Redeye Lightbox at Look11

Last summer, Redeye launched a major educational and development course for photographers looking to make the leap into exhibiting their work. In partnership with Open Eye Gallery, Lightbox took the form of an intensive weekend (31st August - 4th September 2010), packed with all kinds of information, workshops and networking.

The course has culminated in a selection of Lightbox collaborative photographic projects being shown as part of the Look11 Festival in Liverpool this month. In these four projects, audiences can see how the groups have developed their work and initial ideas, resulting in a collection of original and intriguing exhibitions.

Transition
Transition is a photographic collaboration which looks at varying interpretations of the process of change. With projects by eight members ranging from the highly personal to the experimental and socially engaged, Transition includes work that questions the very nature of photographic reality.

The work is to be displayed both within and outside three large shipping containers within the Baltic Triangle, a former industrial site minutes from the city centre. The containers embody the idea of passage or change, having been transported to Liverpool for the purpose of this festival. The work pasted onto their exterior is left at the mercy of the elements over the course of May and is likely to change on a daily basis, encapsulating the theme of the project.

Because of this unusual setup, it is not only the photography but the show itself that makes Transition an eye-catching installation piece.
Location: Baltic Creative
13 May - 31 May 2011
Website: Transition

Control
Photography, for the large part, controls our perceptions of the world. Knowledge of global events and of cultural difference is widely prejudiced, positively or negatively, by the appearances we read from a photograph. With this in mind, a group of photographers have taken over an empty warehouse to explore aspects of control from how architecture can influence control through surveillance to regaining self-control in the face of addictions.

Location: Baltic Creative
Dates: 13 May - 31 May 2011
Website: Control

Excavating Utopia
Excavating Utopia is a collaborative project based on the life of an ordinary street; Park Road. But this Park Road can be found all over the country, depending on where the participants are working. It thus becomes an imaginary street populated by imaginary residents who have the same pressures and joys as "real" people. Mentored by John Darwell, the collaborators bring together the threads from all the Park Roads into a coherent project that reflects on the nature of life in the UK at this time of personal stress and socio-political change.

The work questions the validity of photography as encapsulated by the saying; "seeing is believing", highlighting the subjectivity of photography. Yet in this case any semblance of supposed truth is removed from the images so that what the viewer will unwittingly see is a fabrication of places, people, histories and events.

Location: St. George's Hall
Dates: 14 May - 26 June 2011
Website: Excavating Utopia

We Are Activists
We Are Activists responds to Look's theme of 'photography as a call to action' with a collaborative, multimedia and documentary project. The group consists of six photographers working together with documentary maker Christian Payne.

The project looks at a range of activists working in disparate causes, such as mental health, disability, human, rights, mothers against violence and asbestos. We Are Activists poses the question "is seeing believing" by documenting the activists in their home or going about their daily lives, rather than focusing on the work of activism directly.

We Are Activists looks directly at the ways in which we as a society can now communicate and poses questions about what our perceptions of activism are. The project engages members of the public directly with activists by including ways in which they can communicate directly be it via instant messaging, email or live video conferencing. News of their exhibition at Look11 will be disseminated using guerrilla-marketing techniques across the city of Liverpool including the use of QR codes. In this way We Are Activists hopes to reach a larger audience, in particular those who might not ordinarily visit a photography exhibition.
Location: Public Realm and the Bridewell
Dates: 13 May - 01 June 2011
Website: We Are Activists

For more information on Lightbox shows as well as listings for the rest of the Look11 festival, visit the official website.
-------------