Local pupils team up with acclaimed artist

Internationally acclaimed contemporary artist, Ryan Gander and primary school children from Knotty Ash have unveiled a set of sculptural benches they’d worked on together as part of the Liverpool Biennial inspired by the Metropolitan Cathedral in Liverpool.

The five bench-like sculptures can be found on the plateau behind the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral.

For this new commission, Ryan Gander dissected a model of architect Frederick Gibberd’s modernist cathedral into a series of simple ‘building blocks’. The blocks were then reassembled into different configurations by the schoolchildren from Knotty Ash: Jamie Clark, Phoebe Edwards, Tianna Mehta, Maisie Williams and Joshua Yates.

The maquettes that Gander and the children created have been reproduced on a larger scale to produce the new public seating arrangement within the cathedral grounds. The presentation is part of a larger project, Time Moves Quickly.

All the school children are named artists alongside Ryan Gander for this exhibition, making it a truly collaborative, inclusive and celebratory piece of art for the city.