Lewis Biggs: Biennial bigger and better than ever

Sep 19 2008 by Vicky Anderson, Liverpool Daily Post

AT least, that’s the aim of the spectacle’s director, Lewis Biggs, who tells Vicky Anderson of his hopes for the event

TOMORROW sees the start of the Liverpool Biennial 2008. The celebratory mood of Capital of Culture year, twinned with the event itself in its tenth anniversary, means that hopes are higher for it than ever before.

The biggest of its kind in the country, Liverpool is one of Europe’s major Biennials and this year hopes to attract more than half a million people over its ten-week duration. It comprises four strands.

The main International exhibition of outdoor installations and displays in the city’s foremost galleries features work by specially-invited artists, including the striking Web of Light by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, which can be seen over Exchange Flags. Then there is the John Moores 25 Exhibition of Contemporary Painting at the Walker Art Gallery; the Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition for up-and-coming graduate artists at A Foundation; and the Independents, autonomous and open to all.

This year has seen more interest from people wanting to get involved than ever before.

The theme is Made Up, and is described as "an exploration of the ecology of the artistic imagination" - hence the giant crystal spider, huge neon rabbit and moving trees that have already popped up in parts of the city.

Biennial director Lewis Biggs says that the 2008 factor brought with it "a lot of extra goodwill".

"Everybody wanted to make sure we do something extra special," he said.

"With the things that are usually difficult to arrange, we have found everyone is pulling in the same direction.

"And when it comes to the audience, I think there have been bigger audiences for everything. People are sensitised to something, are getting involved."

The Biennial began, Mr Biggs says, because "not enough people in Liverpool understand just what a wealth of activity there is in the visual arts here.

"When we first thought of the Biennial, it was to make more of what we already had - and to do it through having a party rather than anything totally serious.

"That was James Moores’s vision.

"Then, when everybody saw how successful it could be, there was more support, and it has really grown in people’s minds, certainly in terms of people coming to see it."

Invited artists to the Biennial include Yoko Ono, whose Liverpool Skyladders can be seen in St Luke’s bombed-out Church. Mr Biggs explained: "The best artists are not looking for opportunities, as they already have more of them than they can deal with.

"Liverpool is not renowned as a place for the international art market, but we always find as soon as we’ve got an artist to visit Liverpool they fall in love with the place and really appreciate it as a place to show, not necessarily to sell.

"What we do is bring the best artists from around the world and get them to engage with local people."

It is Ono’s first showing at the Biennial since 2004’s My Mummy Was Beautiful, which divided audiences by publicly showing photographs of a woman’s naked breast and pubic hair.

Despite outcry from some quarters, that it saw the light of day at all marked a real watershed in Liverpool’s art history.

"It was a fantastically important moment for the city," said Mr Biggs.

"Was the city going to be adult enough to do 2008, or would the politicians get so involved that nothing of artistic merit was going to be possible - and it was passed with flying colours.

"That proved the city was capable of running a cultural organisation without interference."

"We’re an arts commissioning agency," Mr Biggs says of the Biennial.

"The extraordinary thing about it is that usually anyone making an exhibition will know what they’re going to get - we don’t know because we commission new work, which is very exciting but a weird position to be in.

"It is a demonstration of our faith in the artists - we have to believe in them a lot."

vickyanderson@dailypost.co.uk