W O O L (2025)

Anna Jane Houghton x Abbie Bradshaw

Liverpool Independents Biennial

The Jesus Chapel, St Margaret of Antioch Church

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W O O L is a multi-channel filmic-sound installation and activatory performance.

W O O L takes the name of the quintessentially Scouse slang term:

(Woollyback); people from outside the city, particularly from surrounding areas like The Wirral and Cheshire, derived from 19th-century dock workers who transported wool on their backs into the marketplace of the city.

W O O L seeks to encompass the affection towards an otherness from which the term derives, utilising the practices of two artists, each born on respective sides of the wool’s journey.

W O O L employs performance and sound to activate ambient and material histories, spanning the geographical distance of wool spun in rural Wales, through Cheshire and carried across the Mersey.

W O O L weaves folkloric craft traditions with nuanced evocations of Scouse football culture, drawing parallels between communal ritual, identity and belonging.

W O O L exists as a collateral exhibition to this year’s Biennial theme BEDROCK, utilising the physical sandstone and social foundations of Liverpool as a curatorial springboard.