Liverpool’s Biennial is here and opens tomorrow, with a press view today. It is set to take over the city with hundreds of new commissions over dozens of venues. Tate Liverpool will be presenting a brand new commission by French architect Claude Parent, one of France’s most important modernist architects. He will realise a major installation for the Wolfson Gallery at Tate Liverpool which will form a key part of the 8th Biennial Exhibition curated by Mai Abu ElDahab and Anthony Huberman, A Needle Walks into a Haystack. Co-commissioned by Liverpool Biennial and Tate Liverpool as part of Liverpool Biennial 2014 it will go on display from 5 July – 26 October 2014.
Claude Parent was born in briefly at Le Corbusier’s office before setting up as an architect with Ionel Schein in 1953. He was selected in 1970 to design the French Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and in 2005 was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. In the mid 1960s Parent devised a theory, with critic Paul Virilio, the fonction oblique, for which he is most famous. This declared that buildings should be all about ramps, slopes and angles, wall-free where possible. Parent has built, lived, worked and taught in his constructions devised through his fonction oblique, taking his work as an active member of his profession to its most avant-garde limits. Among his noted buildings are Villa Drusch in Versailles (1963), the church of Sainte Bernadette du Banlay in Nevers (1963-1966), Maison Bordeaux le Pecq in Normandy (1963), French Pavilion for the Venice Biennale (1970), Avicenne Foundation (1969), formerly Iran House, the last residence to be built in the cite internationale de Paris, designed with two Iranian architects, Moshen Foroughi and Heydar Ghiai.
A former Mersey Docks pilot ship has been transformed into a WWI “dazzle ship” and Michael Nyman presents a memorial symphony for the victims of the Hillsborough disaster at Liverpool Cathedral. There’s also the 2014 John Moores Painting Prize exhibition at Walker Art Gallery plus work at Open Eye Gallery, The Bluecoat and The Vauxhall Art Car Boot Fair at the CCP car park in Duke Street on July 5 featuring the likes of Peter Blake, Polly Morgan and Gavin Turk as well as numerous Liverpool-based artists. Come pick up a bargain!