Lecture

As part of ICI’s Curator’s Perspective— an itinerant public discussion series featuring national and international curators— Sally Tallant, Director of the Liverpool Biennial, will speak about her vision for the Biennial. The 2016 edition of the Liverpool Biennial is on view from July 9 to October 16, 2016, and unfolds through the landscape of the city. It is organized as a story narrated in several episodes: fictional worlds sited in galleries, public spaces, unused buildings, and online, which draw from Liverpool’s past, present and future. Among the works commissioned for the Biennial is Hummingbird Clock by 2015-2017 Vera List Center Fellow Lawrence Abu Hamdan.

For her Curator’s Perspective talk, Sally Tallant will focus on the importance and specificities of international art events in regional capitals, with Liverpool Biennial as a case study. Since 2012, Tallant has transformed Liverpool Biennial by expanding its organizational model to include and prioritize ongoing research, education and production, developing a creative community, and building the city as a place of artistic experimentation.

Sally Tallant is the Director of Liverpool Biennial. She has delivered large-scale exhibitions and commissions. She has also developed an interdisciplinary approach and has commissioned ambitious music and performance programmes including a new work by Michael Nyman in 2014. From 2001— 11 she was Head of Programmes at the Serpentine Gallery, London where she was responsible for the development and delivery of an integrated programme of Exhibitions, Architecture, Education and Public Programmes. She has curated exhibitions in a wide range of contexts including the Hayward Gallery, Serpentine Gallery, Hospitals, Schools as well as public commissions. She has also curated performances, sound events, film programmes and conferences including initiating the Park Nights series in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilions and co-curating the Serpentine Gallery Marathon series with Hans Ulrich Obrist. She is a regular contributor to conferences nationally and internationally. She is Vice President of the International Biennial Association and a member of the London Regional Council for the Arts Council of England and a Trustee of Metal.

Organized by Independent Curators International in collaboration with the Vera List Center.

The Curator’s Perspective is a free, itinerant public discussion series featuring U.S. and international curators, and developed as a way for audiences in New York to connect with timely information about a wide variety of international perspectives on contemporary art today. The series sheds light on movements and models that are still in formation or have been overlooked. This year, speakers in the series have included curators based in London, Manila, Paris, and São Paulo addressing questions about art, culture, and the exhibitions in which they are most interested, as well as the artists and the socio-political contexts that are shaping curatorial practice now.

The Curator’s Perspective series has been made possible, in part, by grants from the Hartfield Foundation and by generous contributions from the ICI Board of Trustees and ICI Access Fund.