Ukraine, the 2022 Eurovision winner, could not host the song contest in 2023 due to Russia’s full-scale military invasion. Instead, Liverpool became the host city on behalf of Ukraine. To champion Ukrainian culture during Eurovision, Open Eye Gallery launched the HOME programme. Organised in partnership with online platform Ukrainian. Photographies, HOME is part of an extensive cultural programme in the Liverpool City Region exploring the meaning of home across exhibitions, trails and events. The published book Home includes featured photographs and commissioned poems, the exhibition views, and essays on the topic of home from Viktoria Bavykina and Max Gorbatskyi, curators, Chris McCabe, the National Poetry Library, and Mariama Attaha, Open Eye Gallery.

The book Home will be available for purchase in the Open Eye Gallery shop (open Tuesday – Sunday, 10am – 5pm) for £20. 

Some of the projects that you can see in the book are, for example, Black on Prussian Blue by Andriy Dostliev and Lia Dostlieva, which explores the notion of a perpetrator’s gaze based on the study of the photographs from the family album of a Wehrmacht soldier who served in the Luftwaffe during WWII, or Anatoliy Babiychuk’s project, in which the village of Horaivka stands as an exemplary story of a small village that has kept a traditional way of living, cultivating a deep connection with the land typical of Ukrainian tradition.

For Ukrainians, both the emotional and physical dimensions of home somehow crumbled. Although Ukrainians’ home has changed beyond recognition since February 2022, and Russian missiles have already destroyed some places depicted in the photographs, there are attempts to reconstruct the experience of home, what it once was, and imagine what it will be.

Viktoria Bavykina and Max Gorbatskyi, curators (Ukrainian. Photographies) said: “While preparing this project, we realised that Ukrainian photography is very home-centred. In the sense that through their photographs, the authors, in one way or another, talk about their home, their own Ukraine.

Even if photographs often conceal more than they reveal, it is exactly through this multiplicity of subjects and themes, approaches and practices, photographs of revolution, war, houses crushed by russian missiles, images of miners, youth, cityscapes and abstractions, that the image of contemporary Ukraine somehow emerges”.

The book shows the Home Trails images, too. Five thematic trails run through all boroughs of The Liverpool City Region, converging in the hub exhibition at Open Eye Gallery. The trails entitled Land, which starts with the exhibition at Norton Priory (Halton), Liberty at Unity Theatre (Liverpool), Resistance at Williamson (Wirral), Settings at the Atkinson (Sefton) and Making at Kirkby Gallery (Knowsley), all represent different perspectives of looking at Ukrainian photographic practices and telling stories about our Home in different ways. Each of the five trails also contains five collectable thematic postcards featuring photographs by different Ukrainian photographers. Money raised through the sale of postcards goes to Hospitallers Ukrainian volunteer paramedic organisation. 

The Home. Perspectives exhibition at the Open Eye Gallery features eighteen projects by fifteen Ukrainian artists offering different views of Ukraine and forming constellations that highlight various aspects of Ukraine’s contemporary sociopolitical context, culture and history.

Also, six Ukrainian photographers each created an image of their understanding of Home. Central to this process was a question critical for every Ukrainian today – how their perception of the Home changed after February 2022, after realising it can be taken away or destroyed at any moment. Six UK Poets each created a short poem in response to these images, using their creative voice to amplify the photographer’s work and bring new perspectives. 

The HOME programme was made meaningful through collaboration between Open Eye Gallery and Ukrainian. Photographies, and we would like to thank the following:

UKRAINIAN PHOTOGRAPHERS: Anatoliy BABIYCHUK, Valentine BO, Oleksandr BURLAKA, Igor CHEKACHKOV, Alexander CHEKMENEV, Andrii DOSTLIEV, Lia DOSTLIEVA, Maryna FROLOVA, Nazar FURYK, Sasha KURMAZ, Viktor MARUSHCHENKO, Mykhaylo PALINCHAK, Evgeniy PAVLOV, Polina POLIK ARPOVA, Victoria PIDUST, Viacheslav POLIAKOV, Andriy RACHYNSKYI, Anton SHEBETKO, Yaroslav SOLOP, Elena SUBACH, Daria SVERTILOVA.

UK POETS: John HEGLEY, Hanan ISSA, Jackie KAY, Roger MCGOUGH (CBE), James CONOR PATTERSON, Deryn REES-JONES.

FUNDERS: DCMS, The British Council, Spirit of 2012, Arts Council England.

SUPPORTERS: Ukrainian Institute, Liverpool ONE, Liverpool BID.

HOME DELIVERY PARTNERS: ace & tate, Arthouse Traffic Films, ArtReview, Arts Bar Baltic, BITA, Bold Street Coffee, C&D Properties, Centre for New and International Writing, Dead Ink Books, dot-art, Edgehill University, Engage, European Poetry Festival, Hafla Hafla, Hurricane Films, Keith’s, Kirkby Gallery, Liverpool Bid, Liverpool Arts Bar, Liverpool Culture Team, Liverpool One, Liverpool Poetry Space, Max Literacy, MerseyMade, Merseyrail, Norton Priory, Nova Scotia, Open Culture, Press Bros, Ropes and Twines, Shenanigans, Singing Our Socks Off Community Choir, The Southbank Centre’s National Poetry Library, SUP, Tempest, Thames & Hudson, Tilly Hire, The Atkinson, The Brink, The Double Negative, The Egg Cafe, The Poetry Society, The World of Glass Museum, UCEN – Manchester, Ukrainian Institute, Unity Theatre, University of Liverpool, Victoria Gallery and Museum, Williamson Art Gallery and Museum, The Windows Project, 92 degrees (Hardman St, Baltic and Southport).

HOME GUEST CURATORS: Kateryna Filyuk, Ben Harman, Louise Pearson, Monika Szewczyk, Amelie Schüle, Lindsay Taylor.

AT HOME GUEST WRITERS: Sarah Hymas, Saul Leslie, Bernadette McBride, Anita Pati, Oleksandra Pron, Deryn Rees-Jones, Pauline Rowe, David Tierney.

HOME BOOK DONATORS: JA Flooring, Steven Lucy, SLMC Marketing, Kroll Corlett, The Printroom, Ian & Pauline Wilson, Sue Grainger, North Liverpool Business Forum.

Commissioned for EuroFestival by Culture Liverpool / Liverpool City Council.