Exhibition launch: We’re telling our own story

Tuesday 8 July / 5pm–7pm / Open Eye Gallery’s atrium / RSVP
Exhibition continues: 8 July – 3 August
Join us to celebrate the public launch of We’re telling our own story: Advancing Reproductive Justice in Northern England​ exhibition, and speak to the team involved in this project. 

The exhibition explores the role of place and community in Reproductive (in)Justice and encourages us to think about how local communities can advance Reproductive Justice and advocate for change. This exhibition includes photographs taken, captioned, and curated by members of ReproNorth, including people with lived experience of health and social inequity and representatives from local community organisations serving women with complex needs and people who are claiming asylum or have refugee status. 

What is Reproductive Justice? 

Reproductive Justice is centred on the core rights to: (1) control our bodies and our futures (bodily autonomy); (2) not have a child; (3) have a child; (4) parent children with dignity in safe and healthy environments. Reproductive Justice helps us consider how structural factors (such as our political systems and everyday social environments) limit reproductive ‘choices.’  While everyone has the same rights in principle, not everyone has the same choices in practice.  

​What is ReproNorth? 

ReproNorth is a network of academic, community organisation, and lived experience partners with a shared commitment to highlight and respond to health and social inequities that compromise Reproductive Justice in the North of England. 

Image: Liza Caruana-Finkel, ReproNorth project workshop April 2025

We’re telling our own story: Advancing Reproductive Justice in Northern England​. Atrium exhibition

Launch: 8 July, 5pm–7pm
The exhibition explores the role of place and community in Reproductive (in)Justice and encourages us to think about how local communities can advance Reproductive Justice and advocate for change. This exhibition includes photographs taken, captioned, and curated by members of ReproNorth, including people with lived experience of health and social inequity and representatives from local community organisations serving women with complex needs and people who are claiming asylum or have refugee status. 

What is Reproductive Justice? 

Reproductive Justice is centred on the core rights to: (1) control our bodies and our futures (bodily autonomy); (2) not have a child; (3) have a child; (4) parent children with dignity in safe and healthy environments. Reproductive Justice helps us consider how structural factors (such as our political systems and everyday social environments) limit reproductive ‘choices.’  While everyone has the same rights in principle, not everyone has the same choices in practice.  

​What is ReproNorth? 

ReproNorth is a network of academic, community organisation, and lived experience partners with a shared commitment to highlight and respond to health and social inequities that compromise Reproductive Justice in the North of England. 

Image: ReproNorth project

Communities of Welcome @ The Kirkby Centre

Anoosh Ariamehr and Communities of Welcome
Celebration: 19 June, 1pm–3pm, The Kirkby Centre
Since January 2025, artist-in-residence Anoosh Ariamehr has been working weekly with a group of Knowsley residents at Huyton Library. Through weekly workshops, Anoosh has supported the group to develop their skills as photographers and artists via workshops, gallery visits and discussion.

The group – Communities of Welcome – became a space for people from diverse cultural and social backgrounds to celebrate their own differences and commonalities. Over several months, the group have used photography to explore their local area, encourage each other and to highlight their own lived experiences of locality and displacement.

Each person brings their own unique history and experiences to a place. This exhibition tells personal stories of connection, identity and place. When these stories are shared, they help us build stronger, more cohesive communities.

Participants: Angela Donnelly, Nataliia Dzhemailova, Sue Emery, Anastasiia Holovach, Andrew Johnson, Semanur Kelesoglu and Jim Stuart.

Anoosh Ariamehr is a socially engaged artist based in Knowsley, whose work focuses on social justice and storytelling. He uses photography as a universal language to bring people together.

Communities of Welcome is part of Photo Here, a programme of socially engaged photographic residencies and exhibitions commissioned by Liverpool City Region Combined Authority as part of this year’s Cultural Events Programme. Developed by Open Eye Gallery in collaboration with each of six local authorities: Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens and Wirral.

Image: Andrew Johnson

Waiting Rooms @ World Of Glass & Street and a Half

Abdullrhman Hassona and Cafe Laziz
Celebration: 15 June 12pm–2pm at World of Glass
Socially engaged photographer Abdullrhman Hassona and members of Cafe Laziz have collaborated to show the diverse culture of St Helens through portraits of people with different immigration and residence statuses. Each image is an introduction to a resident of St Helens and the stories that make a town feel rich with history and experience.
This exhibition is about the places where people pass time, pass on knowledge and practice skills while waiting for the documents and decisions that will change their lives. These can appear at any time and will radically influence each person’s relationship to place. Every day and every building has the potential to be monumental but until then, every day and every building is a waiting room. 

