Liverpool Biennial: Fab Lab helps create Bluecoat exhibition

A room with art works including a wooden box and blue table

Image credit: Kent Chan, ‘Hot House’ 2020-ongoing. Liverpool Biennial 2023 at The Bluecoat. Courtesy of Liverpool Biennial. Photography by Mark McNulty.

Liverpool Biennial - the UK’s largest free festival of contemporary visual art - has been transforming the city through art for over two decades.

A dynamic programme of free exhibitions, performances, screenings, community and learning activities and fringe events unfolds over 14 weeks, shining a light on the city’s vibrant cultural scene.

Liverpool School of Art & Design at LJMU regularly contributes technical and academic expertise to the Biennial and this year is no different with our digital fabrication laboratory – Fab Lab – working with a fascinating exhibition called Hot House.

Kent Chan’s ‘Hot House’ (2020 – ongoing) is an installation and project space which questions the relationship between climates and cultures, and the influence of heat and humidity on our bodies and minds, for which the Netherlands’-based Singaporean artist was invited to take a fresh look at some of the artefacts at Liverpool’s World Museum, particularly from the Global Cultures collection.

His work opens a discussion around why these objects have historically arrived in institutions far from their home countries, where climatic conditions are vastly different, and whether there is a perceived assumption of the superiority of one climate and culture over another.

Working with the curatorial team at Liverpool Biennial, Fab Lab supported Chan to 3D Scan a series of artefacts from the collection and to create accurate models of each object. They then worked with Kent to fabricate a series of 3D printed models that will be housed in the Bluecoat Gallery until September 17.

The Fab Lab team involved Adam Sadiq, Lol Baker, Sean Tolmie and Mark Roughley.