Liverpool’s Open Eye Gallery, which is reopening on 5 November in a purpose-built venue on the city’s waterfront, has come a long way from the days when it was firebombed by a right-wing group that used to regularly target the radical bookshop next door.
The gallery has its roots in a campaigning organisation that promoted film, video and sound recording as well as photography and was run on a shoestring. Out of this sprung Open Eye, which opened one of the first UK galleries dedicated to photography in 1977.
Patrick Henry joined Open Eye at its director in 2004 when it was going through one of its periodic episodes of strife. He was pleased to get the job, but there was not much competition: he soon found out why.
“There wasn’t a long queue of top-notch candidates as most people in the field knew better than I did that it was going to be a very tough job,” he says.
“I asked to see the books and asked the basic questions so I knew it was going to be a handful but, as with many things in life, you don’t know how much of a handful until you are in the middle of it.”
Among the problems Henry had to deal with were staffing and board issues, massive rent arrears and the end of the lease of the gallery’s home, which was not in a particularly suitable area anyway.
“I started in 2004 and the lease ended in 2007,” says Henry. “The biggest problem was that in ten years the rent had gone up 150%, maybe more. There was every reason to think that if we stayed put for another ten years our business model would fall apart as we would not be able to pay the rent.
"So we had two problems: we needed cheaper accommodation and we needed better accommodation.”
In the end, Henry’s work to rebuild the board also led to a solution to Open Eye’s venue problems. One of the options was to move to a new arts school building being developed by John Moores University. To strengthen his hand in the negotiations, Henry appointed Stephen Parry, the managing director of a local regeneration company, Neptune Developments, to the board.
“He was very helpful in negotiations with the university but he also mentioned he was working on a development called Mann Island and said if we were interested we could talk about it as an alternative to the school of art. It was immediately apparent that it was better for us on every level so we withdrew from the arts school conversation.”
But the saga did not end there as the global financial crisis that started in 2007 slowed the progress of the Mann Island development.
This delay jeopardised the £400,000 that Open Eye had secured from the regional development agency (RDA). One of the coalition government’s first acts after it took power last year was to abolish RDAs and, as a result, RDA-funded projects with zero spend against them were cancelled.
Saving the project
“I got a call saying ‘your project has been pulled and if you check the fine print of the offer we are in our rights to do that’,” Henry says.
“We managed to fight our way back and get the funding secured again but I think the decisive reason that we were able to do that was that we had a partner, in the shape of Neptune, who understood the terms of engagement.
"Property development at that level is very political and on our own it is doubtful that we would have been able to defend ourselves. We were very, very lucky.”
But all is now well and the 750,000 Open Eye Gallery will open on 5 November. The venue, which is a stone’s throw from the recently opened Museum of Liverpool on the city’s regenerated waterfront, is split over two floors.
In the main gallery, Open Eye will present an international programme of contemporary photography, which will be complemented by changing exhibitions from its archive of photographs in the first-floor gallery.
Open Eye will also commission a series called Wall Works, largescale graphic installations for the facade of the gallery, which opens onto a large covered public square.
Henry acknowledges that the move is a big leap for the organisation, which only has the equivalent of four full-time staff. Open Eye received about 12,500 visitors a year at its old site, but Henry is expecting up to 80,000 at the new venue.
“The level of ambition and the profile of what we are doing is a huge step, and we are left with a gap between our basic resource level from our regular funding and the demands of our new location.”
Henry says that the gallery’s revenue funding from Arts Council England (ACE) and the city council has flatlined when inflation is taken into account. He also points to the Photographers’ Gallery in London, which was given £3.5m by the arts council for its redevelopment. Open Eye received £100,000 from ACE for its scheme.
“With a small amount of money we’ve done a really ambitious project, which I’m really proud of,” says Henry. “That is great for us, but what we were not able to do was persuade people to increase our funding.”
Despite the challenges, Henry is looking forward to the opportunities for engaging audiences in the gallery’s new location.
Its main opening exhibition will be American photographer Mitch Epstein’s American Power series, which examines how energy is produced and used in the US landscape and how this relates to nature, government and big business. The work was awarded the this year’s £65,000 Prix Pictet photography award and is Epstein’s first solo UK show.
The pleasures of the archive The archive exhibition will be the Pleasure Principle by Chris Steele-Perkins, a study of England in the 1980s by the Magnum photographer.
The Open Eye Archive contains about 1,600 prints by more than 100 photographers. It has been knocked into shape in recent years by specialist volunteer help and Henry is keen to make best use of it.
