Open Eye Gallery stages 209 Women exhibition

An exhibition first staged at the Houses of Parliament is being shown at Liverpool’s Open Eye Gallery as part of the city’s year of events championing and celebrating the achievements of women.

209 Women was commissioned to mark 100 years of some women achieving the vote and features new photographs of the nation's female MPs – shot exclusively by women photographers.

It runs at the Mann Island gallery until April 14.

The free exhibition’s subjects include all Merseyside’s women MPs along with well-known - and less well-known – political faces.

MP for Wirral South Alison McGovern, who is chairman of the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art, said: “The women's movement has never been about one person's achievement: it is about all of us.

"This project carries out that vision, including all kinds of women from all kinds of backgrounds. It is a subtle but very true statement of equality.

“The focus in politics has rightly been on getting a critical mass of women involved. But it's the same issue in many sectors, including art itself. The works will show that women can and ought to be portrayed in all their diversity.

"There is no one way to be a woman artist, to be a woman politician, to be a woman."

Above: Alison McGovern photographed by Hilary Wood. Top: Yvette Cooper by Hannah Starkey

Tracy Marshall, Director of Development and Partnerships at Open Eye Gallery, added: “Photography has become one of the primary ways that we reflect and communicate our vision of the world. Through images, we gain a sense not only of how things are, but also how things could be.

“This project carries so much potential in communicating our vision of gender parity, pointing to a society where policy is made with people of all genders in mind.

“That’s why everyone at Open Eye Gallery is behind this national collaboration of artists and politicians, all the way: to light up the way to a future where gender is no obstacle — in art, in business, in politics and in every other pursuit.”

209 Women is at Open Eye Gallery until April 14. More HERE