The artists at Open Eye Gallery work with lens-based media and sculpture to conjure places that speak to their sense of identity. All three artists are reinterpreting stories, myths, lost traditions and memories to form new ones.

3 artists in this exhibition

Nandan Ghiya’s new sculptural work, co-commissioned with Public Arts Trust India, interprets the Samudra Manthana – a major episode in Hinduism that translates to ‘churning of the ocean’ in Sanskrit. Drawing inspiration from the textiles and patterns of heritage buildings in both Liverpool and Jaipur, the artist creates ‘sculptural photographs’ to explore themes relating to the exploitation of natural resources, rising water levels and racial conflicts.

In Gallery 2, Widline Cadet presents an exhibition of photography works created between 2021 and 2024, centring around her family’s lived experience of emigrating from Haiti to the United States. The works explore the complexities of Black diasporic life and survival, as well as the fragility of memory, using motifs which refer to her past and her ancestry.

Upstairs, Katarzyna Perlak presents a new, collaborative film set in the bedrooms, hallways and ballrooms of the iconic Adelphi Hotel, once a popular destination for wealthy travellers on their way by boat to North America via Liverpool. Co-created with local award-winning filmmaking organisation First Take and participants from their REEL: Queer programme, the film adopts a non-linear, poetic narrative and references the genre of horror to explore longing and Queer identity. The artist also shows work at Walker Art Gallery.