Walker Art Gallery reopens contemporary spaces with eleven major new acquisitions

Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery has officially reopened its contemporary galleries, debuting a striking selection of recent acquisitions.

Anchoring the fresh rehang is Michael Landy’s massive kinetic sculpture, Multi-Saint (2013). Created following Landy’s residency at the National Gallery, the piece blends Christian iconography with inspiration from Italian Renaissance painter Carlo Crivelli.

By embodying five martyred saints—Catherine, Lucy, Peter Martyr, Lawrence, and Michael—the dynamic sculpture beautifully bridges the gallery’s modern additions with its historic 15th-century religious art collection.

Around it hang other works, all new to the Walker’s collection and on display here for the first time. Shaqúelle Whyte’s In an embroiled fashion (2025) shows two men wrestling while a third looks on, painted with energetic brushwork and a dark, rich palette.

Eva Helene Pade’s I mørket (In the dark) (2025) sets a figure in an ambiguous light, drawing on the Northern European expressionist tradition of artists like Edvard Munch. Louise Giovanelli’s Mise en scène (2025) draws on a still from a 1970s film of a young woman taking communion, bringing the artist back to the Walker after she sat on the John Moores Painting Prize jury here in 2025.

Among the new acquisitions is Ebun Sodipo’s diptych What if Laure Was / A Black Goddess Come to Earth (2025), which reimagines Laure, the Black woman who posed for the servant in Manet’s Olympia (1863) but whose own life went largely unrecorded. Sodipo builds a new story for her using digital prints, Mylar, and resin.

The display also includes photographs by Jenny Lewis from her UnBecoming series, made as she documented her own experience of ageing and the menopause alongside images of her daughter. In total, the rehang brings together works by 11 artists, all new to the Walker’s collection and shown here for the first time.

Two of the works, by Landy and Whyte, came to the Walker through the Contemporary Art Society’s Collections Fund at Frieze, selected by the fund’s committee and the gallery’s curators at Frieze London in 2025.

Charlotte Keenan McDonald, Head of Walker Art Gallery, said:

“We’re really pleased to be showing this selection of works to the public for the first time. They’re all new to the collection, and together they give a sense of what the Walker is collecting today, set against the historic works people know us for. With the gallery’s 150th anniversary coming in 2027, it’s the perfect time to show how the collection keeps growing.”

Later in the year, the new acquisitions will become the subject of a curator-led tour as part of the Walker’s ‘Beyond The Label’ series of talks. Visitors will be able to walk the contemporary galleries with the curators who put the rehang together and hear how recent additions are changing the shape of the collection.

Alongside the new acquisitions, a selection of past prize winners of the John Moores Painting Prize return to public display after a brief absence. The late David Hockney’s Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool (1966) is showcased alongside winning works by artists including Peter Doig, Tim Head, and Dan Hays. More prizewinning works will return to the gallery’s walls in the coming months.

Two major exhibitions are also on show at the Walker this summer. Sir John Akomfrah’s Listening All Night To The Rain brings his acclaimed Venice Biennale commission to the city in a radical takeover of the gallery’s portico.

Gender Stories is an exploration and celebration of gender through a diverse collection of fine and decorative art, personal stories and objects, and includes further works by Sodipo and Lewis. Both exhibitions run until 31 August 2026.

Entry to Walker Art Gallery is free for everyone. Donations help keep the gallery free and open to all, and help care for the collection for future visitors to enjoy.