My main Professional Links project was in collaboration with the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool. The project consisted of using the Gallery's photographic archive to inspire a piece of work that was then published in a book. The book would live in the Gallery archive, thus creating a circular piece of work.
I was inspired more by the idea of the archive than any specific images, and decided to document the various locations of Open Eye Gallery. The images and text for the book are shown here;
"In its early days, Open Eye was a heady mix of art and activism, a DIY operation run on a shoestring by artists, volunteers and a tiny staff team...
Open Eye published a magazine, ran workshops and training courses, hired out equipment, screened films, commissioned photographic, performance and moving image works, and organised campaigns and community projects...
Open Eye was one of the city's creative and social hubs. It had the city's main bus station on its doorstep, a popular cafe next door and the radical bookshop News from Nowhere as a close neighbour"
(Open Eye Gallery publicity)
1977-1988: Whitechapel/Hood Street
1989-1995: 110-112 Bold Street
1996-2011: Wood Street
2011- : Liverpool Waterfront
In 2011 Open Eye moved for the fourth time. All of its locations exist within a radius of less than half a mile.
I was intrigued by the was the Open Eye photographic archive functions as a representation of the history of the organisation. Its various locations have become part of its history and are archived, along with the experiences and ideas, within its walls. Drawing from a personal interest in regeneration, and ambivalence towards the gallery's latest transformation, I documented the buildings that had once housed the collection, including its present home.
Each location aspired to be an improvement on the one before. With its latest incarnation, Open Eye becomes part of the creative space that houses the Tate Gallery and the Museum of Liverpool. In its publicity, the gallery reveals that the new premises are "twice the size" of the former space in Wood St. While this is a positive development, I can't help feeling something of the original energy of the gallery is dissipated, with each successive change of premises, I attempt to convey this loss by the use of destroyed photographs.