He is also keen to engage more audience through social media and to look at new opportunities for raising revenue, such as through corporate hire. All this while continuing to stay in touch with the rapidly changing trends in contemporary photography.
Photographs at Open Eye’s new home will be displayed on clean white walls, a far cry from when it was based in the former Grapes Hotel in the late 1970s and showed images in what was the public bar. The gallery may have moved on a lot since those days but it is still a small organisation with big aims.
“With a core staff team of four it is very difficult to meet the ambitions that you inevitably have,” Henry says. “Small arts organisations, if they are run with any enthusiasm, which they inevitably are, try and punch above their weight. It’s a very problematic thing, but it’s what we all do.”
Patrick Henry has been the director of the Open Eye Gallery since 2004.
Before that he was curator of exhibitions at the National Media Museum in Bradford and for six years prior to that he was a freelance photographer based in Manchester. He specialised in music photography.
He studied history of art (BA) and cultural history (MA) at the University of Manchester. He has been a member of the Liverpool Biennial’s curatorial team since 2004 and is a board member of Look2011, Liverpool’s international photography festival.
Open Eye emerged as part of an organisation called the Merseyside Visual Communications Unit (MCVU), which was created in 1973 with a mission to “make more people aware of the many positive ways in which film, photography, video and sound recording can be used in a social, cultural and educative context”.
In 1976 MCVU moved into the former Grapes Hotel in central Liverpool and the Open Eye Gallery followed soon after, occupying what had been the public bar.
In 1989, due to the building’s increasing dilapidation, Open Eye moved to Bold Street, forming an umbrella organisation with the Women’s Independent Cinema House, Community Productions Merseyside and the Community Arts Trust.
In 1995, grappling with funding, premises and organisational problems, Open Eye left Bold Street and moved to the Concert Square area of Liverpool’s Ropewalks.
In November 1996 the gallery was relaunched on Wood Street as Open Eye Photographic and Media Arts. This month the gallery moves to new premises on the Liverpool waterfront. It will open with exhibitions of the work of photographers Mitch Epstein and Chris Steele-Perkins.
Open Eye receives £28,000 a year from Liverpool City Council. And as an Arts Council England national portfolio organisation, it will receive £191,193 in 2012-13, £195,590 in 2013-14 and £200,676 in 2014-15.
It has the equivalent of four full-time members of staff, including director Patrick Henry and curator Karen Newman.
The gallery has its roots in a campaigning organisation that promoted film, video and sound recording as well as photography and was run on a shoestring. Out of this sprung Open Eye, which opened one of the first UK galleries dedicated to photography in 1977.
Patrick Henry joined Open Eye at its director in 2004 when it was going through one of its periodic episodes of strife. He was pleased to get the job, but there was not much competition: he soon found out why.
“There wasn’t a long queue of top-notch candidates as most people in the field knew better than I did that it was going to be a very tough job,” he says.
“I asked to see the books and asked the basic questions so I knew it was going to be a handful but, as with many things in life, you don’t know how much of a handful until you are in the middle of it.”
Among the problems Henry had to deal with were staffing and board issues, massive rent arrears and the end of the lease of the gallery’s home, which was not in a particularly suitable area anyway.
“I started in 2004 and the lease ended in 2007,” says Henry. “The biggest problem was that in ten years the rent had gone up 150%, maybe more. There was every reason to think that if we stayed put for another ten years our business model would fall apart as we would not be able to pay the rent.
"So we had two problems: we needed cheaper accommodation and we needed better accommodation.”
In the end, Henry’s work to rebuild the board also led to a solution to Open Eye’s venue problems. One of the options was to move to a new arts school building being developed by John Moores University. To strengthen his hand in the negotiations, Henry appointed Stephen Parry, the managing director of a local regeneration company, Neptune Developments, to the board.
“He was very helpful in negotiations with the university but he also mentioned he was working on a development called Mann Island and said if we were interested we could talk about it as an alternative to the school of art. It was immediately apparent that it was better for us on every level so we withdrew from the arts school conversation.”
But the saga did not end there as the global financial crisis that started in 2007 slowed the progress of the Mann Island development.
This delay jeopardised the £400,000 that Open Eye had secured from the regional development agency (RDA). One of the coalition government’s first acts after it took power last year was to abolish RDAs and, as a result, RDA-funded projects with zero spend against them were cancelled.
Saving the project
“I got a call saying ‘your project has been pulled and if you check the fine print of the offer we are in our rights to do that’,” Henry says.
“We managed to fight our way back and get the funding secured again but I think the decisive reason that we were able to do that was that we had a partner, in the shape of Neptune, who understood the terms of engagement.
