There’s going to be a heck of a lot of art in the Contemporary Urban Centre this Biennial. Lovely, that’s where our office is too!
Liverpool Biennial 2010 – CityStates
18 September to 28 November 2010
Contemporary Urban Centre, Liverpool
A major new collaboration for Liverpool Biennial 2010 presents a series of international exhibitions exploring the cultural dynamics between cities and states
It is often cities that excite artists rather than ‘nations’, but any contemplation of cities also involves considering the state. Today more than 50% of the world’s population lives in cities, and predictions show this will grow to 70% by 2030. Global migration has given rise to a dual allegiance shared between the city we live and work in and the place or nationality of our birth, culture or ancestry. Without doubt the state of cities increasingly determines the future of states.
CityStates is a cluster of international exhibitions, initiated and supported by embassies, foreign governments, international agencies or galleries, exploring the cultural dynamics between cities and states. A new partnership between Liverpool Biennial and the Contemporary Urban Centre has secured a unified, central space for these exhibitions, which in past editions of the Biennial have been spread across the city. CityStates will be exhibited in converted 19th century warehouses in Liverpool’s Baltic Triangle.
FUTURE MOVEMENTS – JERUSALEM
Curated by Samar Martha, Future Movements – Jerusalem features art works that draw inspiration from the city of Jerusalem and its changing urban structure, taking the viewer to places outside the spiritual and holy Old City to urban locations that, despite their importance in shaping the contemporary urban city, have been rarely referenced or addressed in literature and art.
Artists: Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou Rahme (Palestine); Jawad Al Malhi (Palestine); Sarah Beddington (UK); Anna Boggon (UK); CAMP Group (India); Raouf Haj Yihya (Palestine); Alexandra Handal (Palestine/UK); Shuruq Harb (Palestine); Maj Hasager (Denmark); Jakob Jakobsen (Denmark); Bouchra Khalili (Morocco/France); Larissa Sansour (Palestine/Denmark); Oraib Toukan (Jordan)
VILNIUS: CITY WITHOUT WALLS
City Without Walls is an apt metaphor for the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius as well as the works featured in the exhibition. In 1990, Lithuania was the first Baltic state to break free from Soviet rule and declare its independence. Its freedom may or may not have inspired other Soviet republics to follow; but what is certainly true is that its geopolitical location created a nexus between the easternmost periphery of the European Union and Belarus, Russia, and beyond.
Artists: Laura Garbštienė, Žilvinas Kempinas, Žilvinas Landzbergas, S&P Stanikas
CARIBBEAN PAVILION: THE BAHAMAS, BARBADOS, MARTINIQUE
Curated by David A. Bailey
“How are we to write the histories of non-western societies in relation to modernity?” In his groundbreaking essay ‘Modernity and Its Others: Three ‘Moments’ In The Post-war History of the Black Diaspora Arts’ by Stuart Hall re-visits modernity through three historical art movements (the ‘last colonials’, the ‘post-colonials’ and the contemporary) from the perspective of the Diaspora. This timely discourse is used as the basis of an invitation to 11 artists of three Caribbean islands, the Bahamas, Martinique and Barbados to come to Liverpool and make new work under the CityStates theme.
Artists: Ewan Atkinson (Barbados), Ishi Butcher, (Barbados), Akyem Ramsay, (Barbados), David Damoison, (Martinique), Christian Bertin, (Martinique), Jean-François Boclé (Martinique), Kendra Frorup (Bahamas), Heino Schmid (Bahamas), John Beadle (Bahamas), Lynn Parotti (Bahamas), Lavar Munroe (Bahamas)
NORWAY, SWEDEN, ICELAND, DENMARK, FINLAND: NORDIC ARTISTS
Curated by Claudia Lastra
NICE presents artworks from eight contemporary Nordic artists, in relation to the Liverpool Biennial’s 2010 theme ‘Touched’, the artists chosen for the Nordic pavilion find inspiration from urban landscapes, social environments, identities, rhythms in movement and fetishised commodities. These imaginative geographies examine the ritualised ways of living, everyday experiences of the cities’ environment and materials with which we identify.
Artists: Hrafnhildur Arnardottir aka ‘Shoplifter’ (Iceland); Knut Asdam (Norway); Kalle Brolin (Sweden); Marianna Morkore and Rannva Karadottir (Faroe Islands); Johanna Lecklin (Finland); Hrafnkell Sigurdsson (Iceland); Soren Thilo Funder (Denmark)
QUEBEC: Présence Québécoise à la Liverpool Biennial
Manifestation Internationale d’art de Québec
Curated by Claude Bélanger, commissioned by Sylvain Campeau
When faced with a simultaneously troubling and stimulating work of art, the viewer can’t help but be moved. Québec City has been a forum for the exploration of context-based art that actively seeks viewer reaction, giving rise to more intrusive forms of performance: manoeuvres, happenings, and situational constructions.
Artists: Annie Baillargeon (Québec), Martin Dufrasne / Carl Bouchard (Montréal/ Chicoutimi), Claudie Gagnon (Issoudun), Massimo Guerrera (Montréal), Adad Hannah (Montréal), Manon Labrecque (Montréal), Catherine Sylvain (Montréal), Julie Andrée T. (Québec)
TAIPEI: ORGANIC INTERFACE
Curated by Catherine Jiang
Organic Interface presents seven artists whose work reflects their vivid individual life and the mysterious urbanised homeland. This split in Chinese culture is evoked as a ‘field of aesthetic power’ in which digitised visualisation and the virtual become a space for encounters between Chinese and Western ontological perspectives.
Artists: work by CHEN, Chieh-jen, HOU, I Ting, LIN, Kun-Ying, WU, Cheng-Chang, CHUNG, Yi-Lung and performances by WANG, Fujui, LIU, Yin-Sheng, FU, Wen-Chin and LEE, Mei-YI CHANG, Hui-Sheng
SEOUL (LOOP): MOVING FAST Inspirational Pan-Asian Artists
Curated by Stephanie Kim, Jinsuk Suh, Eugene Tang, Leng Lin, this exhibition showcases Asian media artists and also media artists working in Europe: highlighting the Liverpool Biennial’s strategic location in a European Capital of Culture and as the UK’s Biennial. Demonstrating how moving images can easily travel using networking sites and social networks the exhibition will also show how the perceived virtual reality is in fact with us now.
HUN Kyungwoo (Korea), KOO Jeong-A (Korea), KIM Kira (Korea), PARK Junebum, (Korea), OH Kyungmin (Korea), SHIN Kiwoun (Korea), LEE Hyunchul (Korea), KIM Youngeun (Korea), Mioon (Korea), CHUNG Yumi (Korea), Taguchi Yukihiro (Japan), Taro Izumi (Japan), Sakakibara Sumito, Japan, Zhao Liang (China), Zhang Qing (China), Qiu Anxiong (China), Yang Fudong, (China), Wang Jianwei, (China)
Ma Qiusha, (China), WU Chi-Tsung, (Taiwan), FONG Silas, (Hong Kong), Dinh Q Le, (Vietnam), KUSWIDANANTO Augustinus aka Jompet, (Indonesia), HO Tzu Nyen, Singapore