Liverpool Biennial has announced a number of new partnerships for its 2012 exhibition.

Hotel Indigo Liverpool will be the official hotel partner, and The Cotton Lounge is the official bar partner.

In addition, The Monro and The James Monro are official restaurant partners.

Hotel Indigo Liverpool is located within the commercial district of Liverpool, whilst The Cotton Lounge bar is situated within Hotel Indigo.

Paul Smith, Executive Director of Liverpool Biennial, said: “Hotel Indigo will ensure that Liverpool Biennial 2012 maintains the level of ambition and quality that is associated with the UK’s leading festival of contemporary art.

David Hughes, General Manager of Hotel Indigo Liverpool, said: “We look forward to working closely with the Biennial team in making the event a huge and continued success.”

The partnership with The Monro Group is based on its reputation for food, atmosphere and service. Will Lyons, owner of The Monro Group, said: “The partnership is a reflection of our passion to celebrate Liverpool’s world leading cultural landscape.”

Liverpool Biennial is a free contemporary art festival, presented every two years.

Liverpool Biennial 2012 will take place from September 15 2012 to November 25 2012. For more information, visit www.biennial.com.

Independents Liverpool Biennial 18 September – 28 November 2010

The Independents is one of the largest and most exciting contemporary visual arts festivals in the UK, with an exhibitions programme that runs in parallel to the Liverpool Biennial.

This year the Independents will showcase more than 500 artists in 129 events at 62 venues in Liverpool and the Wirral. It is an open access contemporary art event that showcases young blood and emerging new talent alongside established international artists, throwing up unexpected and genuine surprises in extraordinary and sometimes unusual venues.

Despite the setback of no funding from the Arts Council in a year of stringent public finances and cultural sector funding cuts, the Independents Festival will carry on thanks to revenue and support generated by hundreds of participating artists and galleries.

Mark Willcox, Chair of the independents Board, said:

“Artists and galleries have rallied to help the Festival fight on against all odds this year because they realise the importance, the potential and the value that the Independents has for them. In the current economic climate their support really is something to celebrate”.

With a mix of local, national and international artists, the Independents continues to be a major event that provides opportunities for artists to showcase new work specifically created for the festival.

There is no specific theme for the Independents; some artists create work in relation to a particular space.  For example, 17 artists on the MA photography course at the Royal College of Art will be showing new site-specific work at the Wolstenholme Creative Space using both the interior and exterior of the building.

Established names include the British abstract painter, John Hoyland RA, who will be showing at 3345 Parr Street. Hoyland is part of Abstract Amigos, a series of four separate shows running from 1st September through to 5th December 2010.

The 2006 John Moores Painting Prize winner, Martin Greenland, is showing New Fiction, at the Cornerstone Gallery, a unique take on the meaning of landscape.

Found a Pound is a quirky Liverpool city-wide event in the form of a creative treasure hunt that will take place in art galleries, public spaces and on the street.

Franchon Fröhlich is a long-established international artist based in Liverpool who is showing a collection of drawings, paintings and writings related to the artist’s friendship with the writer Beryl Bainbridge.

At the Six Rooms Gallery, Argyle St, Birkenhead, there are three eclectic group exhibitions encompassing art, craft, design and architecture by more than 25 Wirral artists showing for the duration of the Festival.

With more than 500 artists taking part this is an exciting opportunity to spend the next ten weeks to search out and see work across all disciplines by individuals and groups in a range of places and spaces.

The Independents Liverpool Biennial is an established ‘not-for-profit’ Contemporary Arts Festival established in 2004. The Independents Liverpool Biennial is a free event, taking place from 18th September to 28 November 2010. Full details about all events can be found at www.independentsbiennial.org

The 6th Liverpool Biennial festival sees a host of sponsors and partners in support of this year’s festival.

Alongside welcoming back our National Media Partner, The Independent, we are delighted to have Official Hotel Partner, Novotel Liverpool and Visitor Services Partner, John Lewis on board for the first time. 

You can read more about our partnership with the Independent here.

Read about the partnership with Novotel here

John Lewis chose to sponsor the Liverpool Biennial 2010 Visitor Centre based at the old Rapid Hardware store on Renshaw Street. As Visitor Services Partner, John Lewis will be providing a series of training events for both Liverpool Biennial staff and volunteers.

Liverpool Biennial 2008 welcomed 450,000 visitors who in total made 975,000 visits to Biennial exhibits or sites. The Visitor Centre acts as the hub of the festival, welcoming visitors from all over the world, and we are delighted to have the support of such a well-established, quality brand and look forward to working with John Lewis closely on the development of this year’s Visitor Services offer.

We would also like to welcome Project Sponsors BAM Construction who have chosen to sponsor Hector Zamora’s State of Strain: Displacement based at one of their current development sites, Mann Island.

In addition to BAM Construction, Verso Books have kindly offered their support towards the realisation of Alfredo Jaar’s The Marx Lounge, providing upwards of 800 books for the exhibit.

As Project Sponsors, both BAM Construction and Verso Books will enjoy benefits associated with the their chosen project and the opportunity to be partnered with Liverpool Biennial’s prestigious International exhibition, the world-class focus of the Biennial festival.

Tehching Hsieh is an artist who has been mythologized since retiring from making art in 2000.

In 1970s and 1980s New York, he made an exceptional series of artworks: five separate one-year-long performances.

The exhibition will focus on documentation of his performance ‘life work’, One Year Performance 1980-1981 (Time Clock Piece).

For one year, the artist punched a worker’s time clock located in his studio, on the hour, every hour. Marking the occasion by taking a self-portrait on a single frame of 16mm film, the resulting reel documents a year in his life at approximately one second per day – a pace that is polar opposite of the enduring length of the original performance. The punch cards, witnessed by a third party for authenticity, and other ephemera, document Hsieh’s life restructured around this highly repetitive task.

This will be the first exhibition of the artist’s work in Europe.