"Property development at that level is very political and on our own it is doubtful that we would have been able to defend ourselves. We were very, very lucky.”
But all is now well and the 750,000 Open Eye Gallery will open on 5 November. The venue, which is a stone’s throw from the recently opened Museum of Liverpool on the city’s regenerated waterfront, is split over two floors.
In the main gallery, Open Eye will present an international programme of contemporary photography, which will be complemented by changing exhibitions from its archive of photographs in the first-floor gallery.
Open Eye will also commission a series called Wall Works, largescale graphic installations for the facade of the gallery, which opens onto a large covered public square.
Henry acknowledges that the move is a big leap for the organisation, which only has the equivalent of four full-time staff. Open Eye received about 12,500 visitors a year at its old site, but Henry is expecting up to 80,000 at the new venue.
“The level of ambition and the profile of what we are doing is a huge step, and we are left with a gap between our basic resource level from our regular funding and the demands of our new location.”
Henry says that the gallery’s revenue funding from Arts Council England (ACE) and the city council has flatlined when inflation is taken into account. He also points to the Photographers’ Gallery in London, which was given £3.5m by the arts council for its redevelopment. Open Eye received £100,000 from ACE for its scheme.
“With a small amount of money we’ve done a really ambitious project, which I’m really proud of,” says Henry. “That is great for us, but what we were not able to do was persuade people to increase our funding.”
Despite the challenges, Henry is looking forward to the opportunities for engaging audiences in the gallery’s new location.
Its main opening exhibition will be American photographer Mitch Epstein’s American Power series, which examines how energy is produced and used in the US landscape and how this relates to nature, government and big business. The work was awarded the this year’s £65,000 Prix Pictet photography award and is Epstein’s first solo UK show.
The pleasures of the archive The archive exhibition will be the Pleasure Principle by Chris Steele-Perkins, a study of England in the 1980s by the Magnum photographer.
The Open Eye Archive contains about 1,600 prints by more than 100 photographers. It has been knocked into shape in recent years by specialist volunteer help and Henry is keen to make best use of it.
He is also keen to engage more audience through social media and to look at new opportunities for raising revenue, such as through corporate hire. All this while continuing to stay in touch with the rapidly changing trends in contemporary photography.
Photographs at Open Eye’s new home will be displayed on clean white walls, a far cry from when it was based in the former Grapes Hotel in the late 1970s and showed images in what was the public bar. The gallery may have moved on a lot since those days but it is still a small organisation with big aims.
“With a core staff team of four it is very difficult to meet the ambitions that you inevitably have,” Henry says. “Small arts organisations, if they are run with any enthusiasm, which they inevitably are, try and punch above their weight. It’s a very problematic thing, but it’s what we all do.”
Patrick Henry at a glance
Patrick Henry has been the director of the Open Eye Gallery since 2004.
Before that he was curator of exhibitions at the National Media Museum in Bradford and for six years prior to that he was a freelance photographer based in Manchester. He specialised in music photography.
He studied history of art (BA) and cultural history (MA) at the University of Manchester. He has been a member of the Liverpool Biennial’s curatorial team since 2004 and is a board member of Look2011, Liverpool’s international photography festival.
Open Eye at a glance
Open Eye emerged as part of an organisation called the Merseyside Visual Communications Unit (MCVU), which was created in 1973 with a mission to “make more people aware of the many positive ways in which film, photography, video and sound recording can be used in a social, cultural and educative context”.
In 1976 MCVU moved into the former Grapes Hotel in central Liverpool and the Open Eye Gallery followed soon after, occupying what had been the public bar.
In 1989, due to the building’s increasing dilapidation, Open Eye moved to Bold Street, forming an umbrella organisation with the Women’s Independent Cinema House, Community Productions Merseyside and the Community Arts Trust.
In 1995, grappling with funding, premises and organisational problems, Open Eye left Bold Street and moved to the Concert Square area of Liverpool’s Ropewalks.
In November 1996 the gallery was relaunched on Wood Street as Open Eye Photographic and Media Arts. This month the gallery moves to new premises on the Liverpool waterfront. It will open with exhibitions of the work of photographers Mitch Epstein and Chris Steele-Perkins.
Open Eye receives £28,000 a year from Liverpool City Council. And as an Arts Council England national portfolio organisation, it will receive £191,193 in 2012-13, £195,590 in 2013-14 and £200,676 in 2014-15.
It has the equivalent of four full-time members of staff, including director Patrick Henry and curator Karen Newman.