Announcing: Coventry Biennial 2023

Coventry Biennial 2023 Promo Image featuring: Janet Tryner, Post-Excavation Scan (Blue Rec Project), Digital Image, 2023. Courtesy: Janet Tryner

Coventry Biennial 2023
… like a short cut through the brambles
October 6, 2023 – January 14, 2024
https://www.coventrybiennial.com/artists-2023/

… like a short cut through the brambles will take place from 6 October 2023 until January 2024 in Coventry and Warwickshire (UK).

Across Coventry Biennial 2023 artists and their many collaborators interrogate humankind’s relationship to the world around us. Starting with the broad themes of place, the human condition and the intersection of these, the fourth Coventry Biennial will present a series of exhibitions, events and activities in museums, galleries, historic buildings and public locations.

Focusing on deep time, the mythological and the ground-level, a number of projects explore what is or might be right under our feet. Water becomes a recurring theme. In a city that is about as far from the sea as you can get in the United Kingdom, artists are asking questions about access to water, local and global water infrastructures and the implications and impacts of living on islands. Likewise, what is extracted from the earth is a common thread across the fourth Coventry Biennial, with investigations into petrocultures, guano, geology and waste materials. What can and should be added to our public spaces is a significant area of enquiry and action across a number of socially engaged projects encompassing portraiture, storytelling and the cultivation of urban gardens.

Buried, flowing, growing. Rising, extracted, discarded. Our relationships to the world around us are dense and tangled. Throughout the fourth Coventry Biennial artists remind us of this. … like a short cut through the brambles they take us by the hand and lead us, cautiously.

Our title is drawn from a line of poetry by Antony Owen, a Coventry-based poet and activist. As a title for our Biennial, this half line of poetry acts as an open-ended provocation that connects deeply to the work that our artists are making and asks questions about belonging, protest and survival in a complex world. The title might suggest danger or risk but is also emblematic of freedom, navigation and a close engagement with the natural world.

… like a short cut through the brambles is collaboratively curated by Ryan Hughes, Anneka French and Dr Ian Sergeant with support from Emily Gardner and curators from our partner venues. Ryan Hughes (Artistic Director and CEO, Coventry Biennial) explains:

“My curatorial colleagues and our partners have developed a programme that highlights broad developments in contemporary art while also feeling uniquely and honestly of Coventry and the West Midlands. The artists that we are working with have already been both innovative and generous and we cannot wait to present the results of their labour later this year!”

We are delighted to introduce the Coventry Biennial 2023 artists:

A History of Frogs, Can Altay, Ania Bas, Phoebe Boswell, Alice Channer, Jo Gane, Clémence Lollia Hilaire, Seungwon Jung, Yva Jung, Dinh Q. Lê, Paul Lemmon and Graeme Macdonald, Rene Matić, Mothers Who Make and Alice Wood, Jem Southam, Janet Tryner.

In support of these artists we are pleased to announce that we are working in partnership with the following organisations:

University of Warwick, Coventry University, British Council, Artangel, Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Compton Verney Art Gallery & Park, Nuneaton Library and Information Centre, Warwickshire County Council, Ikon Gallery, Ikon Youth Programme, Freelands Foundation, Arts Council Collection