Open Eye Gallery is a commissioned organisation for EuroFestival, which takes place in the lead up to The Eurovision Song Contest. Working together with Ukrainian curators Viktoria Bavykina and Max Gorbatskyi of Ukrainian.Photographies and partners across Liverpool City Region, Open Eye Gallery will produce exhibitions, events and publications reflecting on the question What does home mean?

The Atkinson is proud to be one of the many partners for this exciting programme. 

The Home Trails App (App Store / Google Play) will lead you to independent spaces across Liverpool City Region to see collections of Ukrainian photography. Five unique trails conclude with exhibitions at Williamson Art Gallery & Museum (Birkenhead), Norton Priory (Runcorn), Kirkby Gallery (Kirkby), Unity Theatre (Liverpool) and The Atkinson (Southport). Each of the venues will have corresponding postcards for sale, with all proceeds going to the Ukrainian photographers. You are invited to collect the postcards from each location and share your own poem, lyric or a letter in response to the exhibitions.

From 4 May – 6 June 2023, works from Ukrainian photographers Sasha Kurmaz and Viktor Maruahchenko will be displayed on The Atkinson’s façade, taking over the windows of Southport Library. Both projects were shot in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, but at different times, and about different people and communities.

My World is not Real Enough for an Apocalypse by Sasha Kurmaz is about the social life of the young generation in the Donetsk region, its form and relationship in the environment. The heroes and heroines of Viktor Marushchenko’s Dreamland Donbas photographs are the illegal coal miners trying to make ends meet.

Discover the full Home programme of exhibitions, events and publications online here: openeye.org.uk/whatson/eurofest-openeyegallery

About Sasha Kurmaz

ukrainianphotographies.org/artists/kurmaz

Sasha Kurmaz is a Ukrainian interdisciplinary artist. He currently lives and works in Kyiv. He holds a BFA in design from the National Academy of Managerial Staff of Culture and Arts in Kyiv in 2008. In his artistic practice, he studies various models of interaction with public space, social groups and communities. He also explores the changing relationship between human beings and the modern world. The focus of his work is urban space and society, examining the tension between the individual and the power structures. He uses different media to work with these issues, such as photography, video, public intervention, and performative situations.

About Viktor Marushchenko

ukrainianphotographies.org/artists/viktor-marushchenko

Viktor Marushchenko (1946-2020) was a photographer, educator, and founder of the Viktor Marushchenko School of Photography. He co-founded 5.6 Magazine and the online gallery 5.6 Store. From 1980 to 1991 he worked as a photojournalist for the ‘Soviet Culture’ newspaper in the Ukrainian SSR. In 1989 Marushchenko temporarily moved to Switzerland and in the 1990s he participated in the exhibition ‘A Hundred Photographers of Eastern Europe’ at the Musée de L’élysée in Lausanne, Switzerland. While being based in Switzerland, Marushchenko participated in numerous photography exhibitions across Switzerland, Germany, France, the US, Canada, Slovakia, Ukraine, and elsewhere. In 1997, he started to work for the ‘Day’ newspaper, and in 1999 he became a freelance photographer. At the invitation of curator Harald Szeemann, in 2001 he participated in the main exhibition of the 49th Venice Biennale. In 2004, Marushchenko represented Ukraine at the 26th São Paulo Art Biennial with the project ‘Dreamland Donbas’, curated by Jerzy Onuch.

Partners

openeye.org.uk / Facebook / Twitter / Instagram

ukrainianphotographies.org / Facebook / Instagram

visitliverpool.com/eurovision-2023/eurofestival

Posted on 29 March 2023 under Exhibition, Just announced