Open Eye Gallery

The Open Eye is my favourite gallery in Liverpool as it updates its exhibitions of contemporary photography on a regular basis. Dedicated solely to photography and the promotion of moving images and visual media, the Open Eye has established itself at the forefront of these media in Liverpool since 1977.
If photography and moving images are something that you are interested in then OE should be a place to keep on your radar. At the moment their exhibitions are sporadic as they will be moving to bigger and places at the end of 2010 with a new riverside gallery space.

I am far from being an art critic, no hang on, perhaps I am in that I generally find myself being very critical of a lot of «pieces of art». I am a big fan of calligraphy for example, the Taj Mahal is a piece of art to me also. However some of the stuff that gets passed as «great pieces of art» these days is just absolute drivel!!!
I’m sorry but this idea of art is subjective and there is no right or wrong and it is merely a form of expression just wreaks to me. Of course there is a right and wrong, one cannot use «art» as an excuse to entertain individual selfish desires at the expense of others. Damien Hirst is one such «artist», I don’t care how much his work was sold for, if a dissected animal is a work of art then my name is Bruce Wayne and I painted the Mona Lisa!!!
«Open eye» gallery thus for me at least was rather a yawn falling asleep close eye gallery. I found majority of the art work boring, amateurish and resembling something we had drawn using water colours in primary school, and with much better results I may add. How do these «artists» get away with it???
I mean I implore you not to but if you are curious, go check out Chris Keeney’s work on show from 9^th to 31^st July. Look for Portrait of a Diva. This is a perfect example, am I blind… or is this a piece of junk!!! Looks like someone made a bad sculptor, saw that it was awful… smashed it because it was awful… then super glued it back together and showed up with it at the art exhibition… to the Artist’s amazement the delusional characters at the exhibition stared at it no doubt in some form of drug induced frenzy and decided to label it a fine piece of art… justifying their ridulous decision by citing parrot fashion something uttered by some artist in an important «art» book they read not long ago!!!
Apologies Chris Keeney if you are reading this, just my opinion mate. I’m sure you will go on making your pieces of art and being successful and I will be forever ignorant on the «art» of being an art critic.
Unless open eye gallery decided to start displaying decent art by decent artists I will urge you to avoid this place. Why don’t you walk into an Apple shop and pick up an iPad if you fancy admiring a piece of modern art!

There’s no denying that Liverpool’s a great art city, boasting some of the best galleries and exhibits in the North West. Open Eye’s a gallery dedicated to photography dating all the way back to 1977, and having moved three times already it’s currently rather settled in its city centre location. Because of when it was born, it was actually one of the first galleries of its kind in the UK but the exhibits have expanded over the years to incorporate film and video installations.
A lot of the exhibits primarily focus on local stuff, industrial too with a leaning towards manual workers and their lives. There are also a few events in collaboration with other Liverpudlian arts organisations, creating a web of cultural connectivity that other cities can only dream of. It might be small but it’s perfectly formed, and with planned expansions in the future things can only get better for this sweet little gallery.

They have revolving modern art, that is usually fairly interesting, although the space is somewhat small. They have a decent book store/​gift shop though.

This review probably should be prefaced with the fact that I do not generally like modern art. I don’t often understand it, appreciate it, or care. Call it ignorance, call it taste, call it what you will. I am, however, always open to viewing it because there have been a few instances were I have fallen in love with modern pieces.
Unless it involves video. Silent video, or ones that emit monosyllabic nonsense over images of parking garages irritate me to no end. Something to that effect was inside Open Eye, so what little interest I had was lost the moment I walked into the room housing that exhibit.
But, to each his own concerning art.
The gallery itself was odd. I had read about it in Itchy and, looking for something new to do in town, decided to drag BF there. We had a heck of a time finding it. Even BF noted that he practically lives on Wood Street and had never noticed it. Once we found it, we had trouble with the door. The girl stared right at us as this was happening, but decided to just stare at us blankly instead of helping. We were already a bit fish-​out-​of-​water esque with the type of gallery it was– this did not help.
The gallery is tiny and when we were there, it was deathly silent. We weren’t even greeted when we entered– more blank stares. There wasn’t a single soul in there and the artwork on display was sparse. It was just plain creepy, especially with the silent film flickering in the corners of our eyes. We browsed for as long as we could stand, politely looked at the «gift shop,» then hightailed out of there.
It was a strange seven minutes to say the least. I heard the gallery is moving to Albert Dock, so I might give it another chance once it’s settled. As long as there’s no video.