Liverpool Biennial returns this summer, transforming the city with bold and thought-provoking contemporary art across public spaces, galleries, and unexpected venues.
What is Liverpool Biennial?
Founded in 1998, Liverpool Biennial is the UK’s largest free festival of contemporary art. Since then, it’s presented over 560 artists and created nearly 400 artworks — many of which remain permanently in the city, like Liverpool Mountain at the Albert Dock or The Hummingbird Clock in Derby Square and even The Dazzle Ferry that takes visitors too and from the Wirral every day. The Biennial has presented work by over 560 leading artists, delivered 34 collaborative neighbourhood projects, and received over 50 million visits.
2025 Theme: BEDROCK
This year’s theme is BEDROCK, inspired by Liverpool’s sandstone geology and its deeper social foundations — from family and heritage to community and colonial legacies.
Liverpool Biennial curator, Marie-Anne McQuay 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’.”
Three Programme Weekends
The festival unfolds across three key weekends, each focusing on a different layer of BEDROCK:
- 7–8 June: Civic and colonial history
- 25–27 July: Family and the things that ground us
- 12–14 September: Geology and the passage of time
Liverpool Biennial 2025 events and exhibitions:
Here is an insight in what kind of artwork and artists to expect at this year’s Liverpool Biennial 2025.
Outdoor Works:
- Alice Rekab — A multi-city (Liverpool and Edinburgh) billboard project with students, exploring identity and belonging. In partnership with Edinburgh Art Festival. (Liverpool ONE).
- Anna Gonzalez-Noguchi — Botanical-themed sculpture inspired by the historical import of ‘foreign’ plants into Liverpool, engraved with records of the city’s botanical collections. (Mann Island).
- Petros Moris — Mosaic works inspired by abandoned playgrounds and personal history (The Oratory, Liverpool Cathedral).
- Isabel Nolan — A steel and concrete sculpture inspired by a drawing of a stained-glass window held in the St Nicholas Pro-Cathedral archive and the leadwork in the windows of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral’s Lutyens Crypt. (St Johns Gardens)
Further works will be exhibited in some unexpected places around the streets of Liverpool:
Anna Gonzalez-Noguchi – Eurochemist, Berry Street.
ChihChung Chang 張致中 – Chinatown.
Kara Chin – Berry Street.
Odur Ronald – SEVENSTORE, Jamaica Street.
Liverpool Biennial 2025 Venues
Bluecoat
The artists at Bluecoat will be focusing on family, chosen family and the cultural heritage which they carry with them and that grounds them.
- Alice Rekab – A layered installation on intergenerational Irish, Black and Multi-Heritage family life.
- Petros Moris – Mosaic work exploring cultural memory, also on view at Walker Art Gallery.
- Amy Claire Mills – Interactive, sensory installation and performance prioritising disability representation.
- Amber Akaunu – New film Dear Other Mother exploring matriarchal community in Toxteth.
- Odur Ronald – Large installation of aluminium passports reflecting African migration.
- ChihChung Chang 張致中 – Ship model-based work reflecting family and naval history, also at Pine Court.
FACT
- Kara Chin – Interactive installation combining urban motifs with manga and gaming aesthetics.
- DARCH – Sound and ceramic work with Sefton residents about land, roots and belonging.
- Linda Lamignan – Film exploring animism, palm oil extraction and Nigeria–Liverpool histories.
Liverpool Cathedral
- Ana Navas – Glass collages inspired by historic female portraiture and local embroidery archives.
- Maria Loizidou – Crocheted tapestry of migratory birds highlighting themes of migration and survival
Liverpool Central Library
- Dawit L. Petros – Dawit presents a research project at Liverpool Central Library 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 – Sculptural photographs inspired by Hindu mythology and colonial resource extraction.
- Widline Cadet – Photographic exploration of Haitian-American diasporic memory.
- Katarzyna Perlak – Horror-inspired queer film set in Liverpool’s Adelphi Hotel. 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.
Pine Court
- Karen Tam 譚嘉文 – Multimedia piece on Cantonese opera and sonic memory in diaspora.
- ChihChung Chang 張致中 – Charcoal rubbing artwork depicting Liverpool’s Chinese Arch. The resulting film documenting the process will be exhibited at Pine Court.
Tate Liverpool + RIBA North
- Hadassa Ngamba – Congo cartography-inspired paintings using colonially extracted materials.
- Mounira Al Solh – Drawings based on dialogues with displaced communities.
- Fred Wilson – African flag paintings stripped of colour to question identity and representation.
- Sheila Hicks – Textile ‘memory balls’ made from garments of friends and family.
- Christine Sun Kim – Infographic drawings on sound, communication and Deaf culture.
- Where the Work Begins – A display curated by RIBA that explores the connection between art and architecture.
Further highlights include sculptural works by Cevdet Erek which measure the passing of time and relationships, photography and sculpture by Dawit L Petros and a new textile work by Antonio Jose Guzman & Iva Jankovic.
The Black-E
- Elizabeth Price – Film on post-war Catholic Modernist churches and architectural trauma.
Walker Art Gallery
- Antonio Jose Guzman & Iva Jankovic – Concrete Roots, textile and dub-based installation on resilience.
- Leasho Johnson – Vivid paintings challenging narratives around the Black queer body.
- Nour Bishouty – Multimedia work on tourism, memory and fictional landscapes.
- Jennifer Tee – Tulip-petal collages inspired by Tampan textile patterns.
Further 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; 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.
20 Jordan Street
- Cevdet Erek – Immersive sound installation replicating the energy of a football stadium.
- Imayna Caceres – Clay-based installation imagining Liverpool’s lifeforce through mud and nature.
Learning Activities
For families, a storybook designed with input from attendees at Liverpool Biennial’s regular family workshops at Liverpool Central Library, will help children and young people explore ‘BEDROCK’. Elsewhere, artist-led workshops, inspired by Biennial projects will happen throughout the summer holidays.
For schools and the wider community, the Liverpool Biennial Learning Programme also includes a selection of online and physical resources developed with teachers across the city to bring Liverpool Biennial 2025 to life in the classroom.
To find out more about the full Liverpool Biennial programme and plan your visit, head to the Liverpool Biennial website.
To discover more events happening across the Liverpool city region visit our What’s On listings.