Past Events Events

Book Launch: A Look At A New Perspective

23 November 2023

Events

Book Launch: ‘544m’ By Kevin Crooks

30 November 2023

Events

Community workshops @ Ellesmere Port Library

6 November - 5 February 2024

Exhibitions

Bernice Mulenga @ Open Eye Gallery Atrium Space

17 November - 17 December 2023

Past Events

Bernice Mulenga: Artist Talk

18 November 2023

Exhibitions

Community @ Ellesmere Port Library

26 October - 11 April 2024

Past Exhibitions

Local Roots @ The Atkinson

14 October 2023

Past Events

Critique Surgery for Socially Engaged Photographers

6 November 2023

Past Events

Deeds Not Words: panel discussion

12 October 2023

Past Exhibitions

Deeds Not Words @ Atrium Space

3 October - 22 October 2023

Ode To Our Space @ Digital Window Gallery

29 September - 23 December 2023

A Look At A New Perspective @ Digital Window Gallery

29 September - 23 December 2023

Past Events

Exhibition Launch: A Place of Our Own

28 September 2023

Past Events

Book Launch: Crow Dark Dawn

19 October 2023

Reflections

12 September - 22 December 2023

Past Events

Sandra Suubi ‘Samba Gown’ Procession

9 September 2023

Exhibitions Future Exhibitions

A Place of Our Own

29 September - 22 December 2023

Past Events

POETRY BOOK LAUNCH: JACK BENNETT – LUNETTE

7 September 2023

Exhibitions

A Portrait of the High Street @ Prescot

31 August 2023

Projects Past Exhibitions

Our Home. Our Place. Our Space. @ Walton

16 August - 2 October 2023

Past Events

Poetry Reading: Coast to Coast to Coast’s sixth Birthday!

16 September 2023

Past Events

CHILDREN’S STORYTELLING: The Mermaid’s Revolt

9 September 2023

Exhibitions Past Exhibitions

Findings: an exhibition by service users of Age Concern

8 August - 10 September 2023

Past Events

Film screening: The Undesirables + When the Sea sends forth a Forest

24 August 2023

Exhibitions Past Exhibitions

Reclaim. Suzanne St Clare and residents of Chester @ Chester

5 August - 10 September 2023

Exhibitions Past Exhibitions

Picturing High Streets. Ciara Leeming and The Spider Project @ Chester

28 July - 10 September 2023

Exhibitions Past Exhibitions

Picturing High Streets. Suzanne St Clare and Chester Traders @ Chester

28 July - 10 September 2023

VR: Home. Perspectives

4 May - 21 May 2023

Past Events

Book Launch: Vestige

27 July 2023

Past Events

An Evening of Poetry: Launch of Life Stills and readings from Merseyside Stanza Poets

15 June 2023

Past Exhibitions

LCR Photo Award Winners @ Williamson Art Gallery and Museum

1 June - 1 July 2023

Past Exhibitions

Me, Myself, My SPACE @ The Atkinson

27 May - 9 July 2023

Exhibitions Past Exhibitions

as the glass clears

25 May - 29 May 2023

Past Events

Poets Hanan Issa and James Conor Patterson at Open Eye Gallery

21 May 2023

Projects

PLATFORM: ISSUE 5

27 April 2023

Past Exhibitions

Solace in the City @ DWG

5 May - 21 May 2023

Exhibitions Past Exhibitions

Home. Making @ Kirkby Gallery

1 May - 15 June 2023

Exhibitions Past Exhibitions

Home. Settings @ The Atkinson

4 May - 15 June 2023

Exhibitions Past Exhibitions

Home. Perspectives @ Open Eye Gallery

4 May - 21 May 2023

Exhibitions Past Exhibitions

Home. Land @ Norton Priory Museum and Gardens

27 April - 11 June 2023

Past Events

HOME: Launch Event

4 May 2023

Projects

HOME SCHOOLS ACTIVITY PACK

18 April - 21 July 2023

Exhibitions Past Exhibitions

Home. Liberty @ Unity Theatre Exhibition Space

1 May - 31 May 2023

Exhibitions Past Exhibitions

Home. Resistance @ Williamson Art Gallery and Museum (Wirral)

26 April - 27 May 2023

Past Events

People and Places: Whitby High School Student Exhibition Private View

28 April 2023

Past Events

The Liverpool Camarade – part of The European Poetry Festival 2023

11 May 2023

Exhibitions Past Exhibitions

People and Places @ Open Eye Gallery

26 April - 1 May 2023

Exhibitions Future Exhibitions

Liverpool Biennial 2023

10 June - 17 September 2023

Past Events

Zine Launch: PLATFORM Issue 5

20 April 2023

Exhibitions

EuroFestival: exhibitions and events @ Open Eye Gallery & Liverpool City Region

26 April 2023

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Archive

The Open Eye Gallery Archive contains approximately 1600 prints by more than 100 photographers. Its holdings are diverse, ranging from works by lesser known photographers to those by leading international artists. The archive is particularly strong on work made in and around Liverpool, including portraits, urban landscapes and social documentary.

