Open Eye Gallery is delighted to welcome Max Gorbatskyi as the new curator. Max is particularly interested in exploring photography’s unique ability to simultaneously reflect and form visual culture, being a powerful but accessible medium that operates both in and beyond the realm of art.

Working with the team and community partners, Max will continue Open Eye Gallery’s work in socially engaged practice, focusing on emerging photographers, local and international perspectives, and facilitating discussions about relevant topics such as decolonisation and climate crisis.

Max was previously a curator at Ukraine’s flagship cultural institution Mystetskyi Arsenal, where he focused on developing photography programmes and exhibitions. He worked extensively with archival and contemporary photography. Among the last projects he curated was a large-scale survey of the last three decades of photography in Ukraine, entitled “Sensitivity. Contemporary Ukrainian Photography” and a research project “Archive of photographer Oleksandr Ranchukov” dedicated to the private archive of a late Kyiv based documentary photographer. Max is a co-founder of the Ukrainian. Photographies platform which features online exhibitions and articles with the aim to ensure the resilience and visibility of Ukrainian art and contemporary visual culture. Max studied MA History of Photography at Birkbeck, University of London and MA Arts management at the University of Bologna. 

More recently Max, together with fellow curator Viktoria Bavykina collaborated with Open Eye Gallery on the HOME programme, which was the largest exhibition of Ukrainian photography in the UK to date, showing in over 40 sites. The programme included 5 new commissions by photographers exploring their home and 6 new commissions by UK poets responding to their images, as well as publications and events across Liverpool city region, reflecting on the question, What does home mean? The programme brought together diverse projects from 17 Ukrainian artists who offer distinct approaches to image creation, and ways of seeing and thinking about Ukraine.

Max Gorbatskyi, Curator at Open Eye Gallery, said: 

Open Eye Gallery means a lot to those interested in and dedicated to photography, locally and internationally. It also means so much to me, and I’m thrilled to join the incredible team and be stepping into this role after being an intern at Open Eye six years ago. I am delighted to take the responsibility to continue the best practices the gallery has developed and to offer new perspectives for its new chapter. I’m looking forward to exploring the ways in which photography can be meaningful for the local communities and respond to today’s global challenges. 

Photography’s unique liminal position of being a medium of art, a technology for multiple uses, a tool for communication, surveillance and documentation, and a major part of contemporary visual culture suggests the multiplicity of ways of approaching it. It can reflect, emancipate and connect people. It can tell stories. Working together with the wonderful team of the Open Eye Gallery, we will continue to work on unleashing the potential photography has in the context of now and here.

Sarah Fisher, Director at Open Eye Gallery said:

Max comes to the gallery at an interesting time – as we are building upon our community, regional and international partnerships, and growing our co-authored programme. Watch this space, as his exceptional knowledge of photography and his collaborative approach shape a dynamic programme, extending the range and reach of  photographic voices. 

Open Eye Gallery produces exhibitions, long-term collaborative projects, publications, festivals, and university courses – locally and worldwide. It welcomes over 85,000 visitors to its Liverpool waterfront gallery every year, over 200,000 to projects in other venues, and many more to its online spaces.