LOOK Photo Biennial 2024: Beyond Sight is coming to Open Eye Gallery with three impressive projects. Looking at stars and seashores, photo prints and urban lights, the artists explore the complex human relationships with nature and use photography as a creative tool for scientific inquiry and environmental advocacy.
The exhibited projects are:
Protege Noctem by Mattia Balsamini: a visual research dedicated to the disappearance of the night. The project chronicles the unofficial alliance between scientists and citizens documenting the harmful effects of artificial light on the natural night sky and ecosystems. Light pollution is a significant issue, and defending darkness is crucial for human health, scientific research and protecting wildlife.
Erosion by Stephanie Wynne: a piece of research and a photographic exploration of how post WW2 the structural waste of war was disposed of or reused. This reverberates with the dreadful current conflicts around the world – when or if a conflict is over, how does the structure of a city or landscape recover?
Precious Metals by Melanie King: a project considering the life cycle of silver and palladium, from their production within the cosmos, extraction from Earth and their uses in photography. The project suggests methods and materials that are less harmful to the environment.
Max Gorbatskyi, Open Eye Gallery Curator, says: The exhibition explores the interplay between human intervention and natural processes, shedding light on the often unseen or overlooked consequences of ubiquitous human practices. By addressing cosmic, terrestrial, and daily subjects, the projects underscore the increasing complexity of human relationships with nature guided by consumption and ambition. The artists use exquisite form and poetic subjects to firmly state the urgency of sustainable practices, whether in art or urban planning.
Main gallery show is accompanied by our Digital Window exhibition, Blast Sheets by Max Boardman. This project (created in the Lake District, Cumbria) explores the relationship between the natural and the altered environment – focusing specifically on the development and scale of the process of quarrying. The images display the enormity of the industry and the historical and contemporary scars that are accommodated by the natural landscape.
The LOOK Photo Biennial is building on from the six week long exploratory Climate Lab which took place between January and March 2024. Open Eye Gallery invited researchers, artists, academics and visionaries to take over the gallery and use it as a lab space, showing work in progress and talking through ideas to tackle climate change.
More exhibitions and events developed with a range of partners will be announced throughout the summer in Liverpool, Wigan and Cumbria as LOOK Photo Biennial 2024 continues.
LOOK Photo Biennial is a photography festival delivered by Open Eye Gallery. Taking place in sites across the North West, LOOK’s programme operates as a cultural exchange both locally and internationally.
Celebration event with drinks and music from Dance for Plants: 27 June, 6 – 8 pm. RSVP.
Feature Image Credit: Mattia Balsamini, Protege Noctem