Rose Howey Cooperative Gallery: 01
Welcome from our housing cooperative in Liverpool. You join us as we embark on establishing a gallery and performance space in the heart of our home – the ‘main’ room of the building – today referred to by its dwellers as the ‘Events Room’.
From its beginnings in the 1850’s, this room (and the house itself) has constantly been a place of human interaction and co-operation; whether to dine, discuss or debate, the space remains central and integral to our co-existence. It is not only residents that benefit from and use this room: The events room welcomes a migrant women’s choir practice, Paper Wings band rehearsals, creative writing and science clubs for kids and a Community kitchen once a month where all the different groups come together to share food and thoughts and fundraise for a crisis fund which aids women seeking sanctuary in the UK from gender based violence.
Over the next few months, we are hosting a series of intimate exhibitions in the Events Room alongside the Liverpool Biennial and will be creating online versions of the exhibitions for the Open Eye Gallery blog. Alongside the works there will be writings that explore the process from the different artistic perspectives of co-operative members.
The first in the series is ‘1, 2, 3…Origins and expressions of political desires’ – is an introduction to the artists exhibiting over the summer and showcases the history, the diversity, and the creative production of co-operative members and friends.
The project began with three co-operative residents over espresso in the tea kitchen.
Pamela Mastrilli is an Italian social researcher and photographer currently working with Migrant Artists Mutual Aid (MaMa) who uses photography to examine and capture gestures of harmony defining a post-colonial British citizenship.
Jennifer Verson, performance artist and artistic director of MaMa, is showing documentary photographs of her work with the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army alongside documentary images of her current work to explore how migration and motherhood impact art and activism.
Parisian photographer, Ulysse Di Meglio, currently studying for his Masters in Photography at Manchester Metropolitan University, has been documenting the co-op and its Event Room for over two years in order to explore the co-operative use of space and more widely, co-operative living in the UK. He is exhibiting his photographic documentation in situ.
Each of the ten artists to feature in ‘1, 2, 3…’ will exhibit work that expresses their personal relationship to dissent, social engagement and radical social change.
The desire to participate in social change by breaking down binaries and boundaries and allowing artists to flourish as both creator and subject, is an inspiration behind the conception of this project.
The collaboration between the co-operative and the Open Eye Gallery emerges as an expression of the gallery’s history, rooted in the origins and expression of art and activism. These events re-imagine that origin and is an expression of a shared political desire for contemporary Liverpool.
As part of our coinciding schedule of events the MaMa choir will be performing the Open Eye gallery atrium on the 16th of July at 1pm.
