Home: Ukrainian photography inspiring UK words

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 (available soon) 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.