The photographs represent people from 13 countries and feature messages in 8 different languages.

Abdullrhman Hassona is an Egyptian visual artist based in St. Helens. A mixed-media social documentarian and educator, he is passionate about capturing people’s stories and representing diverse cultures through photography and film.

Waiting Rooms  is part of Photo Here, a programme of socially engaged photographic residencies and exhibitions commissioned by Liverpool City Region Combined Authority as part of this year’s Cultural Events Programme. Developed by Open Eye Gallery in collaboration with each of six local authorities: Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens and Wirral.

Image by Abdullrhman Hassona

I’ll Tell You Later @ Williamson Art Gallery and Museum

Emma Case and Happy Snappers
Celebration: 16 July / 6pm–8pm / Williamson Art Gallery and Museum
Join us for an inspiring exhibition showcasing the work of the Happy Snappers, a Wirral-based photography group made up of both Deaf and BSL users. 

I’ll Tell You Later explores the relationship between the Deaf experience and the hearing world. It sheds light on the barriers D/deaf individuals face, while showing the Happy Snappers as a powerful example of how inclusive, supportive communities can break down these obstacles. Through their work, the group highlights the importance of creating a more inclusive society that benefits everyone.

This exhibition is an opportunity to engage in meaningful conversation through the lens of photography.

I’ll Tell You Later is part of Photo Here – a LCR-wide project where the photographers and community group members curate exhibitions of their work in each of the city region’s boroughs. 

Emma Case is a socially engaged photographer working with local communities focusing on projects that often explore home, identity, memory and place. Emma is interested in building real relationships over time and working collectively, often looking at social issues and their impact but through the lens of changing the narrative through storytelling. Emma is fluent in British Sign Language and has worked with the Deaf community for over 20 years; from support worker with SignHealth to Actress with Deafinitely Theatre. Emma is extremely passionate about accessibility for Deaf audiences and artists within cultural spaces.

Happy Snappers are a group of friends who are both Deaf and BSL users. They get together and enjoy life outside and explore some of the Wirral’s hidden locations and beautiful scenery, and capture these locations on camera. They are not a professional photography group but share the same love of meeting people, socialising and having fun. 

I’ll Tell You Later is part of Photo Here, a programme of socially engaged photographic residencies and exhibitions commissioned by Liverpool City Region Combined Authority as part of this year’s Cultural Events Programme. Developed by Open Eye Gallery in collaboration with each of six local authorities: Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens and Wirral.

Image: photo by Jack

 

 

Celebration: I’ll Tell You Later @ Williamson Art Gallery and Museum

Emma Case and Happy Snappers
16 July / 6pm–8pm / Williamson Art Gallery and Museum
Join us to celebrate an inspiring exhibition showcasing the work of the Happy Snappers, a Wirral-based photography group made up of both Deaf and BSL users.

I’ll Tell You Later explores the relationship between the Deaf experience and the hearing world. It sheds light on the barriers D/deaf individuals face, while showing the Happy Snappers as a powerful example of how inclusive, supportive communities can break down these obstacles. Through their work, the group highlights the importance of creating a more inclusive society that benefits everyone.

This exhibition is an opportunity to engage in meaningful conversation through the lens of photography.

I’ll Tell You Later is part of Photo Here – a LCR-wide project where the photographers and community group members curate exhibitions of their work in each of the city region’s boroughs.

Emma Case is a socially engaged photographer working with local communities focusing on projects that often explore home, identity, memory and place. Emma is interested in building real relationships over time and working collectively, often looking at social issues and their impact but through the lens of changing the narrative through storytelling. Emma is fluent in British Sign Language and has worked with the Deaf community for over 20 years; from support worker with SignHealth to Actress with Deafinitely Theatre. Emma is extremely passionate about accessibility for Deaf audiences and artists within cultural spaces.

Happy Snappers are a group of friends who are both Deaf and BSL users. They get together and enjoy life outside and explore some of the Wirral’s hidden locations and beautiful scenery, and capture these locations on camera. They are not a professional photography group but share the same love of meeting people, socialising and having fun.

I’ll Tell You Later is part of Photo Here, a programme of socially engaged photographic residencies and exhibitions commissioned by Liverpool City Region Combined Authority as part of this year’s Cultural Events Programme. Developed by Open Eye Gallery in collaboration with each of six local authorities: Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens and Wirral.

