Open Eye Gallery

Past Events and Exhibitions

Woman photographed close-up against a bright pink backdrop

Casey Orr: Saturday Town at Open Eye Gallery

11 April 2024 to 18 May 2024

Saturday Town is a photography series by the award-winning photographer Casey Orr. Since 2013 Casey has travelled throughout the UK with her pop-up portrait studio photographing young people on Saturday afternoons. The project explores fashion, identity and the self-expression of young people on Saturday afternoons on the high streets and public spaces of towns across the country.
This is the largest show of Saturday Town and Casey Orr’s first retrospective show - on at Open Eye Gallery intil 18 May.

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A person sat with opened bean pods around them and putting hand in a bowl of beans with vibrant print clothing

LOOK Climate Lab at Open Eye Gallery

18 January 2024, 10:00 to 31 March 2024, 17:00

Open Eye Gallery are running LOOK Climate Lab - a biennial programme exploring how photography can be a relevant and powerful medium for talking about climate change. Running from 18 January to 31 March 2024, they'll transform the gallery into a lab: bringing together researchers and artists to test their ideas and encouraging their audiences to discuss systematic changes needed for dealing with the climate crisis.

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A group of people looking at a board of post-it notes and photos in an exhibition space

Socially Engaged Photography MA Open Day at the Open Eye Gallery with University of Salford

1 February 2024, 13:00 to 15:30

Open Eye Gallery are delighted to be hosting a special hybrid event, where anyone interested in finding out more about their joint MA in socially engaged photography course with the University of Salford, can come along to hear more.

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Middle aged man and woman sat chatting outside a local cafe in the sun

A Place of Our Own at Open Eye Gallery

28 September 2023 to 22 December 2023

Open Eye Gallery is delighted to present A Place of Our Own, a group exhibition which brings together the local stories of people across Walton (North Liverpool), Prescot (Knowsley) and Chester town centre, running from September to December 2023.

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Networking

Critique

Critique Surgery for Socially Engaged Photographers

6 November 2023, 11:00 to 13:00

Open Eye Gallery,

Liverpool

A group of people looking through photography prints on a table

Our Critique Surgeries are a supportive and welcoming space to share your work and get feedback and inspiration to continue making work!

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uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things

10 June 2023 to 17 September 2023

uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things.

The artists at Open Eye Gallery highlight Western exploitative practices related to the extraction and destruction of natural resources in African countries. Work by David Aguacheiro and Rahima Gambo is presented alongside a new iteration of Sandra Suubi’s performance installation ‘Samba Gown’.

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Networking

Talk

Hothouse Liverpool

29 November 2019, 10:00 to 16:00

Open Eye Gallery,

Liverpool

Hothouse arrives in Liverpool in partnership with LOOK Photo Biennial for a day-long celebration of photographic talent. Throughout the day there will be quick-fire presentations from photographers about their recent work and projects, which will drill down to the substance and inspiration behind a project. Get involved - apply to present, plus there is ample opportunity for networking and to show your portfolios and books.

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Exhibition: A Portrait Of..., Open Eye Gallery

2 August 2019 to 29 September 2019

Portraits change the way we understand one another. Whether this is professional photos, selfies on Instagram or snapshots of our friends, the photos that we take of ourselves and each other speak volumes about who we are and who we want to be. Through portraits, we come face to face with someone else: they create a space in which we can challenge the assumptions that we often hold about people. This exhibition presents projects that give us a chance to empathise, to consider the experience of someone else’s life.

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Kinship - Open Eye Gallery

10 May 2019 to 7 July 2019

Opening Friday 10 May, Kinship at Open Eye Gallery navigates the dynamics of modern relationships. The exhibition presents projects from seven photographers, all women, addressing traditional ideas of how people might relate to others based on their gender, age, or position within a family. Together, the artists seek to open up new ways of thinking about how we express our sense of kin — as friends, family and partners. Kinship features the work of Pixy Liao, Lydia Goldblatt, Johanna Heldebro, Jenny Lewis, Momo Okabe, and Margaret Mitchell.

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Literary Evening: The Other

4 April 2019, 18:30 to 20:00

The Other is an inclusive literary night encouraging its writers to get to know each other and foster new friendships. In response to Open Eye Gallery's current exhibition 209 Women, this edition will be an all-women line-up (including non-binary/female identifying writers) sourced from an open call.

