From Here by Turner Prize shortlisted artist Nathan Coley is a landmark new co-commission between Liverpool Biennial and Culture Liverpool on Liverpool’s UNESCO World Heritage Waterfront.

The text-based light sculpture is made up of the words From Here, All the Worlds Futures, From Here, All the Worlds Pasts. Inspired by the writing of German philosopher, Walter Benjamin, and acknowledging the curator, Okwui Enwezor’s influential exhibition All The World’s Futures at Venice Biennale 2015, Nathan Coley’s expansion of the phrase presents a new meaning that reinforces the power of Liverpool as a place, its history and speaks to the hope for the future.

Measuring twenty metres in length, the largest text work made to date by the artist, has been designed specifically to wrap around the four sides of the St. George’s Dock Pumping Station, an iconic Victorian red brick building located on Mann Island in the heart of the city, and still used on a daily basis by the building’s owners Network Rail.

Nathan Coley lives and works in Glasgow. This will be the first time he has shown in Liverpool since his work was featured in the Turner Prize Exhibition at Tate Liverpool in 2007, for which he was shortlisted.

Recent solo exhibitions have included Parliament Hall, Edinburgh (2019), Parafin, London (2019, 2017); EAST Gallery, Norwich (2018); Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2017); New Art Centre, Roche Court, Salisbury (2016), while notable group exhibitions comprise Utopias, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (2020); Stories for an Uncertain World, Edinburgh Art Festival (2019); The Aerodrome, Ikon, Birmingham (2019); Sculpture In The City, London (2019); Possibilities For a Non-Alienated Life, Kochi Muziris Biennale (2018); Arhus2017 – European Capital of Culture (2017); Actions - The Image of the World can be Different, Kettle's Yard, Cambridge (2018); Age of Terror - Art since 9/11, Imperial War Museum, London (2018); Glow, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2016); and Daydreaming With Stanley Kubrick, Somerset House, London (2016). Coley's work is held in important international collections including Tate, London; Scottish National Galleries, Edinburgh; Government Art Collection, London; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; Israel Museum, Tel Aviv; VanAbbemuseum, Eindhoven; and Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand.

The installation will initially remain in situ for twelve months, alongside the 11th edition of the Liverpool Biennial, The Stomach and the Port, which runs from 20 March 2021.