Isabel Nolan draws inspiration from a diverse range of different sources to create her artwork, including religious relics, architectural plans, literary and historical figures, and human and animal behaviour. These artistic investigations are driven by intensive research, but the result is always deeply personal and open to different interpretations.
Built in 1813, St Nicholas’ stood on Copperas Hill and served as Liverpool’s Catholic Pro-Cathedral until 1967 – the upright section of Nolan’s work is loyal to the original tracery of the east window. The other half is geometric – reminiscent of the windows in Lutyen’s Crypt, which sits beneath the Metropolitan Cathedral. The Crypt is all that remains of an earlier design for the building, after plans were redeveloped following financial issues due to the Second World War.
Lying here on its side, the piece might evoke ideas of architectural ruins, yet the bright colours – a nod to stained glass and industrial steelwork palettes – suggest possibility and ambition. For Nolan, the piece attempts to claim space for these buildings that have ultimately been lost, or which represent that which was never realised – repurposing something once functional to reflect on rich histories of Liverpool. The piece draws not only the past and present, but also the real and imagined, together.
This work is temporarily located at the John Lennon Art and Design Building at Liverpool John Moores University.
Further work by this artist is located at The Walker Art Gallery.
Courtesy of the artist and Kerlin Gallery. Commissioned by Liverpool Biennial, with support from Art Fund and Culture Ireland.
Anna Gonzalez Noguchi’s art practice is informed by her cross-cultural heritage, particularly her relationship with her Japanese grandparents, who often inspire the materials used in her work. She attempts to preserve fragmented memories and experiences from her childhood – including their glitches and inconsistencies – as a way of identifying with her biography and heritage.
The artist combines machine and hand-made objects, some of which are found and some created new. She layers them on top of one another to give them new life and purpose, referencing how our memories can often change or take on new meaning over time. The works have a nostalgic quality, reminding us of both treasured family mementos and kitsch souvenirs. A continuous presence in the artist’s works are references to plants and fruits, including cut-outs from her grandfather’s gardening magazines and buttons in the shape of flowers. These botanical symbols act as a metaphor or memorial to the impermanence and fluidity of identity.
A major outdoor sculpture by the artist is exhibited at Mann Island.
Courtesy of the artist.
Odur Ronald uses aluminium printing plates to explore ideas of free movement, migration, access, belonging and identity.
The material has always been important to Ronald, ever since he was child when he would collect scrap metal to sell for extra pocket money to buy toys.
His practice centres around repurposing and testing the possibilities of this aluminium metal, which he manipulates through hand-stitching, weaving, denting, burning and layering.’
No Hurry’ was made during an art residency at Silhouette Projects in Kampala, Uganda, during which Ronald reimagined and recreated objects which he interacted with and which he felt were important to him in his daily life. The work is based on a memory the artist has of his friend turning up to meet him at the airport in battered old trainers. The artist presents the work as a playful anecdote, claiming that his friends and, more generally, other Ugandans, would usually rather arrive late than sacrifice looking good.
Work by this artist is also on view at Bluecoat.
Courtesy of the artist and the Martin Kharumwa collection. Supported by SEVENSTORE
The title of this work, ‘Bunchlann/Buncharraig’, translates from Irish Gaelic as ‘Origin Family/Bedrock’. It speaks directly to the subjects of community, resistance, diaspora and places of belonging that define the theme of Liverpool Biennial 2025. Alice Rekab uses their own personal experiences of Irish, Black and multi-heritage family life to explore hybrid identities, shared traditions and legacies of migration.
Led by artists Tobi Balogun, Maïa Nunes and Aisling-Ór Ní Aodha, the group – all of whom had personal or familial connections to migration – shared stories about their heritage and culture through personal belongings, and explored self-expression through the mediums of hip-hop dance, language and voice.
Further work by Alice Rekab is exhibited at Bluecoat.
Courtesy of the artist. Co-commissioned by Liverpool Biennial and EAF25 (Edinburgh Art Festival), with support from The Ampersand Foundation, Culture Ireland, the Arts Council Ireland Visual Arts Project Award and Liverpool ONE.