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Wake Up Together

22 November 2018

Two bodies of work pushing for the right to exist in our skin on our own terms: Ren Hang UK premiere & Robin Hammond's Where Love Is Illegal.

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Snapshot to WeChat: A Migration of Identity

6 April 2018 to 17 June 2018

As part of Liverpool 2018’s China Dream season, Snapshot to WeChat: A Migration of Identity presents three projects examining the role of photography today, casting some light on life in a rapidly transforming global culture.

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Workshop

Redeye Academy: Digital Detox - Cyanotypes and Salt Prints

31 March 2018, 10:00 to 17:00

Open Eye Gallery,

Liverpool

Digital Detox is a full day workshop that will give you a grounding in analogue photography, concentrating on cyanotypes and salt prints.

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Seacombe Ferry, From ‘The Pier Head’ Series, 1985. © Tom Wood

The Pier Head - Tom Wood

12 January 2018 to 25 March 2018

The Mersey Ferries operate between Liverpool and the Wirral peninsula. Photographer Tom Wood lived in New Brighton for 25 years, and for most days throughout the 70s and 80s he crossed the river. Whilst waiting for the ferry to arrive or crossing the river, he took photographs.

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Takiyah Daly at her home, Andrew Jackson & Granby Four Streets CLT, 2017

Culture Shifts: Local

5 October 2017 to 22 December 2017

Culture Shifts: Local presents collaboratively produced photography from eight socially engaged photography projects across Liverpool. The work demonstrates how photography as an art practice can be used to help communities define themselves, bridge cultural divides and communicate the vital issues of today.

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40 Years of Open Eye Gallery- 1977-2017. Wall Work by Thom Isom. Photo by Mark McNulty.

Open 3: Affecting Change

7 July 2017 to 17 September 2017

Early career photographers work with communities, businesses and individuals who are affecting change in Liverpool.

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© Luke Ching. 1/F 17 Fung Yi Street, To Kwa Wan, KL, Hong Kong（Door, Wall, Window) 2001.

Culture Shifts: Global

6 April 2017 to 18 June 2017

Culture Shifts: Global explores the city and our urban environments as seen through outsider’s eyes.

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Raf Simons, Autumn/Winter 2003. Catwalking.com

North: Identity, Photography, Fashion

5 January 2017 to 19 March 2017

Co-curated by Lou Stoppard and Adam Murray, North explores the way the region is depicted, constructed and celebrated in select photographs, artworks and fashion collections. The show brings together collective visions of the North, unpicking the tropes and themes that appear regularly in design and media and takes into account the rich cultural history of the region.

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Talk

Special Event

Liverpool to Tokyo with Vesta Hex

2 March 2017, 18:30 to 20:00

Open Eye Gallery,

Liverpool

Liverpool to Tokyo with Vesta Hex

In partnership with Open Eye Gallery, Redeye presents photographic artist Vesta Hex, as she shares a body of research that explores the ways we consider, create and consume photography in the UK compared with Japan.

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40 Years of Open Eye Gallery: 1977-2017

5 January 2017, 18:00 to 21:00

Open Eye Gallery invite you to the launch of their 40th Birthday Year.

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JERWOOD/PHOTOWORKS AWARDS 2015

28 October 2016 to 19 December 2016

Open Eye Gallery will present a group exhibition of new photography enabled by the first national Jerwood/Photoworks Awards.

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Ideas Lab on Writing & Photography

14 December 2016, 18:00 to 20:00

An ideas lab inviting writers and photographers to think collaboratively about their practice.

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The Edges Of These Isles - Film Screening and Discussion

29 November 2016, 18:00 to 19:30

Photographer Simon Bray and painter Tom Musgrove discuss their new collaborative project, The Edges of These Isles.

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Talk

Redeye open forum - Finding meaning in photography

24 May 2016, 19:00 to 20:00

Open Eye Gallery,

Liverpool

Come and join Redeye in a discussion (over a drink) about meaning in photography. It aims to be an informal and enjoyable evening with a serious purpose. It links to Open Eye’s current exhibition Open 2: Pieces of You - six photographers who share a curiosity in exploring how we gather and make meaning of our experiences.

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Flat Death

15 January 2016 to 3 April 2016

Jordan Baseman, Deadness, 2013. Still courtesy the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London

Edgar Martins attempts to understand our relationship to death and photography’s role in this process through a variety of images. Jordan Baseman’s exhibition of memorial images sits within a long tradition of photography being used by families to remember their loved ones after they have passed.

