Art Exhibitions in Liverpool
Your guide to the latest art exhibitions in Liverpool, featuring major galleries, independent spaces, and must-see shows across the city.
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Walker Art Gallery: Sir John Akomfrah and Gender Stories Exhibitions Open This May
Two major exhibitions exploring identity, memory and belonging are set to open at Walker Art Gallery this summer, bringing internationally acclaimed contemporary art and deeply personal stories to the heart of Liverpool. Opening on 16 May 2026, Listening All Night To The Rain by Sir John Akomfrah and Gender Stories will run side-by-side until 31 August, transforming the gallery into a space for reflection, conversation and cultural dialogue. Originally commissioned by the British Council for…
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Close to Home: Liverpool Exhibition Creates Space for Conversations Around Suicide
A ground-breaking exhibition exploring stories and the impact of suicide is to open in Liverpool’s historic Cunard Building this September. Developed in collaboration with Merseyside-based community arts organisation Heart of Glass, Close to Home, is more than an exhibition. It is an act of witness, inviting audiences into a space of contemplation, of reflection, of quiet assembly. Built upon lived and living experience of suicidal thoughts and attempts, and of bereavement by suicide, it has been…
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Art in the Ev Continues with Julie Lawrence’s Walking Through Seasons
Where shadow and light fold together, and return reshapes what is seen. At Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre, visual art has become part of the building’s everyday rhythm rather than a separate event—and that’s largely down to its ongoing partnership with dot-art. Their collaboration continues to open up the theatre’s spaces to a rolling programme of contemporary artists, inviting audiences to encounter new work in passing as much as by intention. It’s within this quietly evolving setting that Julie Lawrence’s latest…
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Exhibition Preview: The Diamond — Brian O’Hanlon’s Powerful Portrait of Working-Class Nightlife
The Diamond – Holding On to Something Real in a Fading Nightlife Culture. Brian O’Hanlon is a Liverpool-based photographer whose work bridges documentary storytelling and commercial image-making. Originally trained in graphic design and art direction, he spent over two decades in the creative industries before returning to photography, a shift that continues to shape his distinctive visual style. His work focuses on people, place and identity, often exploring working-class culture and contemporary British life with both sensitivity and structure.…
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People Power: New Exhibition Tells Story of Saving Liverpool’s Palm House
A new exhibition at Liverpool Central Library is set to spotlight one of the city’s most powerful stories of community action, as the Save It! display explores how local people helped rescue the iconic Sefton Park Palm House from dereliction. Opening 7 May and running until 27 August 2026, the free exhibition—located on the third floor of the library—marks 25 years since the Palm House reopened in 2001, following a decade-long grassroots campaign to save…
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Home And Away Workshops Announce Exhibition At St George’s Hall Exploring Belonging And Displacement
A new exhibition exploring themes of belonging, migration and memory is set to open at St George’s Hall this May, as Liverpool-based collective Home and Away Workshops unveil their latest body of work. Running from 6–31 May 2026, Home and Away brings together a diverse group of artists whose practices are shaped by experiences of displacement, transition and identity. The exhibition launches with a free preview event on 6 May from 5–7pm, with entry available…
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Preview: Being There At Bridewell Studios & Gallery
Process over polish, lines still in motion… At Bridewell Studios and Gallery this May, the line between studio and exhibition space is being deliberately blurred. Being There – Conversations in Drawing isn’t a show in the traditional sense. Instead, it’s a three-week residency that invites the public into the process itself—into the uncertainty, repetition and quiet decisions that sit behind finished work. Featuring Colette Lilley, Jon Barraclough and Sarah Jane Richards, the gallery will operate as an open, working studio,…
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Renowned Artist Pete McKee Comes To Liverpool With His Pop-Up Art Exhibition & Live Music Show
This Spring, renowned Artist Pete McKee is partnering with Music Venue Trust on a UK Tour of his exhibition The Boy With a Leg Named Brian. The tour is stopping at District in Liverpool on 16 May. Favoured by musicians, designers and iconic brands, Pete’s work has been commissioned by the likes of Noel Gallagher, Arctic Monkeys and fashion designer Sir Paul Smith. Pete is delighted to be championing and raising awareness of the vital work that Music Venue Trust do to keep…
