This event is a collaboration with GI LEARN and The Glasgow School of Art’s Friday Event.

Every recurrent exhibition is unique, but some are more different than others, and in the face of the apparent proliferation of Festivals and Biennials internationally, Liverpool Biennial has constantly worked to break the rules and confound expectations. The Biennial’s International exhibition (composed of around 40 commissions by artists working outside the UK) is organised collaboratively; is realised 50% in non-gallery spaces, and is directed by an art commissioning agency that operates widely across the city region, in disadvantaged neighbourhoods as much as in the city centre. At the culmination of Glasgow International 2010, this talk will discuss how Liverpool Biennial has developed in ways that mark it out from the global competition – of festivals and Biennials - as well as allowing it to set its mark strongly on the city in which it operates; providing a means of reflecting upon the impact or benefits to artists, audiences, arts organisations and cities of such large-scale event led formats.

Since November 2000, Lewis Biggs has been Chief Executive and Artistic Director of Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art. He has led the company to become a leading art commissioning agency working in the public realm, as well as the promoter of the UK’s largest visual art’s festival. The agency is dedicated to ‘engaging art, people and place’ and has realised projects such as Antony Gormley’s Another Place, Jaume Plensa’s Dream and Richard Wilson’s Turning the Place Over.

Lewis was Director of Tate Liverpool (1990-2000), an exhibition officer for the Visual Arts Department of the British Council (1984-87), and Gallery Co-ordinator for Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol (1979-84). As joint Director of Art Transpennine98 (with Robert Hopper) his focus moved beyond the museum / gallery context.

He is a Director of Culture Campus Ltd, a partnership between Liverpool’s Universities and major regional arts organisations dedicated to ‘graduate retention’ in Liverpool; and series editor of Tate Modern Artists (monographs on contemporary artists appearing since October 2002).

GI LEARN is a research and learning project of Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art and is made possible through funding from the Scottish Art’s Council’s LEARN Fund.