We are delighted to announce the artists selected for the Liverpool Biennial x SEVENSTORE artist bursaries.
As part of a shared commitment to supporting locally-based artists and creative practitioners Liverpool Biennial and SEVENSTORE have joined forces to offer three bursaries of £3000 each for artists and creative practitioners between April – July 2026.
As the 14th edition of Liverpool Biennial will be informed by perspectives and experiences of childhood and youth, expanding upon these themes, we selected 3 emerging artists through an open call, whose practices are informed by the experiences of children and young people.
Liverpool Biennial x SEVENSTORE Bursaries intend to support the professional development of the artists’ artistic careers, seeking to support the development of new skills, knowledge and networks that will benefit their career and professional development in the short and long term.
The selected artists all explore experiences of childhood and youth in their practices, whether that be through their own childhood memories, socially engaged practices with young people and children, through workshops, or through collaboration with their own children.
We look forward to seeing how the artists’ projects develop over the next few months!
Meet the artists!
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Chelsea Humado
Wobble Studio is the visual identity of Liverpool-based multidisciplinary artist Chelsea Humado. Inspired by West African motifs, Pop Art and the reclamation of racist caricatures and depictions of Black physiology, Wobble Studio creates colourful illustrations presenting characters in surrealist and whimsical scenes.
Wobble Studio explores Humado’s culture and heritage as a Black woman, as well as her complex experiences with mental health conditions, seeing the “wobbly” way of life as multi-faceted: liberating, raw and tender. Through inviting viewers to process their own emotions through humorous illustrations and evocative portraiture, Wobble Studio sees art as a tool to comprehend the incomprehensible.
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Leon Barnard
As an audiovisual artist, Leon explores the possibility of technology to create multisensory artworks that engage with ideas of childhood memory, loss and the sea. Underpinning their practice is an intention to speak to the present absences in their life through the absent presence of sound.
In recent works they have applied transducer-speakers, (speakers that shake surfaces through sound), to create kinetic sound-sculptures that playfully animate objects, to create haptically engaging and interactive spaces. Sonic beach-combing also plays an integral role in their material research, regularly scanning the shoreline for shells and sounds to use in their artwork.
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Linny Venables
Linny Venables is a disabled visual artist based in Liverpool, working in sculpture, installation, curation and facilitation. Her practice is process-led, with outcomes emerging through socially engaged activity, collaboration, shared experiences and responsive making.
Venables works primarily with kiln-formed glass, exploring the sensory and therapeutic qualities of the making process. Using techniques such as slumping, extruding and manipulation, she transforms glass into colourful, glossy, jelly-like forms that look as if they might wobble, melt or shift.
