16 September 2012 Last updated at 12:00

In pictures: Liverpool Biennial 2012

Around 150 brightly-coloured artificial pigeons have been placed on and around the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool as part of the seventh Liverpool Biennial, a 10-week festival during which contemporary artists from around the world take over venues across the city. The pigeons were made by the Barnsley-based Patrick Murphy under the title Belonging. Photo: Mark McNulty.

Jose Angel Vincench's work takes the form of five mobile home trailers spelling the word Exile to represent the transient existence of people who have left their homes for political reasons. The Liverpool Biennial is billed as the largest international contemporary art festival in the UK and attracted more than 600,000 people in 2010. Photo: Jerry Hardman-Jones.

$Jorge Macchi - Refraction$ One of the main venues is the Copperas Hill Building, the former Royal Mail sorting office behind Lime Street station, which is open to the public for the first time. The artworks inside include Refraction by the Argentine artist Jorge Macchi, in which bent iron bars are supposed to recreate the optical effect seen when an object is put into water.

Visitors will also have a rare chance to go inside The Cunard Building, one of the so-called "three graces" on Liverpool's waterfront. The building is playing host to work by more than a dozen artists, including Parkverbot by the Tunisian Nadia Kaabi-Linke. Photo: Jerry Hardman-Jones.

Visitors to the Liverpool One shopping centre are being confronted by the sight of a vintage elevator apparently bursting through the pavement. It is a sculpture by the Israel-born, New York-based artist Oded Hirsch. Photo: Jerry Hardman-Jones.

Cities 3D by Mona Hatoum, a Lebanese artist raised in UK, consists of maps representing cities including her birthplace Beirut, with three-dimensional raised and indented sections representing destruction and rebuilding. Photo: Jerry Hardman-Jones.

A huge inflatable black pillow made by Lithuanian architects and artists Audrius Bucas and Valdas Ozarinskas fills one part of the Copperas Hill Building. It represents the city of Vilnius as part of the City States strand, which also features art from Lisbon, Oslo Gdansk and Wellington. Photo: Jerry Hardman-Jones.

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In pictures: Liverpool Biennial 2012

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