Tate Liverpool turns to ancient Greece during the ninth Liverpool Biennial this summer (9 July-16 October), with an exhibition of classical sculptures and artefacts drawn from the collection of National Museums Liverpool. Contemporary artists, including Andreas Angelidakis and Jumana Manna, will show new works at Tate alongside objects from antiquity amassed during the early 19th century by the Lancastrian collector Henry Blundell, which are now in the port city's collection.
One of Liverpool Biennial’s most ambitious ever commissions will involve draining a dock in north Liverpool for a work devised by the Italian artist Lara Favaretto. The dock will be emptied and filled with casts of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures secured to the floor in concrete. The piece points to “the impermanence of monuments themselves”, the organisers say.
“Liverpool has so much neoclassical sculpture. The biennial artists will create a fictional past, present and future, just like the city’s architects did when they designed the neoclassical buildings in the 1800s,” says Sally Tallant, the director of the biennial. US artist Betty Woodman is also due to create a classically-inspired fountain for the plaza in front of the art deco George's Dock Ventilation Tower on the city's waterfront.
Tallant says that the biennial has been conceived as a series of episodes. “It’s like writing a series for television,” she says. “We wondered what would it be like if the exhibition unfolded in a series of episodes across the city.”
These six components include Ancient Greece; Chinatown, which draws on Liverpool’s Chinese community; Flashback, which features contemporary interpretations of historical events by artists such as Mark Leckey; Software, which explores “parallel understandings of art and life” through technology; and Monuments from the Future in which artists, such as New York-based Alisa Baremboym and US sculptor Rita McBride, imagine what Liverpool might look like in 30 years’ time.
The Children’s Episode section, which includes art made for—and with—children and young adults includes Japanese artist Koki Tanaka’s project focusing on the controversial Youth Training Scheme (YTS). This work initiative of Margaret Thatcher’s aimed to reduce soaring youth unemployment during the 1980s (critics pointed out that most participants were paid a pittance with no guarantee of a job).
Tanaka has found participants who demonstrated against the YTS scheme in 1985 when 10,000 children took to the streets in mass protest. A selection of these individuals, and their children, will walk through the city from St George’s Hall to the Pier Head in June. Tanaka’s account of the upheaval will go on show at Open Eye Gallery.
