Liverpool – The 13th edition of the Liverpool Biennial, titled BEDROCK, will unfold across the city from 7 June to 14 September 2025, transforming galleries, public spaces, and unexpected sites into a sprawling meditation on place, memory, and belonging. Curated by Marie-Anne McQuay with Director Dr Samantha Lackey, this year’s festival digs deep into Liverpool’s physical and social strata—its sandstone bones, its colonial hauntings, and the communities that root it.
Thirty artists and collectives will present work across 18 venues, including new additions such as Pine Court in Chinatown, The Black-E, and 20 Jordan Street in the Baltic Triangle. Twenty-two new commissions will respond to the city’s layered histories, with outdoor installations at Liverpool ONE, Mann Island, St John’s Gardens, and the grounds of The Oratory at Liverpool Cathedral.
The Stone and the Story
BEDROCK takes its name from the sedimentary rock beneath Liverpool’s streets, but McQuay stretches the metaphor, inviting artists to reflect on the people, traditions, and contested legacies that shape identity.
“This Biennial is about origins,” McQuay explains. “It’s about the things we carry—families, ancestral knowledge, the land itself. Liverpool’s history is written in its stone and its streets, but also in the migrations that have defined it.”
Highlights Across the City
Bluecoat: Amber Akaunu’s film Dear Othermother celebrates matriarchal networks in Toxteth, while Alice Rekab’s Bunchlann/Buncharriag explores Irish and Black diasporic kinship.
FACT Liverpool: Kara Chin’s seagull-filled multimedia installation and DARCH’s earth-and-ceramic soundscapes connect local voices to Merseyside’s geology.
Liverpool Cathedral: Ana Navas’s glass collages honour embroiderers from the Cathedral’s archives, while Maria Loizidou’s suspended tapestry of migratory birds reimagines sanctuary.
Open Eye Gallery: Widline Cadet’s photographs trace Haitian migration, and Nandan Ghiya’s Samudra Manthana sculptures fuse Jaipur’s patterns with Liverpool’s colonial trade routes.
The Black-E: Elizabeth Price’s RIBA-supported film excavates the trauma embedded in post-war Catholic Modernist churches.
New Commissions and Collaborations
Anna Gonzalez-Noguchi’s botanical steel towers at Mann Island mirror Liverpool’s historical plant imports.
Isabel Nolan’s stained-glass-inspired sculpture in St John’s Gardens (supported by the Art Fund) echoes the city’s ecclesiastical archives.
Odur Ronald’s hand-stitched aluminium passports at Bluecoat confront histories of African migration.
Public Programme: Layers Unpeeled
A free 14-week event series will unpack BEDROCK in three acts:
7–8 June: Liverpool’s colonial foundations
25–27 July: Family and chosen kinship
12–14 September: Geological time and urban change
Highlights include Frieze New Writers’ Liverpool debut, UP Projects’ eco-conscious art symposium, and British Council-led curator exchanges.
The City as Canvas
From Chinatown charcoal rubbings (ChihChung Chang) to Adelphi Hotel queer narratives (Katarzyna Perlak), the Biennial stitches itself into Liverpool’s fabric. As Lackey notes: “This is about art that doesn’t just occupy the city—it converses with it.”
Liverpool Biennial 2025: BEDROCK 7 June – 14 September 2025 | Free admission