Anders Hanson

This photo is of a group of buildings that every Sheffielder will know, but may not recognise from this viewpoint.

I happened to notice this collection of interesting chimneys, turrets and roofs on my way up Vicar Lane past the end of St. James’s Street. At the back is the top of Kemsley House (the distinctive building that houses Bradford & Bingley on High Street) and then in front is the top of the building on the corner of East Parade that houses a branch of Lloyds TSB, the offices of Natural England and a few other organisations.

I had to take this photo several times as I had to zoom in so far to get in all of the features that I wanted the camera shake was terrible. Fortunately I managed to get one good shot, but unfortunately this was the one photo that didn’t include the edge of Sheffield Cathedral that should be on the left of the photo.

In the last week I’ve been to quite a few different exhibitions as a part of the Art Sheffield 08 event. Since I’ve lived in the city centre my knowledge and appreciation of different forms of art has grown massively, and it’s all down to the great advantage that most art galleries in the city are within a 5 minute walk of my front door. Instead of having to decide whether to both travelling to see an exhibition that I am unsure whether I will appreciate, I can instead just give it a go.

Art Sheffield 08 is an exhibition held at various venues around the city and includes a lot of art by Sheffield based artists, as well as those based elsewhere. This week I have visited the exhibits at the Millennium Galleries, Winter Garden, Site Gallery, End Gallery, Sylvester Space and Bloc - three of which are places I have never been to before.

The general idea underpinning the different exhibits seems to be that modern work is not just about doing particular tasks but it is also about performing, and so many of the exhibits take ordinary life and show them as performance or they ask what would happen if we refused to perform as we should. I confess to not being sufficiently cultured to fully appreciate the overarching theme of the exhibition and how everything links in. But at the risk of sounding pretentious, I have as a result of visiting a lot more exhibitions over the last few years, moved from seeing art purely on the basis of whether I think a painting is beautiful or not, to enjoying more different forms of art and appreciate them much more on an emotional level. I often find that I enjoy something simply because it is strangely compelling even if I cannot explain why. That is the case with much of the Art Sheffield exhibition. The give away is when I find some of the exhibition has got inside me so much that I find I have to keep going back to see it again and again. That has also happened with some of this exhibition.

For me the exhibits that you have to see are: George Henry Longly’s ‘tertiary matter‘ at Bloc, Katy Woods’ ‘Sailing Dinghy Hawk 20…‘ at Sylvester Space, Ines Schaber’s ‘Picture Mining‘ at End Gallery, Katie Davies’ ‘38th Parallel‘, Sean Snyder’s ‘Analepsis‘, Phil Collins’ ‘they shoot horses‘ and the wonderful ‘Insults & Praises’ and ‘Promises and Threats’ by Tim Etchells and Vlatka Horvat, all at the Millennium Galleries, and the sadly only week-long ‘Failed Fall‘ by Roman Ondak at the Winter Garden. But I would advise anyone to go and see as much of it as you can before it ends on the 30th of March. It is also free to get in.

Going to these exhibitions has certainly helped rekindle my own interest in photography, as many of the exhibits I have enjoyed have either been photographic or film. But I am also finding myself get quite a lot of pleasure from installation art as well. I think the exhibition helps me look at things differently and can be pretty inspiring and a break from normal life.

Art Sheffield

Photo credit: Tim Etchells and Vlatka Horvat, Insults and Praises (2003) Image courtesy of the artist.