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Talk

Still Here: An evening with Lydia Goldblatt

25 February 2016, 18:30 to 19:30

Open Eye Gallery,

Liverpool

Join us at Open Eye Gallery for an evening with photographic artist Lydia Goldblatt. Lydia will talk about her life and work including the critically acclaimed project Still Here.

More info about Still Here: An evening with Lydia Goldblatt →

Networking

Talk

Tights and Control Pants: An evening with Stephen King and Natalie Wardle

22 October 2015, 18:30 to 21:00

Open Eye Gallery,

Liverpool

Join us at Open Eye Gallery for an evening with Stephen King and Natalie Wardle, two photographers exploring gender, identity and sexuality.

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Special Event

One Photograph

29 June 2015, 18:30 to 20:00

Open Eye Gallery,

Liverpool

Join us at Open Eye Gallery to share and talk for a minute about one photograph that means something to you, and to hear others share theirs.

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Metamorphosis of Japan After the War

22 January 2015 to 26 April 2015

This exhibition reflects on the turbulent period in Japan following the war, exhibiting over 100 black and white photographs by 11 leading post-war Japanese photographers.

The exhibition features work by Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Shomei Tomatsu, Eikoh Hosoe and Ken Domon among others. Rather than arranging the works by period and author, this exhibition is divided into three sections – “The Aftermath of the War,” “Between Tradition and Modernity,” and “Towards a New Japan.”

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Talk

Talk and Networking: An evening with Carole Evans

20 April 2015, 19:00 to 21:00

Open Eye Gallery,

Liverpool

Carole Evans, photographer and co-founder of Portrait Salon, joins us at Open Eye Gallery to give a talk on her life and work.

More info about Talk and Networking: An evening with Carole Evans →

Ebb and Flow

17 May 2014 to 22 June 2014

Ebb and Flow is an audio-visual survey of the history and changes that have taken place within the oldest Chinese community in Europe, curated by Jill Carruthers.

Drawing from the rich selection of photographic prints preserved in the Open Eye Gallery Archive, the show looks at the physical and architectural transformations of Liverpool’s Chinatown, as well as documenting the establishment and development of the local Chinese community.

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Breaking the code of silence

22 February 2014 to 4 May 2014

Open Eye Gallery presents, for the first time in the UK, the intense work of Sicilian photographer and photojournalist Letizia Battaglia (born 1935 in Palermo, Italy). Breaking the Code of Silence will guide the viewer along a journey into one of the darkest periods in post-war Italian history.

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Alvin Baltrop and Gordon Matta-Clark: The Piers From Here

7 December 2013 to 9 February 2014

The exhibition focuses on the area of the Piers in New York City during the mid 1970s - while Matta-Clark was pursuing the idea that art could act as a catalyst for urban regeneration and land re-appropriation, Baltrop investigated the life at the margins.

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Networking

Picturing Prostitution

21 January 2014, 18:30 to 21:00

Open Eye Gallery,

Liverpool

Please note - this event is now fully booked and we would advise you not to come unless you have registered for a place.

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You Never See Them Like This

6 September 2013 to 24 November 2013

Two years after his death, Open Eye Gallery pays tribute to the work of Liverpool-born photojournalist Tim Hetherington (1970 – 2011) in an exhibition of photography and film work.

The show is presented in collaboration with the Tim Hetherington Trust and Magnum Photos.

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Film screening - Which Way is The Frontline From Here? The Times and Life of Tim Hetherington

10 October 2013, 18:00 to 20:00

Open Eye Gallery presents an exclusive screening of 'Which Way is The Frontline From Here? The Times and Life of Tim Hetherington', followed by a Q&A with director Sebastian Junger and producer James Brabazon.

The event will take place at Camp and Furnace, 10th October, from 7pm.
You can book your ticket online using the event link, or by ringing the gallery on 0151 236 6768.

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The Wild and the Wise

17 May 2013 to 25 August 2013

In collaboration with LOOK13, Liverpool International Photography Festival, Open Eye Gallery presents the work of Charles Fréger and Eva Stenram. The exhibitions are institutional premieres in the UK.

Both shows respond to this year’s festival title (WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?), approaching the notion of subjectivity and selfhood from different perspectives.

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Drape

17 May 2013 to 25 August 2013

In collaboration with LOOK13, Liverpool International Photography Festival, Open Eye Gallery presents the work of Eva Stenram and Charles Fréger.