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Preview: Brendan Lyons – Discreet Discrete Exhibition At Bridewell Studios
Where paint deceives and asserts itself, Brendan Lyons makes the familiar feel unexpectedly alive… At first glance, Brendan Lyons’ work appears to flirt with the familiar. Tape, plastic, folds, fixings — the everyday language of the studio and the street. But linger for a moment longer and that certainty begins to slip. What looks like one thing quietly reveals itself as another. Paint becomes object, surface becomes substance, and perception is gently but persistently unsettled.…
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Preview: Ken O’Hare Retrospective at Bridewell Studios
Ken O’Hare – A Retrospective of Calm in a City of Movement For Kenneth O’Hare, the city was never simply a place of movement and noise. It was a site of contemplation — a space where silence could be found in steel, glass and light. A Gentle Man: A Retrospective of the work of Kenneth O’Hare, presented at Bridewell Studios & Gallery, offers the first comprehensive overview of an artist whose quiet, meditative vision of…
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LOOK Climate Lab 2026 Launches at Open Eye Gallery Exploring Climate Change Through Photography
LOOK Climate Lab returns in 2026 with a major biennial programme exploring how photography can be used as a powerful and relevant medium for engaging with the climate crisis. Taking place from 23 January to 29 March 2026, LOOK Climate Lab 2026 will see Open Eye Gallery transformed into an experimental “lab” space, bringing together artists, researchers and activists to test ideas, share knowledge and spark discussion around the systemic changes needed to address climate…
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FACT Liverpool Unveils a Year of Immersive, Interactive Exhibitions for 2026
FACT Liverpool has announced its full 2026 exhibitions programme, featuring newly commissioned artworks, locally embedded participatory projects, and major installations by emerging and established artists. Using playable game worlds and AI technologies, the exhibitions explore quests for greater meaning through the creation of new mythologies rooted in ancestral knowledge, more-than-human perspectives, and acts of congregation and resistance. Alongside the re-staging of existing works, FACT is delighted to present new commissions by Vytas Jankauskas, Sahjan Kooner,…
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Tate Liverpool Announces ARTIST ROOMS: Ed Ruscha for 2026
Tate Liverpool has announced a major new display dedicated to influential American artist Ed Ruscha, opening next spring. ARTIST ROOMS: Ed Ruscha will be presented across Tate Liverpool + RIBA North from 12 February to 14 June 2026, showcasing a rich selection of the artist’s books, photographs, paintings, drawings, and lithographs. Focusing on the driving culture of mid-century America and the evolving architecture of Los Angeles, the display explores how Ruscha captured the look, feel,…
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Ken Horton: A Life In Colour Exhibition Coming To The Cornerstone Gallery
Rhythm, light and colour – Ken Horton steps back into the spotlight… Ken Horton’s upcoming exhibition at The Cornerstone Gallery, A Life in Colour, offers Liverpool audiences the chance to step inside the creative world of one of the city’s most quietly influential artists. Running from 6 November to 18 December 2025, this retrospective gathers together paintings spanning more than forty years – from figurative beginnings to luminous geometric abstractions that pulse with life and…
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‘Toxteth: The Harlem of Europe’ New Exhibition To Tell The Story of Black Musicians From L8
A new photographic exhibition in Liverpool is set to tell the story of Toxteth’s Black musicians of the 1950s and 1960s, whose influence reached The Beatles and beyond. This autumn, the University of Liverpool’s Victoria Gallery & Museum (VG&M) presents Toxteth: The Harlem of Europe. Running from 11 October 2025 to 26 April 2026, the free exhibition features portraits by Liverpool photographer Ean Flanders. Alongside striking new images of musicians from that era, Flanders also captures…
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Abstract Alchemy Exhibition Brings Nature’s Transformations to dot-art Gallery This Autumn
dot-art Gallery in Liverpool will host Abstract Alchemy, a new group exhibition featuring works by Amanda Oliphant, Felice Beilin and Rachel McArdle, running from 5 September – 11 October 2025. The exhibition explores how three artists use processes akin to alchemy to transform recordings, memories and lived experiences of nature into abstract depictions of landscapes in constant flux. Amanda Oliphant translates patterns, rhythms, and sensations of the natural world into textured visual stories. Drawing on…
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Euro Summer: Liverpool Exhibition Celebrates the Power of Women in Football and Community
Creative studio Dorothy in Liverpool’s Baltic Triangle are hosting an exhibition, Euro Summer, curated by Nali Simukulwa – celebrating players, fans, and creatives in women’s football – and there’s no better time for it. Just last night, England Women were crowned champions of Euro 2025, marking another historic milestone for the Lionesses and women’s sport. Since the Lionesses brought football home in 2022, Women’s football has grown exponentially both in England and around the world,…