Image: photo by Jack

Liverpool Biennial 2025

The Biennial festival, titled ‘BEDROCK’, takes place 7 June – 14 September 2025, curated by Marie-Anne McQuay. ‘BEDROCK’ draws on Liverpool’s distinctive geography and the beliefs which underpin the city’s social foundations. It is inspired by the sandstone which spans the city region and is found in its distinctive architecture. ‘BEDROCK’ also acts as a metaphor for the social foundations of Liverpool and the people, places and values that ground all of us.

Open Eye Gallery is one of the Biennial’s venues. The artists at Open Eye Gallery work with lens-based media and sculpture to conjure places that speak to their sense of identity. All three artists are reinterpreting stories, myths, lost traditions and memories to form new ones.

In Gallery 1, Nandan Ghiya’s new sculptural work, co-commissioned with Public Arts Trust India, interprets the Samudra Manthana – a major episode in Hinduism that translates to ‘churning of the ocean’ in Sanskrit. Drawing inspiration from the textiles and patterns of heritage buildings in both Liverpool and Jaipur, the artist creates ‘sculptural photographs’ to explore themes relating to the exploitation of natural resources, rising water levels and racial conflicts.

Nandan Ghiya (b.1980, Jaipur, India) is a self-taught visual artist and academic based in Jaipur. Hailing from a family of studio photographers, Ghiya incorporates found vintage photographs and wooden frames to reflect upon shifts in image,identity & space in the 21st century environment with digital elements as the leitmotif. His recent sculptural directions are based on mythological allegories, commenting on the changing urban landscape and its impact, both on heritage and climate.

In Gallery 2, Widline Cadet presents an exhibition of photography works created between 2021 and 2024, centring around her family’s lived experience of emigrating from Haiti to the United States. The works explore the complexities of Black diasporic life and survival, as well as the fragility of memory, using motifs which refer to her past and her ancestry.

Widline Cadet (b. 1992, Haiti) Cadet delves into intergenerational memory, selfhood, and erasure within the Haitian diasporic experience through photography, video, sculpture, and installation. Throughout her practice, Cadet draws inspiration from her memories, Haitian culture, folklore, and an archive of family photographs and videos to create speculative images that traverse specific moments in time and geographic locations, exploring inherited cultural beliefs and the ways that Black diasporic life continues to inform and shapeher lived experiences.

Upstairs, in Gallery 3, Katarzyna Perlak presents a new, collaborative film set in the bedrooms, hallways and ballrooms of the iconic Adelphi Hotel, once a popular destination for wealthy travellers on their way by boat to North America via Liverpool. Co-created with local award-winning filmmaking organisation First Take and participants from their REEL: Queer programme, the film adopts a non-linear, poetic narrative and references the genre of horror to explore longing and Queer identity. The artist also shows work at Walker Art Gallery.

Katarzyna Perlak is a Polish born artist, based in London whose practice employs video, performance, textiles, sculpture and installation. Through her work Perlak employs a notion of ‘tender crafts’, exploring how crafts (heritage and traditions) can be revisited and re-imagined from contemporary feminist, queer and diasporic (migrant) perspectives.  She engages ‘affective truths’ such as myths, tales, dreams, desires, collective memories, and seek to problematise how history is written and traditions are represented.

Liverpool Biennial catalogue (£15) is available in Open Eye Gallery’s independent bookshop.

Marie-Anne McQuay, Curator, Liverpool Biennial 2025, said: “The city’s geological foundations and its psyche have provided the starting point for the conversations of Liverpool Biennial 2025, with the invited artists bringing us their own definition of ‘BEDROCK’. Definitions which include family and chosen family, cultural heritage carried across the generations, and the environments that nurture and restore them.

“Central to this understanding of BEDROCK is the sense of loss that comes from the ongoing legacies of colonialism and empire so formative to Liverpool’s foundations. In responding to the city, artists have taken inspiration from Liverpool’s archives and histories, from its communities and civic spirit, and from taking time to dwell in its green spaces which support plant, insect, and bird life in unexpected ways through planned and unplanned urban developments.”

Dr Samantha Lackey, Director, Liverpool Biennial, said: “This festival deliberately explores and visibly exposes the foundations of Liverpool, connecting international artists with our histories, people and the very ground we walk on. Working with Marie-Anne McQuay, with her long-standing knowledge of the city and its communities, has allowed us to dig deeper into the things that make us a Biennial that could only be created in Liverpool.

“We’re excited to have forged new relationships with local organisations including First Take and At The Library, alongside our work with long standing partners at Tate Liverpool, National Museums Liverpool, FACT, Bluecoat and Open Eye Gallery, consolidating the city’s cultural connections between the local and the global and looking to its foundations to support growth and possibility for the future.We look forward to sharing BEDROCK with visitors from our city and wider region, as well as those visiting from across the UK and internationally.”

