Liverpool Biennial 2025 at Open Eye Gallery

Maja Lorkowska, Exhibitions Editor

Visit now

Liverpool Biennial 2025 at Open Eye Gallery

Open Eye Gallery, Waterfront
Until 14 September 2025

Always double check opening hours with the venue before making a special visit.

A pillar sculpture with photos of architecture in the middle of the gallery
Images by Kate Davies
Book now

The Liverpool Biennial 2025 exhibition at Open Eye Gallery is one of the standout events of this year’s art festival, gathering the works of Katarzyna Perlak, Nadan Ghiya and Widline Cadet. We’ve covered the festival as a whole when it first began back in June, but this particular show is too just too good to miss and you still have until mid-September to catch it.

The exhibition features the artists’ work across the three separate rooms of the photography gallery, where two-dimensional images seamlessly fuse with sculpture and film.

Photo: Maja Lorkowska-Callaghan

First up, you’ll find Nadan Ghiya’s expertly created assemblage works which combine photographs with reconstructed wooden frames. The artist is interested in the development of photography and associated technology, and its shifting role in defining our perception. He combines found images with digitally manipulated photographs – they’re cut up, repositioned and arranged in highly decorated frames. In the centre of the room, there is a tower-like structure which visually brings the display together but it’s the wall-based works that really shine.

Photo: Maja Lorkowska-Callaghan

Gallery Two is filled with Widline Cadet’s poetic works which draw on the artist’s heritage, Haitian culture, folklore and intergenerational memory, with Black diasporic life being the key motif throughout. As well as being loaded with meaning, the photographs are incredibly beautiful and filled with otherworldly light. The novel method of display means that the installation is layered, with photo wallpaper underneath some of the images and frames either coming off the walls or covering large sections of the image like a fence.

A lot could be said about this body of work but we’ll tell you this – it’s a genuinely fresh approach to photography and we recommend that you just go and check it out yourself for the full experience.

Katarzyna Perlak turned Gallery Three into a small cinema for her film The Land Beneath Sleeps Lightly (2025). Created in collaboration with Reel Queer participants, the film is set in Liverpool’s Adelphi Hotel, once a luxury destination for wealthy visitors which offers only glimpses of its faded glory today. Perlak is interested in Queer and diasporic perspectives which are manifested in the form of a 20-minute, non-linear story with exquisite costumes and elements of the horror aesthetic. You’ll want to stay until the end.

What's on at Open Eye Gallery

Where to go near Liverpool Biennial 2025 at Open Eye Gallery

Liverpool
Gallery
RIBA North

RIBA North is the national architecture centre on the Liverpool Waterfront and a temporary home to Tate Liverpool.

Waterfront
Hotel
30 James Street

Steeped in history, 30 James Street is a Titanic-themed hotel with a an atmosphere of opulence and classic glamour.

City Centre
Restaurant
Etsu

What Etsu sushi restaurant in Liverpool lacks in marketing skills, it more than makes up for in Japanese cuisine.

Liverpool
Restaurant
Silk Rd

Silk Rd Tapas serves up delicious Mediterranean small plates, named after the Silk Route, an ancient network of trade routes, bringing spices and silks.

Waterfront
Café or Coffee Shop
Royal Liver Building

An iconic landmark, the Royal Liver Building was one of the first multi-storey buildings made using a steel-reinforced concrete structure.

Afternoon tea at Oh Me Oh My
City Centre
Café or Coffee Shop
Oh Me Oh My

A secret space and tea room, Oh Me Oh My lives in the stunning surrounds of Liverpool’s West Africa House. We take a look.

Photo of a stained glass window showing the word 'Surgery'
City Centre
Bar or Pub
Jenny’s Bar

Jenny’s Bar is hidden away on Fenwick Street in Liverpool. Descend a staircase from what looks like a fish restaurant, and you’ll find a bar in two parts.

Waterfront
Museum
The British Music Experience

It’s a discotheque for the senses, an incredible collection of artefacts and memorabilia, audio guides, music and stories. There are iconic costumes worn by David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, Dusty Springfield, the Spice Girls and Adam Ant, and musical instruments played by some of the world’s most renowned artists from Noel Gallagher to the Sex Pistols.

What's on: Exhibitions

Image of a performer dressed as a creepy moon, wearing a beige suit jacket, grinning in front of a lamp
EducationCity Centre
British Science Festival

Enjoy comedy shows to art installations, dynamic performances and more at this amazing celebration of all things science.

Free entry

Culture Guides

Detail of an abstract sculpture, with burned materials and rusty chicken wire at the centre, with rusted metal bars bent around it.
Exhibitions in the North

Chocolate fountains, beautiful batiks and medieval marginalia - this month's supersized Exhibitions Guide has it all.

Literature Events in the North

The autumn leaves might be falling already, but the harvest is plentiful as the live literature scene gets back into the swing of things after a summer break...

Theatre in Manchester and the North
Theatre in the North

This season’s theatre is gloriously eclectic: from radical cabaret and reinvented classics to new musicals and boundary-pushing performance.

Cinema in the North

This month we recommend a season of Film noir, cult Australian movies and a huge celebration of DIY community cinema.