FACT Liverpool launches interactive 'Art Plays Games' exhibition

From Thursday, 5 September 2024 – Sunday, 27 April 2025, FACT Liverpool will host Art Plays Games, a free interactive exhibition dedicated to games created by digital artists and independent video game developers.

Art Plays Games explores how artists are increasingly using games to provide alternative perspectives on the world today and to challenge traditional storytelling forms.

Over the nine-month run, the exhibition’s artworks and games will rotate, offering something new for audiences to discover with each visit.

Housed inside FACT’s first-floor gallery, Art Plays Games is designed to be an inviting space, with cosy furnishings and ambient lighting creating a relaxed atmosphere for gamers and non-gamers of all ages.

Art Plays Games (2024). Installation view at FACT Liverpool. Photography by Kieran Irvine

The displayed games and artworks offer varying levels of interactivity, ranging from multi-player cooperative games to moving image works produced using game engines or gameplay mechanics.

In addition to the works made by artists, the exhibition includes a handheld gaming area equipped with iPads and Nintendo Switch consoles, allowing visitors to experience games made by independent developers and studios.

Art Plays Games highlights how worldbuilding and gaming have become key tools for artists when creating works that explore representation and agency. Artists use games to challenge the limits of play and control and encourage players to think about collaboration versus competition.

Over the exhibition’s duration, selected games will explore critical themes such as identity and representation, climate change and ecology, non-human perspectives, and advancements in AI technology and machine learning.

The exhibition opens with contributions from artists Rachel Maclean, Sahej Rahal, Angela Washko, and Loopntale, with additional games and playable artworks by David O’Reilly, Alice Bucknell, and others to be added later in the exhibition run.

Among the featured works, visual artist and avant-garde filmmaker Rachel Maclean presents her first deepfake film, DUCK (2023). Visually captivating, funny, and technically innovative, DUCK draws inspiration from video games, sci-fi, classic Hollywood, and film noir to raise compelling questions around truth and power.

Sahej Rahal’s cooperative multiplayer game, Distributed Mind Test (2023), invites players to navigate a sprawling post-apocalyptic landscape in which all traces of humanity have been wiped. Set in an unknown future, the work encourages players to think as and with the non-human to uncover stories of the world left behind.

Angela Washko‘s Mother, Player (2023) is an experimental, hand-drawn narrative video game exploring stories of pregnancy and early parenthood during the global pandemic. Players navigate the maternal healthcare industry and parenting culture through the perspective of a burnt-out pansexual artist who decides to have a child, despite the increasingly discouraging geo-political climate that deprioritises and devalues care.

Originally developed and exhibited during a residency at FACT in 2018, Youngju Kim of artist collective Loopntale presents an updated version of Layers of Reality: The Cat (2018-2024). Interested in the curious ways that human and non-human life forms co-exist within urban spaces, this detective puzzle game playfully explores the lives of marginalised beings as they attempt to escape a deserted metropolis.

Alongside the works, FACT will host a number of free and affordable events within the space, such as talks, workshops, and tournaments that further explore questions around world building, gamification, and screen culture.

Maitreyi Maheshwari, Head of Programme at FACT, said:

“FACT has a long history of presenting artists’ games and interactive works within our exhibitions. As game-engines and gaming have become increasingly important tools and reference points for artists, it felt timely to dedicate a space to experimenting with the forms of storytelling and worldbuilding that new technologies allow, especially as they cross over with expanded approaches to cinema.

“These interactive works often address some of the most pressing concerns we face as individuals, society and planet by playfully imagining other forms of being and bringing alternative realities to life. In increasingly divisive times, we wanted to create a space for people to come together, hang out, and interact.”