Next Up is an annual graduate exhibition of work from the MA in Socially Engaged Photography course, a joint programme Open Eye Gallery has run with the University of Salford since 2018. This year, it features work by four early-career photographers, specifically artist Helen Constantinou (Contemporary Fine Art MA), in partnership with Homotopia.

This work brings together twelve separate photographs taken at the beginning of the anti-Section 28 protest march on 30 April 1988. By combining these individual frames into a single image, the work resists the fragmentation of memory and reasserts a moment of collective resistance against legislation rooted in prejudice. Revisiting these photographs is not simply an act of looking back, but a reminder of the profound and lasting consequences that suppression and censorship have on individuals, communities, and society. Section 28 was born from fear, ignorance, and hostility, seeking to erase LGBTQI+ lives from public visibility and cultural discourse.

Today, these images resonate with renewed urgency. The rhetoric employed by contemporary far-right political movements echoes many of the narratives that underpinned Section 28, once again questioning the legitimacy and visibility of LGBTQI+ people and communities. By returning to this moment of protest, the work insists that these histories are not closed chapters but ongoing conversations, reminding us that visibility itself can be an act of resistance and that remembering is inseparable from the struggle against erasure.

Please note Open Eye Gallery opening times, 10am – 5pm, Tue – Sun.

Access: All of our participating venues except The Vault have level access and accessible bathrooms. Contact [email protected] if you have any access queries or concerns we can help with.