of Liverpool and the people, places and values that ground all of us.
Open Eye Gallery is one of the Biennial’s venues. The artists at Open Eye Gallery work with lens-based media and sculpture to conjure places that speak to their sense of identity. All three artists are reinterpreting stories, myths, lost traditions and memories to form new ones.
In Gallery 1, 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, the artist creates ‘sculptural photographs’ to explore themes relating to the exploitation of natural resources, rising water levels and racial conflicts.
Nandan Ghiya (b.1980, Jaipur, India) is a self-taught visual artist and academic based in Jaipur. Hailing from a family of studio photographers, Ghiya incorporates found vintage photographs and wooden frames to reflect upon shifts in image,identity & space in the 21st century environment with digital elements as the leitmotif. His recent sculptural directions are based on mythological allegories, commenting on the changing urban landscape and its impact, both on heritage and climate.
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. The works explore the complexities of Black diasporic life and survival, as well as the fragility of memory, using motifs which refer to her past and her ancestry.
Widline Cadet (b. 1992, Haiti) Cadet delves into intergenerational memory, selfhood, and erasure within the Haitian diasporic experience through photography, video, sculpture, and installation. Throughout her practice, Cadet draws inspiration from her memories, Haitian culture, folklore, and an archive of family photographs and videos to create speculative images that traverse specific moments in time and geographic locations, exploring inherited cultural beliefs and the ways that Black diasporic life continues to inform and shapeher lived experiences.
Upstairs, in Gallery 3, Katarzyna Perlak presents a new, collaborative film set in the bedrooms, hallways and ballrooms of the iconic Adelphi Hotel, once a popular destination for wealthy travellers on their way by boat to North America via Liverpool. Co-created with local award-winning filmmaking organisation First Take and participants from their REEL: Queer programme, the film adopts a non-linear, poetic narrative and references the genre of horror to explore longing and Queer identity. The artist also shows work at Walker Art Gallery.
Katarzyna Perlak is a Polish born artist, based in London whose practice employs video, performance, textiles, sculpture and installation. Through her work Perlak employs a notion of ‘tender crafts’, exploring how crafts (heritage and traditions) can be revisited and re-imagined from contemporary feminist, queer and diasporic (migrant) perspectives. She engages ‘affective truths’ such as myths, tales, dreams, desires, collective memories, and seek to problematise how history is written and traditions are represented.
Liverpool Biennial catalogue (£15) is available in Open Eye Gallery’s independent bookshop.
Marie-Anne McQuay, Curator, Liverpool Biennial 2025, said: “The city’s geological foundations and its psyche have provided the starting point for the conversations of Liverpool Biennial 2025, with the invited artists bringing us their own definition of ‘BEDROCK’. Definitions which include family and chosen family, cultural heritage carried across the generations, and the environments that nurture and restore them.
“Central to this understanding of BEDROCK is the sense of loss that comes from the ongoing legacies of colonialism and empire so formative to Liverpool’s foundations. In responding to the city, artists have taken inspiration from Liverpool’s archives and histories, from its communities and civic spirit, and from taking time to dwell in its green spaces which support plant, insect, and bird life in unexpected ways through planned and unplanned urban developments.”
Dr Samantha Lackey, Director, Liverpool Biennial, said: “This festival deliberately explores and visibly exposes the foundations of Liverpool, connecting international artists with our histories, people and the very ground we walk on. Working with Marie-Anne McQuay, with her long-standing knowledge of the city and its communities, has allowed us to dig deeper into the things that make us a Biennial that could only be created in Liverpool.
“We’re excited to have forged new relationships with local organisations including First Take and At The Library, alongside our work with long standing partners at Tate Liverpool, National Museums Liverpool, FACT, Bluecoat and Open Eye Gallery, consolidating the city’s cultural connections between the local and the global and looking to its foundations to support growth and possibility for the future.We look forward to sharing BEDROCK with visitors from our city and wider region, as well as those visiting from across the UK and internationally.”
Liverpool Biennial is the UK’s largest free festival of contemporary visual art. Taking place in historic buildings, unexpected spaces and art galleries, the Biennial has been transforming the city through art for over two decades. A dynamic programme of free exhibitions, performances, screenings, community and learning activities and fringe events unfolds over 14 weeks, shining a light on the city’s vibrant cultural scene.
Images by Kate Davies
