Ghost Art School X Independents Biennial presented a number of exhibitions and events under the banner of The Right Map, for the Independents Biennial held in Liverpool during 5 June to 14 September 2025. The exhibitions consisted of, Unstable Series - Holes I - IV, at The Stables, curated by Rory Macbeth; & Slipstream, at CBS Gallery, curated by Phoebe Thomas
Emerging from the spirit of Ghost Art School, it celebrated artists who move between margins, who learn in the cracks, and who map their own routes when none are given. Here, the map was never fixed, drawn in gestures, erased by time, redrawn in conversation, in defiance and in care. The Right Map asked, not where we are going, but how we move - and who gets to move us.
The Right Map: Unstable Series - Holes I - IV, curated by Rory Macbeth. The Stables Gallery.
Holes are strange. We talk about them as things, but they are ‘not-things’ — defined by what surrounds them, not what they are. They exist and don’t exist at the same time. The works here are holes literally or metaphorically. Holes as places to hide, or to hide things. Holes are portals - a way in to a different world, access to the inaccessible. A view through to the other side. Dummy phones invite you to talk to people you cannot reach by ordinary phone — to talk to the mythical, the fictional, to the deceased, or the unborn. Cakes which, as people cut and ate at the opening, revealed ‘Skye-Picot 1916’ on the plates, the name of the treaty dividing up the Middle East engineered by Britain and France and that has been the foundation of all the destabilisation and war right up to the present day. The audience re-enact this act of division, and create a hole way bigger than an empty plate.
Cartoon holes on glass hover uneasily and precariously in reality, referencing possibilities of holes from Alice to wormholes via Looney Tunes and the Yellow Submarine.’MacArthur Park’ is sung in a shower, a song about loss as an overheard unseen private moment. The hayloft resonates with the dissonances that come from broken organ pipes - holes that have unplanned-for holes. Poles that serve as a way of viewing other things, has its eyeholes placed towards the floor or up high, and away from the viewer, rendering their instinct to look through them, in an act of a truancy of vision. From stalactites, found holes, filling holes, objects that make holes, silhouette cut-outs of an eskimo’s brain that adorn holes — from Ursula K Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction to black holes and back again.
Ghost Art School’s logo are two eyeholes — actual holes, that can be put in anything. It is a means of looking through to something else - reversing the panopticon. Ghost Art School members have been collecting images of found holes that make up an ongoing and perpetually growing collection, adding to the strangeness of holes — Holes hold positions in our lives. Their position is not measured by a title or name, but by location and the responsibility they carry. What we learned, and the kinds of holes we found in a map that was already full of them and searching for further holes, the experience went far beyond what was expressed - more about what happens when we work together, recognising where we succeeded so that we can carry them forward, and where things did not work so we can avoid them.
Participating artists:
Alison Reid, Alma Stritt, Charli Kleeman, Chelsea Johnson, Chris Roberts, Colm Moore, Conner Browne, Cos Ahmet, Danielle Freakley, David W Hicks, Eleanor Capstick, Finn Roberts, Gary Finnegan, Gwendolin Kircali, Halyna Maystrenko-Grant, Hannah Browne, Harriet Morley, Igor Prato Luna, Jasmir Creed, Karema Munassar, Lily Patricija, Mai Sanchez, Marie-Sofie Braune, Molly Lindsay, Molly Mousdell, Phoebe Thomas, Priya Foster, Ritu Arya, Rory Macbeth, Sonic Relics, Theodora Koumbouzis, Tom Doubtfire, Tom Kelly, Valetina Passerini, Xueying Zhang
Images: Cos Ahmet, Installation views of The Truancy of Vision I (diptych), 2025 & The Truancy of Vision II, 2025, taken from The Right Map: Unstable Series - Holes, The Stables Gallery, Port Sunlight Village, Wirral.
For further installation views, please visit the galleries of The Truancy Of Vision I (diptych) and The Truancy Of Vision II, under the section ‘work’ on this site.