About

The fifth Coventry Biennial is called 'Obsessions, Possessions' and will take place from the 3rd October 2025 to the 25th January 2026 across Coventry and Warwickshire, including at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum. Consisting of exhibitions, events and activities, this festival will bring together artists, organisations and audiences to explore and respond to collections and archives of all kinds.

CURATORIAL FOCUS:

The impulse to collect is tied to our desire for meaning, belonging and understanding of ourselves and of society. Coventry Biennial 2025 will facilitate a collective exploration of the roles and functions of collecting within the art, museum, heritage and knowledge production sectors, the wider community and the artists’ studio.

The programme of exhibitions, events and activities will platform the co-creation and presentation of new artworks and exciting reimaginings of collections and archives rooted in society’s shared obsessions and possessions.

Ranging from major national art collections to personal and family archives, from libraries to what can be found beneath your kitchen sink, from warehouses full of artworks to photo albums full of memories, we will explore how and why we collect, what it means to collect and will examine the impacts, legacies, politics and problematics of what is (or isn’t) included.

Set against the backdrop of the development of a new, nationally significant but locally embedded “Coventry City Cultural Gateway” building that will see the British Council Collection and the Arts Council Collection relocate from London and Yorkshire to Coventry, our festival programme will welcome, question, celebrate and challenge the access, power and meaning of “groups of things” that are as varied as our obsessions and our possessions – whether thats footballers, the Enclosure Acts or a photo album.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:

Andi, Simeon Barclay, Sophia Ehrnrooth, Leah Gordon, Caitlin Kiely and Dr Jamie Larkin, E.N. Mirembe and Rosie Olang' Odhiambo, Debashish Paul, Prasanta Sahu

We'll be announcing more participating artists in July 2025.

More details can be found at www.coventrybiennial.com and the full festival programme will be available from September 2025.