 

Liverpool Biennial is the UK’s largest free festival of contemporary visual art. Taking place in historic buildings, unexpected spaces and art galleries, the Biennial has been transforming the city through art for over two decades. A dynamic programme of free exhibitions, performances, screenings, community and learning activities and fringe events unfolds over 14 weeks, shining a light on the city’s vibrant cultural scene.

Images by Kate Davies

Heroes of Anfield @ Walton Breck Road

As part of a two-year artist-in-residence programme, delivered in partnership with Open Eye Gallery and Culture Liverpool, we have developed an embedded community project in Anfield, working with local residents through a range of creative workshops and pop-up events.

Through this work, photographer Emma Case and writer Pauline Rowe created The People of Anfield project, developed through close collaborations with local residents and community groups to create a striking public realm artwork on Walton Breck Road titled Heros of Anfield. This large-scale installation, displayed on public hoardings, brings the stories and faces of Anfield to the forefront, celebrating the people who shape the area every day.

Through photography and conversation, The People of Anfield has captured the spirit of this vibrant community, amplifying voices and personal histories that often go unseen. The final artwork transforms a key public space into a living gallery, reflecting the strength and pride of Anfield’s residents.

This project builds on Open Eye Gallery’s ongoing commitment to socially engaged photography, utilising photography to foster connections and celebrate local identity in the heart of Liverpool. Visit Walton Breck Road to experience the installation and see Anfield through the eyes of its people!

Emma Case, Open Eye Gallery’s photographer in residence, said: It has been such a wonderful time working on this residency. We’ve connected in many creative ways with lots of different people and witnessed both the community’s frustrations and its constant hard work and dedication to bring people together and to support one another. I hope that this exhibition gives people a real glimpse of that and celebrates the community that we feel honoured to have gotten to know.

Pauline Rowe, Open Eye Gallery’s writer in residence, said: It has been an amazing opportunity for me as a writer and poet to work with so many creative, inspiring and friendly people who are a great credit to the city of Liverpool. I look forward to continuing the work with Emma and our many friends in Anfield.

The People of Anfield project was shown as part of The Flowers Still Grow exhibition at Open Eye Gallery in 2024.

The artist-in-residence programme is part of Culture Liverpool’s Creative Neighbourhoods programme, which aims to address the needs of each community at a neighbourhood level, encouraging local pride, a sense of place, inclusivity, accessibility and empowerment.

Images by Bronwyn Andrews

Not All Who Wander Are Lost @ Crosby Library

Stephanie Wynne and The Group from Crosby Camera Club
Celebration Event: 14 June, 12pm–2pm, Crosby Library
Members of Crosby Camera Club have set out to discover the feel of Sefton – the streets, fields, green spaces, coast and places where day to day life takes place. They enthusiastically roamed across the borough embracing the principles of psychogeography – how location affects emotions and behaviour – responding through photography to locations across the length and breadth of the borough that are familiar and less familiar. The group are confident photographers who collaborated with artist in residence Stephanie Wynne, to expand their ideas about photography and to challenge themselves to create pictures that reflect their new ways of seeing. Explore the exhibition, see what they saw, and enjoy a wander through Sefton.

Photographers: June Poston, Andrew Dunford, Duncan Reid, Paul Baker, Cathy Rigby, Andy Joynson, Stephen Lang, Sue Williamson, Paul Ryan, Graham Liu, Patrick Doherty, Chris Hands.

Stephanie Wynne has worked as a commissioned photographer for over 25 years. She formed the partnership McCoy Wynne with Stephen McCoy and they collaborate on commercial assignments and personal projects. Stephanie’s primary interest in photography is in the broad subject areas of landscape and the built environment, particularly the impacts of environmental change. She has enjoyed a varied career including teaching photography in both further and higher education. Her career has been informed and enriched by her innate interest in people and the environment. In recent years she has expanded her practise by drawing on skills and expertise to produce collaborative, socially engaged projects.

Not All Who Wander Are Lost is part of Photo Here, is part of Photo Here, a programme of socially engaged photographic residencies and exhibitions commissioned by Liverpool City Region Combined Authority as part of this year’s Cultural Events Programme. Developed by Open Eye Gallery in collaboration with each of six local authorities: Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens and Wirral.

Image: Stephen Lang

The Williamson Open 2025

The Williamson Open is BACK for 2025! Our much-loved annual exhibition showcases the best in art and photography made by artists across the Liverpool City Region.

Submissions open 2nd July, and the exhibition will open 10th October.

For full details on how to apply, please visit the dedicated webpage in the link below.
Info for the Williamson Open (Entry will be available from 2nd July)