Open Eye Gallery

Visit: 14th November

from "marmalade-cafe.blogspot.com"

Upstairs in the Open Eye Gallery is a display of a collection of Mark Morrisroe photography, showing both abstract and figurative works. I don't really know much about photographers and the only ones I've really heard of before are Robert Frank and Ed van Der Elsken, so this was an exciting change. Admittedly, at first when I started looking at the images I felt quite uncomfortable. I'd just been downstairs to see the Yoshiyuki exhibition featuring images of people having sex in a park in Tokyo wherein the participants seemed a bit too heavy on the male side compared to the female, and it seemed a bit sinister because of this. Then, coming upstairs there was photography that included found pornographic imagery of women, so I felt a bit uncomfortable and upset almost, because it always seems to be women that are exploited and taken as an acceptable target of gazes. (I was especially uncomfortable when the only other visitors taking long looks at the works in both exhibitions with me were male). I then saw quite a few images of naked males, presumably from pornography being used in the images. At this point my boyfriend became quite uncomfortable, which I was a bit happy about to be honest. I was relieved, and I found it massively refreshing to encounter an exhibition that demonstrated the exploitation of a male body (even if this was not the intention of the artist). I think everyone's become too accepting to view women as the standard objects, and this is especially true of men, the majority of whom who I have witnessed become very uncomfortable when faced with exploited images of their own gender. For this reason, I enjoyed the exhibition, especially an image called "The Psychology of Leather" - not only because it featured a man, but also because I thought the composition was incredible. 

Some of the techniques used in the other photographs reminded me of Mariah Robertson, whose work consists of analogue photography manipulated to look like digital photography.

Mariah Robertson - Untitled 34

Of course, despite the manipulation and experimentation of and with the medium, there aren't many similarities in the purpose of these artists' works. With the subject of AIDs and the interest in the body/ own mortality, I would have to say the Morrisroe work is more coherent to that of Derek Jarman's. I thought that, especially when taken in context of the artists own life, the works were very powerful. They weren't morbid, I didn't think. I thought they showed a kind of vitality in life, and a humour, and a richness that a life well lived should have. There were some somber, more intimate photographs, like small interludes into Morrisroe's mind, which I thought were really touching. I really enjoyed the exhibition. I thought there was just the right amount of photos so that you could appreciate each one fully.

From Open Eye Gallery Website

The above image is "Untitled" by Kohei Yoshiyuki, whose work was exhibited downstairs at Open Eye. I thought the way the visitors viewed the work, with a torch in a dark room, was extremely clever and unique and made you more involved with the artwork and its context; flashing a light on each image, you felt like a bit of a pervert, looking at things you shouldn't, but you couldn't help be fascinated by them, because they were objectively beautiful photographs and interesting displays of human nature. Looking at the images in this way made the whole gallery experience completely different to any other in terms of how a visitor views photographs.