LOOK PHOTO BIENNIAL 2022 at Castlefield Gallery New Art Spaces: Wigan

Exhibition Opening Party: Thursday 8 December, 6-8pm, all welcome at The Horrocks Gallery.

Venues:
– Castlefield Gallery New Art Spaces: Wigan, Grand Arcade, 23 Crompton Street, Wigan, WN1 1BH
– The Horrocks Gallery, Leigh Spinners Mill, Leigh, WN7 2LB

The LOOK Photo Biennial, a photography festival delivered by Open Eye Gallery, is coming to Wigan and Leigh this December 2022.

The exhibitions are part of the Open Eye Hub, a space to champion local voices and collaboration between communities of Wigan and Leigh and the wider photography community based in the UK and beyond. The hub will be a space to share ideas, bring people together, and through photography, explore and communicate the urgent themes and issues of our times.

Ways of Living archive: See Change

Opening in the new Horrocks Gallery in Leigh Spinners Mill will be an exhibition of photography from the Ways of Living archive and photography from Wigan & Leigh College Students. A preview of this exhibition will also be on display in the windows of Castlefield New Art Spaces: Wigan.

The show has been co-curated by two local, early career arts professionals, Sara Lawlor, and Hannah Tipping, working alongside curator Mario Popham and Producer Charlie Booth. As part of their role with the Open Eye Hub, the Community Fellows researched and selected pieces from the archive that resonated with them and that reflected issues they felt were relevant to local Wigan borough audiences.

With the warming world impacting every corner of the globe, a sea-change, or dramatic transformation, is necessary in our attitudes to nature and our place within it. One of the challenges of the changing climate is its scale and complexity, which requires us to connect our individual lived experiences with events unfolding in distant parts of the world. Photography brings us closer, allowing us to see the effects of a warming world as well as the actions of people taking steps to help us avoid and adapt to its effects.

The photographic projects in See Change, made by artists working in northern Britain and abroad, emphasises this interconnectedness of climate-based issues. The exhibition shifts the focus from the apocalyptic imagery that makes up much of the media coverage of the issue, instead directing our gaze towards the quieter stories of people and communities adapting to and anticipating a changing world.

The photographic archive was established by Then There Was Us and Open Eye Gallery and was originally produced as an online platform. The archive addressed the urgent issue of climate change and the many ways in which people are adapting to a rapidly changing world.

Artists exhibiting in the See Change exhibition include:
Simon Bray, Katie McCraw, Joshua Turner, Gabriel Fernandez, Edwin Huddleston, Charlotte Dobson

Artists from Wigan & Leigh College with work in the exhibition include:
Milly Gallagher, Leah Farrimond, Phoebe Burns, Hannah Bate, Alice Balkwill, James McLelland, Hollie Warhust