Give Them the Old Razzle Dazzle: Liverpool Biennial 2014

Biennial/Trienniale/Anythingennial season is upon us. Glasgow International kicked everything off in April. Whitstable Biennale in May/June saw gin drinking in beach huts, life-guard performances and stories from a meteorite. Folkestone Triennial in August/September promises us work with an architectural slant: more beach huts, this time from Pablo Bronstein and a cruise-liner hotel lookout from Alex Hartley. No one knows quite what to expect from the new Bristol Biennial in September but, back up in Manchester, the Asia Triennial (September also) looks set to be a winner.  

The oldest biennial in the UK is, however, Liverpool's, which opens this month for its eighth edition. The festival launches with two new commissions, Carlos Cruz-Diez’s Dazzle Ship and composer Michael Nyman’s memorial symphony to the victims of the Hillsborough disaster 25 years ago, which will be performed at Liverpool Cathedral on 5 July. The core exhibition, titled A Needle Walks into a Haystack, is curated by Cairo-born, Brussels-based Mai Abu ElDahab and Geneva-born, San Francisco-based Anthony Huberman. The two are attempting to “disrupt the way we assume our habits and experience our habitats” through a group exhibition of international artists and several more focused installations and exhibitions across the city which look at not just contemporary work, but also at the historical and archival. The Bluecoat will be presenting the work of James Whistler (1834-1903), particularly his infamous Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room (1876-77). This ambitious interior Anglo-Japanese mural/artwork was considered shocking by the Liverpool shipowner it was created for and, in part, resulted in Whistler’s eventual bankruptcy. Across town, FACT presents a solo exhibition of L.A-based artist/filmmaker Sharon Lockhart, her first in the UK, which includes a new installation created for the Biennial. Tate Liverpool, as they did last year, will curate from their own collections in the second-floor galleries. The exhibition includes the work of over 46 artists, including Rachel Whiteread, Susan Hiller, Francis Bacon and León Ferrari (good name!). Downstairs, in the Wolfson Room, an exciting new commission from architect Claude Parent remodels the gallery with slanted floors and ramps, allowing the visitor to re-navigate the space.

Biennial visitors have come to expect sneaky peeks into previously disused or private buildings all over the city. In 2012 we were invited to explore the old postal sorting office on Copperas Hill and the rather epic Cunard buildings on the riverfront. This year does not disappoint, and visitors are invited into the Old Blind School (and former Trade Union building) on Hardman Street, which has been derelict for many years. Another new venue has also been announced this year, referred to mysteriously as ‘The Apartment’ (located in St Andrews Gardens), which will host the work of experimental Belgium television director Jef Cornelis.

A notable bow-out from the main Biennial exhibition is Open Eye, who have chosen to do their own thing this year with an exhibition curated by Lorenzo Fusi (previously curator at the Biennial) called Not All Documents Are Records: Photographing Exhibitions as an Art Form. The exhibition looks to be a meaty one, with work including Hans Haacke’s 1959 photographs of the Kassel quinquennial documenta and a new work from Cristina de Middel that reinterprets the history of the Liverpool Biennial. This should be a good recursive loopy moment within the festival; you will be in the festival, looking at documentation of art festivals, which are in themselves artworks within the festival, and at the same time they tell the history of the current festival, which could itself be an artwork. Exhibition as medium. Take a photograph to complete the oddness.

As usual you can expect to see major partner exhibition the John Moores Painting Prize (dubbed the 'Oscars of the painting world' according to the website, but slightly less glam in reality) at the Walker Art Gallery. The Skinny has its (conceptual) money on either the black and white worm-like totems from Christopher Cook or the stark nakedness of Robert Fawcett. Bloomberg New Contemporaries, the important platform for recent graduates, now in its 65^th year, is also back, this time at the World Museum and selected by Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, Enrico David, and Goshka Macuga.

Over the course of the Biennial, The Skinny will be covering all elements of its programme, reviewing the shows and profiling and interviewing the artists both in print and online. First up we chatted to German artist Judith Hopf, who's exhibiting new work at the Old Blind School. We also recommend the best of the exhibitions and projects that form the wider festival and Independent programme, alongside key events and performances to look out and book ahead for. Happy Biennialing!