The archive was started in 1980 – three years after the Gallery opened – by Open Eye Gallery’s first Director of Exhibitions, Peter Hagerty. Collecting has followed changing agendas over the years, but has remained closely linked to the Gallery’s commissions and exhibition programmes. The first works to enter the archive came from the open submission exhibition Open Eye Gallery 1980. Similar open group exhibitions continued, and fed works into the archive, until 1996.

Some of the archive’s earlier works date from the 1930s and 1940s. They include a substantial body of work by Edith Tudor-Hart, exhibited at Open Eye Gallery in 1988. Tudor-Hart was a Bauhaus-trained photographer from Austria who fled to the UK in the 1930s to avoid prosecution for her political activities. She photographed in the coal mining areas of the Rhondda Valley and in the industrial North East of England; from the late 1930s her work explored issues around social policy, housing and the care of disabled children.

In 1985 Neil Burgess (Open Eye Gallery’s Director 1982-86) organised an exhibition of the work of Bert Hardy, a leading British photojournalist of the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1940s Hardy was commissioned by Picture Post magazine to shoot photo-essays such as Chinese Hostel in Liverpool (unpublished, 1942) and Is There a British Colour Bar? (1949). In 2006 Getty Images donated the exhibited works to the Open Eye Gallery archive.

In 1983 Open Eye Gallery’s Liverpool Free Studio project set-up a temporary studio on the street outside the Gallery. Over a number of days the participating photographers, who included Tom Wood and John McDonald, photographed passers-by, who were invited to come back the next day to collect a print. From 1984-89 Open Eye Gallery’s Project Assistance Scheme helped local photographers create new work; each project contributed a set of prints to the archive.

A number of Open Eye Gallery’s exhibitions in the 1970s and 1980s examined the wider roles of photography in popular culture. Works were collected from exhibitions such as Snap, Razzle and Pop: a History of Pop Photography 1955-83, including pictures of 1960s Merseybeat stars and of the wider UK music scene. The 1986 exhibition A portrait of Comedy was also a source of works for Open Eye Gallery’s archive and included portraits of UK comedy stars of the 1940s, 50s and 60s.

In 2007 the Gallery commissioned and exhibited The Water’s Edge, a series of portraits by Michelle Sank of women who work, or worked, on the Liverpool waterfront. The project was produced in collaboration with writer and oral historian Joanne Lacey, who also co-authored the book (published by Open Eye Gallery and Liverpool University Press, ISBN 978-1-84631-084-3). Michelle Sank donated a set of prints to the archive in 2008.

Another major acquisition in 2008 was the exhibition Cities on the Edge, commissioned as part of the city’s European Capital of Culture programmes and curated by photographer John Davies. The exhibition and accompanying book (Liverpool University Press, ISBN 978-1-84631-186-4) explored Liverpool and six other European port cities through the eyes of leading international photographers. The exhibition was donated to the archive by Liverpool Culture Company.

Photographers represented in the archive include: Gabriele Basilico, Ian Beesley, Vanley Burke, Steve Conlan, Philippe Conti, Will Curwen, John Davies, John Edwards, Paul Fazackerley, Bruce Gilden, Steve Hale, Sean Halligan, Edward Chambre Hardman , Bert Hardy, Thurston Hopkins, Peter Kennard, Greg Leach, Peter Hagerty, Harry Hammond, Edith Tudor Hart, Mari Mahr, Peter Marlowe, Derek Massey, John McDonald, Neil McDowall, Rob Meighen, Joel Meyerowitz, Simon Norfolk, Paul O’Donnell, Martin Parr, Caroline Penn, Michael Robinson, Michelle Sank, Ludwig Schirmer, Samantha Seneviratne, Patrick Shanahan, Ewen Spencer, John Stoddart, Wolfgang Suschitsky, Jan Svenungsson, Ali Taptik, Ed van der Elsken, Sandy Volz, Wojtek Wilczyk, Rob Williams and Tom Wood.

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