Call out for artist to work with young people on the ‘The Unselfish Selfie’ programme.

About:

 A collaborative art project with the New Beginnings youth group based in the borough of Sefton.

The group have worked on several previous socially engaged photography projects with staff and freelancers from Open Eye Gallery and local cultural partner – the Atkinson in Southport.

For this new project, the young people have decided to focus on the current exhibition at the Atkinson, The Unselfish Selfie. This exhibition aims to shine a light on self-portraits by contemporary artists, who traditionally have not been given an equal voice and have remained largely invisible, particularly women artists and artists of colour. Throughout art history, numerous artists have made self-portraits, many of which represented the artists in the act of painting to advertise their skills. The Unselfish Selfie charts the development of the self-portrait as a much more expressive medium used to explore human condition, where artists have painted themselves with honesty and have created images that evoke a sense of our shared humanity. https://www.theatkinson.co.uk/exhibition/the-unselfish-selfie/

The artists featured in The Unselfish Selfie, are caught in the process of self-examination, confronting their own frailties and mortality. Others use their images to explore todays’ issues of identity, diversity, and gender.

This new opportunity invites artists with an active interest in photography, collage and mixed media to submit a project proposal for how they would work collaboratively with young people to produce their own creative artwork reflecting on the key themes touched on in The Unselfish Selfie exhibition. Please note, Open Eye Gallery team and the young people involved have already visited the current exhibition and have begun to produce initial photographs and ideas based around their visit to the exhibition.

It is envisaged that the young people would work collaboratively with the artist and in-house Open Eye Gallery team to produce individual creative projects to be exhibited at the Atkinson in May 2023.

Artist Brief:

The artist will be expected to:

• Deliver up to 7 sessions with the New Beginnings youth group (please note that the group usually meet for these sessions on Mondays and Thursday evenings but can also do mid-week day time sessions during half terms/ school holidays), alongside Open Eye Gallery’s Creative Producer, to create a new photography project. These sessions will take place at MYA SPACE (Bootle)
• Respond actively to The Unselfish Selfie show, currently on display at the Atkinson, Southport.
• Have up to 2 days to prepare the work for the exhibition at Atkinson, Southport.
• Attend between 1-2 wider artist sharing labs during the projects duration to share feedback and peer review of other current projects being delivered within our young people’s programme.
• To work with Open Eye Gallery’s Head of Social Practice, Creative Producer, Sefton Youth Prevention team and MYA SPACE (Bootle) to ensure clear communication and planning for each delivery session including budget and materials spend.
• Contribute to the monitoring data and evaluation reporting
• Option to contribute up a written reflective blog about the project, for the Open Eye Gallery website and associated Socially engaged photography network (SEPN)

* Please note there are several photography collections, which include portraits, in Open Eye Gallery’s archive, which may be of interest to photographers as material for the project as it develops.

BUDGET

• Artist fee £200 a day (based on an estimated 7 sessions plus 2 days for preparing the work for exhibition) – £1800
• Workshop and production materials – £500 plus access to free camera equipment from Open Eye Gallery
• Artist travel – up to £300 claimed with receipt
• Production costs – up to £1200 for exhibition/ visual outputs

*Please note Open Eye Gallery also has access to photographic kit such as iPads, DSLR, pop up portrait studio kit and there is a separate budget for participants access costs.

SUBMISSION DETAILS AND PROJECT SCHEDULE

Deadline for submission of interest: _10am, 27 March 2023

• Please submit up to 2 A4 sides describing why you are interested in the role and potential lines of enquiries / approaches to practice you would like to deliver through this project
• If you would prefer to send a video proposal – please make sure this is no longer than 7 minutes long.
• A current CV
• Up to 8 images / video links exemplifying your work which you feel is most relevant to this project.

Please send your application to jobs@openeye.org.uk along with a completed equal opportunities monitoring form which you can complete here: https://forms.gle/wfyu2QSV7XZQ6Uod7

Project recruitment timeline:

Shortlisting: week of 27 March
Shortlisted artists confirmed by 30 March
Interviews on Monday 3rd April (online)

Project delivery

Sessions to be delivered between Mid April – Mid May 2023

Exhibition install at the Atkinson – week of Monday 22nd May 2023

Exhibition Launch 27nd May, 2023

Evaluation Period – June 2023

If you have any questions about the role please contact anna@openeye.org.uk

Posted on 6 March 2023 under General news