Port City: on mobility and exchange

26 June - 24 August 2008

Yto Barrada, Ursula Biemann, Mary Evans, Meschac Gaba, Melanie Jackson, Erik van Lieshout, William Pope.L, Zineb Sedira and Magreb Connection Screening Programme

Port City is an international cross-artform touring project, addressing issues of global migration, trade and contemporary slavery.

Traditionally ports have been seen as gateways to a wider world, representing a point of contact and exchange with different countries and cultures, facilitating the movement of people as well as goods and ideas. However in an era of globalisation, port cities have ceased to have such territorial allegiances, becoming simply trading points on a worldwide network. The works by the artists in this exhibition explore the idea idea of a port city as a symbolic site of cultural exchange.

Several works in the exhibition and screening programme draw attention to the experience of migration, in particular between North Africa and the Mediterranean. Ursula Biemann presents Sahara Chronicle a video installation focusing on migration routes and also curates a screening programme of artists’ moving image works and documentary films that will be shown throughout the exhibition.

The exhibition also includes a video presented in a giant pillbox by Erik van Lieshout, an installation made in response to the media and looting frenzy that resulted from the wreck of the MSC Napoli by Melanie Jackson, and a vast model of a global cityscape made from sugar by Meschac Gaba, to which an iconic Liverpool building will be added during the course of the exhibition.

Sweetest Building
Thank you for voting for which building you wanted to see added to Meschac Gaba's Sweetness cityscape. The winning building is the Liver Building, which has been added to to the sculpture and will be on display until  the exhibition closes on 23 August.


Saturday 2 August 2pm-4pm
A special event to unveil Liverpool's sweetest building with artist Meschac Gaba

Saturday 23rd August, 2-4pm
Port City Symposium
Join Paul Domela (Programme Director of Liverpool Biennial), Mary Evans (Artist), Tom Trevor, (Director of Arnolfini),Mark Waugh (Director of A Foundation) and Claudia Zanfi (Director of MAST - Museo di Arte Sociale e Territoriale) for a discussion around the themes and issues raised by Port City, commemorating UNESCO's International Day for the Rememberance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.

Ursula Biemann
Sahara Chronicle , 2006
Courtesy of the artist

Erik van Leishout
Larium , 2001
Courtesy of the artist and Groninger Museum, Netherlands

Meschac Gaba
Sweetness , 2006
Courtesy of the artist