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Liverpool to Liverpool

‘Liverpool-to-Liverpool - Chronicles of an aimless journey’ is an extensive body of work that came out of a one-month journey by container-ship following the trade routes that link old-world Liverpool, to another ‘new world’ Liverpool in Nova Scotia, Canada. A major commission for Liverpool (UK) with a budget of £100k, the piece invents new models for permanent public art. Faithfull’s innovation was to respond to the psychogeography of Liverpool by immediately leaving this city to seek its influence around the globe and trace one of the journeys that built this city of empire. As well as creating video-works, photographs and diaries, the main purpose of the voyage was to create 181 drawings that are now permanently etched into the York Stone paving of a new public space in the heart of Liverpool (UK).

The journey and artwork were also insinuated into the fabric of this city in a number of other more ephemeral ways. On arrival in Liverpool Nova Scotia, Faithfull dispatched 181 drawings as postcards sent to random addresses in the Liverpool (UK) telephone book - prompting various local newspapers reports. Then, in 2009, a book of the complete drawings, diary extracts and an essay by Joe Moran (author and lecturer at Liverpool University) was published by Liverpool University Press.

Finally to launch the artwork a performative-lecture was given in Liverpool’s civic hall presenting the journey and discussing Liverpool’s history and influence upon the globe. This lecture was then given twice more (in 2009 in the lunchtime-lecture series at UCL and in 2010 as part of Liverpool Biennial).

The complete Liverpool-to-Liverpool body of work then later featured in Faithfull’s double-solo exhibition ‘Voyages Extraordinaire’ (together with Christoph Keller) in CRAC, Alsace, France and was examined in the eponymous catalogue with text by Sophie Kaplan (2010).