Elizabeth Price is an artist born in Bradford, Yorkshire.
2025 Biennial Year Find out more
She has exhibited in group shows internationally, and has had solo exhibitions at Tate Britain, UK; Chicago Institute of Art, USA; Julia Stoschek Foundation, Dusseldorf; Index Gallery, Stockholm; Musee D’art Contemporain, Montreal: Artangel, London; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; GoMA Glasgow and the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid. In 2012 she won the Turner Prize for her solo exhibition, ‘Here’, at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Award for Artists. In 2013, she won the Contemporary Art Society Annual Award with the Ashmolean and Pitt Rivers Museums, Oxford.
She was born in Bradford, Yorkshire in 1966 and grew up in Luton, Bedfordshire. She attended Putteridge Comprehensive Secondary School and studied at the Royal College of Art, London and Leeds University. Throughout her career as an artist, Price has continued to work in academia, and is presently Professor of Film and Photography in the School of Art, Kingston University, UK.
Liverpool Biennial 2025
'HERE WE ARE', 2025
Presented for the first time at Liverpool Biennial 2025, this major new single channel film by Turner-Prize winning artist Elizabeth Price, centres on the architectural history of Catholic modernist churches in post-war Britain, a foundational architecture designed to house incoming communities, reflecting Liverpool’s own migratory patterns. The work features historic photographs from the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) archive as well as a series of newly commissioned architectural photographs (taken by Andrew Lee) with a particular emphasis upon churches in the North West.
In ‘HERE WE ARE’, Price explores how these distinctive, modern buildings can tell a story of 20th century migration and post-war uncertainty. Over one thousand Catholic churches were built in Britain between 1955-1975 – including
Presented for the first time at Liverpool Biennial 2025, this major new single channel film by Turner-Prize winning artist Elizabeth Price, centres on the architectural history of Catholic modernist churches in post-war Britain, a foundational architecture designed to house incoming communities, reflecting Liverpool’s own migratory patterns. The work features historic photographs from the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) archive as well as a series of newly commissioned architectural photographs (taken by Andrew Lee) with a particular emphasis upon churches in the North West. In ‘HERE WE ARE’, Price explores how these distinctive, modern buildings can tell a story of 20th century migration and post-war uncertainty. Over one thousand Catholic churches were built in Britain between 1955-1975 – including many remarkable ones in the Liverpool City Region. They were built by and for the expanding Catholic diaspora in Britain, which came primarily from Ireland but also from Southern and Eastern Europe. During the course of the video – which is narrated by a collage of multiple voices, derived from varied archival and contemporary sources – we are shown a wide range of modern church designs. These range from modest structures and conversions to bold, highly experimental modernist buildings. The narrators consider how these buildings manifest the experience of the Catholic diaspora at this time, many of whom worked on the reconstruction of British cities, bombed during the war of 1939-45. A large number of the churches featured echo the municipal style of civic buildings, schools and swimming pools built in the intensive period of reconstruction that followed World War II. The resemblance of these churches to social, secular buildings reveals a church engaged in the social lives of its congregations, and possibly less aloof from the realities of work, migration and war. In ‘HERE WE ARE’, Price suggests that in these buildings, we see a diasporic minority announce – sometimes cautiously, often boldly – both their sense of difference and belonging within British towns and cities. This is a story that speaks both to Liverpool’s foundation as a city formed by migration and the welcome that is owed to incoming communities today, which now includes Catholic congregations from Poland, Ukraine, Nigeria and Ghana. The story opens with the 1937 futurist church of Our Lady Star of the Sea and St Winefride in Amlwch, Anglesey, designed by the Italian-born engineer Giuseppe Rinvolucri, and concludes with some of the remarkable churches created by Liverpool’s F.X. Velarde in the post-war period. The video also features over 20 other churches from areas across North West England including Birkenhead, Blackpool, Bolton, Huyton, Preston and Wigan. Courtesy of the artist. ‘HERE WE ARE’ was commissioned by Liverpool Biennial, with support from RIBA. It is the first chapter of a two-part series of videos supported by Kingston University, London and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. The artist and Liverpool Biennial would also particularly like to thank the Priests, administrators and parishioners of the many churches who participated in the project. The details of all of the churches photographed are included in the video credits. Showing at The Black-E
'HERE WE ARE', 2025
Showing at The Black-E
Wednesday - Sunday 10am - 6pm-
Elizabeth Price, Film Still from 'HERE WE ARE' 2025. Courtesy of the artist.
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Elizabeth Price, Film Still from 'HERE WE ARE' 2025. Courtesy of the artist.
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Elizabeth Price, Film Still from 'HERE WE ARE' 2025. Courtesy of the artist.
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Elizabeth Price, Film Still from 'HERE WE ARE' 2025. Courtesy of the artist.
Venue
The Black-E
The Blackie, 1 Great George St, Liverpool L1 5EW (Please note that the entrance to the exhibition is on Nelson Street, next door to Pine Court) View venue