The Mead team did a quick whistle-stop tour of the Liverpool Biennial. Called The Unexpected Guest, it weaves ideas about migration, hospitality, encounter, welcome and belonging. Best venues include the amazing Cunard building with its marble halls lit by chandeliers, an opulent departure lounge for transatlantic passengers. Here there was a neat installation by Superflex, ‘Liverpool to Let,’ about the plethora of commerical spaces to rent in the city and a film by Nadia Kaabi-Linke where a congregation sang the answers to visa questions to which only the most obtuse migrant would answer ‘yes’. Best was the film by John Akomfrah at the Bluecoat – a poetic tribute to the founder of cultural studies, Stuart Hall, deploying public and private archives and the gaps in between to create a compelling narrative of cultural change in the middle years of the twentieth century.