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Free Exhibition Tour

11 August 2013, 13:30 to 14:30

Free exhibition tour led by Open Eye's curatorial team, no booking required, just turn up.

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Hand Colouring Workshop

21 July 2013, 09:30 to 15:30

In Partnership with Ilford, Open Eye Gallery welcomes photographer, master printer and author Andrew Sanderson to lead a full day, workshop on hand colouring black + white prints.

Booking is essential as places are limited. Click the event link on the right to reserve your place.

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Free Exhibition Tour

14 July 2013, 13:30 to 14:30

Free exhibition tour led by our curatorial team, no booking required, just turn up.

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What is... Lomography?

22 June 2013, 13:30 to 15:30

In Partnership with Lomography Open Eye Gallery hosts an afternoon workshop with a Lomo expert.

Try out different cameras and techniques and share your results with us via Facebook. Cameras are provided and the workshop cost includes a free roll of film, 10% off Lomography’s Processing Lab and 10% off all purchases in the Open Eye Gallery shop on the day.

Places are limited – click the event link on the right to book your ticket.

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Free Exhibition Tour

9 June 2013, 13:30 to 14:30

Free exhibition tour led by our curatorial team, no booking required, just turn up.

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Eva Stenram in Conversation with Lucy Soutter

19 May 2013, 14:30 to 15:30

Open Eye Gallery presents a discussion on key themes in contemporary art photography between exhibiting artist, Eva Stenram, and art historian and author, Lucy Soutter.

Stenram’s work explores the flux of perception through manipulation of acquired negatives and source photographs, and is considered in Soutter’s latest publication ‘Why Art Photography?’ (2013).

Lucy Soutter is a photographer, critic and art historian. She teaches in the Department of Critical and Historical Studies at the Royal College of Art and has written about contemporary art and photography.’

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Precious Commodities

2 March 2013 to 5 May 2013

Born in Brussels in 1976, Manchester-based Mishka Henner’s work explores and subverts the value of photography in today’s media-saturated world.

His images derive from a multitude of sources – the Internet, satellite imagery and television, as well as the precious canon of photography, calling to question the idea of authorship and challenging traditional associations of photography through a singular viewpoint.

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Quiet Radicalism

2 March 2013 to 5 May 2013

Austrian born Edith Tudor-Hart (1908 – 1973) was a photographer, Communist-sympathiser and spy for the Soviet Union, who used photography as a tool to communicate her political ideas.

She studied photography at the Bauhaus and fled Vienna in 1933 to escape persecution for Communist activities and her Jewish background.

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A Lecture Upon the Shadow

7 December 2012 to 17 February 2013

A Lecture Upon The Shadow brings together new work by six artists from the North West and Shanghai.

Using different approaches, the artists play with light, shadow and form to re-imagine familiar situations, exploring photography’s relationship to illusion and the everyday.

The exhibition takes its title from a poem by the English Renaissance poet John Donne. It is a unique collaboration between Open Eye and ShanghART.

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Landscapes

7 December 2012 to 17 February 2013

This exhibition brings together a selection of E. Chambré Hardman’s landscapes taken over a forty-year period.

Curated by Julia García Hernández, it is delivered in partnership with the National Trust.

Irish-born Edward Chambré Hardman (b.1898 d.1988) is best known for his photograph The Birth of the Ark Royal (1950) and for the highly successful commercial portrait studio that he ran on Liverpool’s Bold Street from 1923, and Rodney Street from 1949.

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Mark Morrisroe

15 September 2012 to 25 November 2012

American artist Mark Morrisroe was 30 years old when he died from an AIDS-related illness in 1989. In the final years of his short life Morrisroe produced photograms using x-ray imagery of his own body alongside cuttings from pornographic magazines and other ephemera.

This archive exhibition forms part of Liverpool Biennial 2012 – The Unexpected Guest.

Image: courtesy of The Estate of Mark Morrisroe (Ringier Collection) at Fotomuseum Winterthur.

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Sinta Tantra

15 September 2012 to 25 November 2012

Using colour as a primary material, Sinta Tantra creates architectural interventions on a grand scale.

Taking the Liverpool Biennial's theme (of The Unexpected Guest) as a point of departure, Tantra reflects upon how buildings welcome or repel us, and how bodies navigate environments shaped from light, colour and physical structures.

