Our A Level Photography students and Carmel Photography tutor, Kevin Crooks, exhibit their work in the St Helens World of Glass Museum.

Open Eye Gallery presents the first exhibition of LOOK Photo Biennial in St Helens World of Glass Museum. “Before it Melts into Solid” follows the exploration of Climate Change mapping the North West’s industrial pasts and sustainable futures. The exhibition is a collaboration between artist Andy Broadey, Kevin Crooks and Carmel College photography students.

Climate Crisis and Glass

The Climate Crisis is like molten glass. After the glowing glass comes out of the furnace there is a narrow window of time to shape it as it cools at a rate of 10°C per second.  This is the time for the glassblower to act, before possibility turns solid. This is the kind of ecological time we find ourselves in. An urgent moment to act before the damage of climate change becomes irreversible. The artists use images to present this urgency as a space for action, where individual change can shape sustainable futures.

What is the Exhibition about?

In this exhibition, new visual narratives are constructed from fragments of the St Helens and the North-West of England’s industrial pasts. Andrew Broadey has accumulated images that are a mixture of industrial machinery, transport, and architecture. The visual legacy of St Helens’ coal mining is captured by local photographer Kevin Crooks.  Both the artists work has been rearranged into montages that propose new connections. Their work speculates how photographic montage can help us initiate ecological futures from fragments of our past.

Carmel College students use photography to show us how the vast and often overwhelming theme of climate change can be located in their tangible contexts. Looking at landscapes, communities, animals and memory, their visual stories help us access these complex realities by closing the gap between ecological data and lived experience. The students’ work is a response to the work by the two accompanying artists, Andrew Broadey and Kevin Crooks. This collaboration initiated from a workshop during Open Eye Gallery’s Climate Lab. This is the research stage in preparation for LOOK Photo Biennial 2022: Climate.

Visit The World of Glass website for more information about the exhibition – What’s On

For more information about our A Level Photography course, click here – A Level Photography