Informed by her cross-cultural heritage, Anna Gonzalez Noguchi’s art practice is based on a mixture of local research and personal or familial experience. She removes, relocates and reconstructs objects in different geographic territories to give them new meaning and to highlight the fragility of memory and experience.
Plants from the city’s botanical archives, such as the Himalayan Balsam, are engraved onto the work. They were originally collected for ornamental or medicinal use, or for their ‘splendid invasiveness’ – the rapid and widespread growth of certain non-native plants.
From a distance, the work’s metallic surfaces can act like mirrors, causing the structure to flicker in natural light or camouflage into its surroundings. The reflective nature of the work reference show people, wealth and culture migrated to a new place – both throughout history and in present times – will merge to become one with wider society, its landscape and its architecture.
Incorporated into the work are benches which visitors are invited to sit on. The top of each seat features a cutout of the day of the week written in Japanese kanji characters, referencing the natural elements each character signifies. Through these cutouts, the work becomes a physical calendar, tracking days across different moments in time. By sitting alongside other visitors, we mimic the behaviour of plants, cross-pollinating with the work and each other.
Further work by this artist is exhibited at Eurochemist.
Courtesy of the artist. Commissioned by Liverpool Biennial, with support from Acción Cultural Español.
Kara Chin is an artist working across animation, ceramics, sculpture and installation. She uses unexpected materials, strange scales and fragmented references and imagery to create sculptures which reflect on our day-to-day relationship to fast evolving technology and the world around us.
She refers to these intricate works as ‘litter fossils’ as they reference common sights and objects found in cities such as takeaway cartons, seagulls and other city detritus. The trail of works links Liverpool Biennial 2025 venues, ultimately leading us to FACT Liverpool where Chin presents a new, interactive multimedia installation. Part of the same body of work, her installation at FACT explores rage, grief and nuisance through repeated motifs such as seagulls, parking meters, and the seemingly invasive Buddleia plant often found in cities including Liverpool. Alongside references to litter seen here, they serve as metaphors for global unease and anguish in the face of economic and ecological decline.
Further work by this artist is exhibited at FACT Liverpool.
Courtesy of the artist and LINSEED. Commissioned by Liverpool Biennial, with support from Suling Mead.
At The Black-E, Turner Prize-winning artist Elizabeth Price presents a major single channel film, supported by RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects), which centres 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, whilst also telling a story of 20th century migration.
*Please note that the entrance to the exhibition is on Nelson Street, next door to Pine Court*
Amy Claire Mills presents an interactive, sensory installation, co-commissioned with Liverpool-based disability and Deaf arts organisation DaDa, supported by Paul Hamlyn Foundation. The artist advocates for creating inclusive, adaptive ‘third spaces’ that prioritise disability representation, access and care. The artist will also create a collaborative performance with d/Deaf, Disabled and Neurodivergent practitioners from the region.
Alongside work by Alice Rekab which focuses on intergenerational experiences of Irish, Black and multi-heritage family life, and Petros Moris’ extracted ‘ready-made’ mosaics, other highlights include a new film titled ‘Dear Othermother’ by Amber Akaunu which celebrates a deeply personal tale of friendship, single motherhood and alternative, matriarchal community networks in Toxteth, one of the oldest Black communities in the UK.
On the ground floor, 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.
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. Work by the artist is also on view at Pine Court.
In FACT’s foyer gallery, Kara Chin presents an interactive, multimedia installation which draws on repeated motifs such as seagulls, parking meters and the seemingly 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.
In Gallery 1, 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.
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 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.
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.
Maria Loizidou creates a large-scale, crocheted installation which responds to the architecture of the building; a hanging tapestry of hand-embroidered migratory birds that can be found on Merseyside. Co-commissioned by Liverpool Cathedral, Loizidou’s thoughtful installation invites us to consider our relationship with nature and explores themes of migration, coexistence and survival in a constantly changing world.