Tantra’s intervention will transform the external facade of Open Eye Gallery and the public space adjoining it, creating a spectacle of submergence and superabundance.

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Kohei Yoshiyuki

15 September 2012 to 25 November 2012

First exhibited in Tokyo in 1979, Kohei Yoshiyuki’s (Japan, b. 1946) twin projects 'The Park' and 'Love Hotel' ignited furious debate about photography’s relationship with voyeurism and surveillance.

In The Park, as observer, and with his camera loaded with infrared flashbulbs and film, he photographed in three different Tokyo parks over several years. The resulting body of work captures heterosexual and homosexual couples engaged in sexual activity, and the peeping toms who stalked them.

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Masterclass: Camera-less Photography with Paul Kenny

29 October 2012, 10:30 to 17:00

In this hands-on masterclass, delivered in partnership with Redeye and Open Eye, Kenny will guide participants through the camera-less art of the photogram, giving people the opportunity to create their own unique images using darkroom processes.

Developed over the last thirty-five years, Paul Kenny’s exquisite images have evolved through a range of camera-less techniques. With an increasing move towards abstraction, Kenny’s work focuses on awe-inspiring details of the landscape, addressing ideas of fragility, beauty and transience.

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Sinta Tantra In Conversation

15 September 2012, 11:00 to 12:00

Artist Sinta Tantra discusses her new commission Together Yet Forever Apart with Open Eye Curator Karen Newman.

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Still Outside (or Unexplained)

22 June 2012 to 2 September 2012

Still Outside (or Unexplained) presents four artists, from the UK, France and Switzerland.

They share common ground, closely observing and reworking parts of their environments that might otherwise be unseen or neglected. Using still and moving images, they question what we see as natural and artificial, and what we think we know about the world around us.

Still Outside (Or Unexplained)
Review by Stephen Clarke

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One Minute Sculptures

22 June 2012 to 2 September 2012

Open Eye Gallery presents a selection of eighteen photographs of Wurm's earliest One Minute Sculptures, made in the late 1990s.

Since the late 1990s Wurm has been developing One Minute Sculptures, an ongoing series in which we see the artist or his models pose in spontaneous ways with everyday items, inserting pencils in ears, propping chairs on eyes, and bringing a host of inanimate objects to life.

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Beginners DSLR Photography

27 July 2012, 23:00 to 10 August 2012, 23:00

Open Eye are running a series of one-day Saturday courses for beginners this summer, to guide you through how to get the most out of your digital SLR camera.

The courses are led by professional photographers Mark McNulty and McCoy Wynne. See Open Eye's website for all details and how to book.

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Richard Mosse: Infra

30 March 2012 to 10 June 2012

Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool is showing the UK premier of Richard Mosse’s Infra, alongside a seminal project by photographer Simon Norfolk, from 30 March to 10 June 2012. The gallery launches a new Wall Work commission by artist Emily Speed on the same date.

Richard Mosse’s Infra project uses obsolete military surveillance technology, a type of infrared colour film called Kodak Aerochrome, to investigate ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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Richard & Famous

13 January 2012 to 18 March 2012

Curated by Martin Parr, Richard & Famous, showcases work by photographers Richard Simpkin and Simone Lueck.

The exhibition features an extraordinary collection of images from the personal project of Australian photographer and star-hunter Richard Simpkin, examining our ever-evolving celebrity culture and raising questions about identity, social boundaries and the passage of time.

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Painted Photographs from the Collection of Martin Parr

13 January 2012 to 18 March 2012

Running concurrently to Richard & Famous, is the archive exhibition Painted Photographs featuring celebrity photographs from the personal collection of UK photographer Martin Parr.

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Breakfast with the Artists and Guest Curator Martin Parr

13 January 2012, 09:30 to 11:00

Guest curator Martin Parr joins exhibiting artists Simone Lueck and Richard Simpkin for discussion about their work, and what ‘celebrity’ means today. Ticket price includes tea, coffee and pastries.

Tickets £10; concessions £7.

Tickets are limited, to book please email info@openeye.org.uk or call 0151 236 6768.

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American Power

5 November 2011 to 23 December 2011

American Power at Open Eye Gallery is the American photographer Mitch Epstein's first solo show in the UK.

Epstein was awarded the prestigious 2011 Prix Pictet photographic award for this body of work, which examines how energy is produced and used in the American landscape, questioning the power of nature, government and corporations.

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