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Iconic Satirists Modern Toss Brings Major Exhibition to Liverpool
Marking 21 years of satirical cartoon excellence, Modern Toss will bring a full-scale retrospective of its work to Liverpool for two weeks this summer. Running from 25 July until 10 August at Northern Lights in Cains Brewery Village, the exhibition will feature some of Modern Toss’s most notorious artwork as well as some brand new pieces. Created by cult cartoonists and animators Jon Link and Mick Bunnage, the exhibition will be a museum style display…
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Amartey Golding Talks ‘Silent Knight’: A Powerful Portrait of Prison Life, On Display At FACT
Where Art and Lived Experience Collide… Some artists paint pictures. Others throw punches. Amartey Golding somehow does both – and neither – crafting work that pulls you in and holds you there, somewhere between discomfort and wonder. Now, this shape-shifting storyteller brings his latest exhibition to FACT Liverpool, and trust us, it’s one for the soul. Golding’s life reads like a patchwork of place and perspective: born in London in the late ’80s to an…
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Exhibition Review: Amartey Golding, Silent Knight, at FACT Liverpool
A Chain of Voices, Heard in Stillness… Step into FACT Liverpool’s Gallery 2 and you’re met with a silver spectacle — an arresting, sculptural form that draws you in and doesn’t let go. At its heart stands Silent Knight, a collaborative centrepiece by artist Amartey Golding, and the final commission in FACT’s powerful Resolution project. Its presence is undeniable — physically, emotionally, politically. Constructed in collaboration with over 50 incarcerated men from HMP Altcourse, Silent…
Art exhibitions in Liverpool form a central part of the city’s thriving creative landscape, reflecting both its rich cultural history and its forward-looking artistic energy. Liverpool has long been recognised as a city of creativity and innovation, and its galleries, museums, and independent art spaces provide countless opportunities to experience work from local, national, and international artists. Whether you’re passionate about contemporary art, intrigued by historical collections, or looking to discover emerging talent, Liverpool’s art exhibitions offer something for everyone.
The city is home to some of the UK’s most renowned galleries. Tate Liverpool, located at the Royal Albert Dock, is one of the country’s leading contemporary art galleries, hosting major touring exhibitions and showcasing works from the Tate Collection. The Walker Art Gallery, often referred to as the “National Gallery of the North,” offers an impressive collection of Renaissance masterpieces, Victorian classics, and modern works, alongside regular temporary exhibitions that shine a spotlight on diverse artistic practices.
For those seeking a more contemporary and experimental edge, Bluecoat — Liverpool’s oldest contemporary arts centre — presents thought-provoking exhibitions alongside a vibrant programme of performance, literature, and community-focused projects. FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) is another must-visit, dedicated to exploring the intersection of art, film, and digital culture. Its exhibitions often push boundaries and highlight the ways technology and society influence creativity.
Beyond the larger institutions, Liverpool boasts a thriving independent arts scene. Galleries such as Open Eye Gallery, dedicated to photography and visual culture, and OUTPUT Gallery, which showcases work by artists from or based in Merseyside, provide vital platforms for fresh perspectives. Rathbone Studio and dot-art Gallery also play an important role in championing local talent and offering audiences the chance to engage directly with artists’ work.
Art exhibitions in Liverpool aren’t confined to traditional gallery spaces. The city’s creative energy spills into its streets and public spaces through murals, installations, and site-specific projects. Biennial festivals such as Liverpool Biennial, the UK’s largest festival of contemporary visual art, transform the city into an open gallery, bringing international attention and creating opportunities for residents and visitors to engage with art in unexpected ways.
Whether you’re planning a gallery day out, looking for inspiration from leading names in the art world, or wanting to support grassroots initiatives, Liverpool has an exhibition for you. From family-friendly shows to conceptual installations, the city’s art scene is inclusive, diverse, and ever-changing. Our coverage of art exhibitions in Liverpool brings together reviews, previews, and features to help you discover what’s on now and what’s coming up next.
If you’re passionate about visual arts or simply curious about new experiences, Liverpool is the perfect place to explore. The city’s exhibitions not only showcase incredible artistic talent but also reflect its character — open, experimental, and deeply connected to its community.