Art Sheffield 2010: Over To You, Bank Street Arts, Sheffield, 6 March – 1 May
Reviewed by: Charlotte A Morgan »
May saw the close of the fifth Art Sheffield event organised by Sheffield Contemporary Art Forum (SCAF), and the reactionary fringe project Art Sheffield 2010: Over To You, initiated by privately funded multidisciplinary gallery and studio space Bank Street Arts. As an exhibiting artist in Art Sheffield with connections across both projects, this is an interesting, if contentious, situation to explore.
The Art Sheffield events have developed a profile that allows many, but not all of Sheffield's venues to host a range of local, national and international artists together in an exhibition that has a wider remit than their own individual programmes; artists this year included Phil Collins, Katerina Seda and Haegue Yang. Referencing Georges Perec's novel Life: A User's Manual, this year's invited curators Annie Fletcher and Frederique Bergholtz selected work around the notion of 'affect' within everyday relationships, suggesting this as the point from which to consider our position within current cultural, economic and social circumstances.
Becky Shaw's radio play The Christmas Party developed from visits to a dementia sufferer during a residency with Age Concern, and conveys a situation that is at once uncomfortable and poignant, familiar and yet completely specific to the people involved. The work demonstrates the critical potentials of operating on the periphery; dialogue directly intervenes in the environment of potentially confused, distracted, moved or amused listeners without mediation.
Ruth Ewan's 'Moderately Wrathful' examines the life of Sheffield author Robert Tressell and the sustained popularity of his 1914 book The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist, celebrated as a socially critical advocate of agency for the working man. Ewan's research was manifest in a collection of book editions and artefacts displayed at Site Gallery, and a series of cards containing quotes and illustrations from Tressell distributed across all venues for visitors to collect. Collecting these re-framed elements engaged the viewer in an enquiry into Tressell's ideas and their relationship to the collective society of past and present.
Work that found alternate contexts was welcomed but not nurtured in Art Sheffield 2010's development and was lacking in the programme, but as a single exhibition spread across venues, Art Sheffield's curatorial thread had a subtlety that can be compromised by the scale and spectacle of international events and biennials. Art Sheffield is not a biennial, but is surrounded by similar debate regarding use of public funds and relevance to local people. Though acknowledged by SCAF1, these concerns prompted the development of Over To You, along with Bank Street Arts founder John Clark's perception of SCAF as exclusive and Art Sheffield as undemocratic and framed by "quasi-intellectual pontification". Whilst critical questioning encourages development, self-reflection and evaluation in an event or organisation, criticism is distinct from protest and accusation, which created a strained relationship and made the intentions and agendas within Over To You unclear.
An initial call through Bank Street Arts' website and Facebook group2 aimed to instigate dialogue around Art Sheffield and created a positive space for response, which led to an artist-led decision to focus the response around an exhibition, open to all. The exhibition occupied ten rooms with a rich, varied and knowingly low budget display of individual works and curated spaces, including a presentation of the metalwork, art and music created at listed mester's Portland Works, 'Containing Nature and Reversing Space', an installation by students of Sheffield Hallam University and 'Art Sheffield 2' by Gary Manton, who was invited to be part of the show after independently developing his satirical piece in response to the Art Sheffield publicity material.
As a response to Art Sheffield, the exhibition format enabled individual works to comment on Art Sheffield or be shown to its potential audiences. However, provocative texts accompanying the project on the Over To You website combined with allegations of 'creativity' with SCAF accounts, gave the project a personal tone.3
For some artists this sense of opposition closed down the potential for dialogue and prevented them from participating. This was the case for Robin Close, who responded in the form of a letter to the Sheffield art community arguing that, "far from representing a united front of disenfranchised artists, the Over To You project served more to construct a sense of marginalisation where there need not be one"4. The antagonism apparent within Over To You prevented the project from becoming an inclusive platform for wider participation in the discussion and exchange demanded by the context and the criticisms raised.
As in any large-scale project, the relationships in these events were multiple and complex. Critical perspectives were articulated openly and enthusiastically amongst many artists and curators without the need to align with a definite 'side'; for most the events did not represent oppositional groups with unified identities, and opinions could be discussed without provocation or animosity. Sheffield-based artist group utk, who presented 'The Knight's Tour; – life, a loser's manual' as part of Over To You and a member of which also took part in SCAF's 2009 Sheffield Pavilion, posted online that, "for utk, the dialogue that might grow out of the siting of a vibrant international show in the city, and a response by Sheffield artists to the debate about Contemporary Art, does not stem from any negative or contradictory position and should carry only pros and no cons". Their reconfiguration of past projects for the show demonstrated a constructive self-criticality in practice.
A more complex set of relations was also demonstrated by Haroon Mirza's dual involvement in Art Sheffield and the fringe event 'There is No Solution Because There Is No Problem', curated by Richard Sides and Angharad Williams and supported by the artist as "a positive way of presenting the breadth and scope of what Sheffield has to offer, [...] by its title a non-threatening attempt at being symbiotic". 'No Solution' occupied a disused retail unit in Sheffield centre and the new artist-led space Unit 3b. The event exemplified the inherent criticality of a fringe? use of alternate sites and networks and their potential to intervene in a context whilst creating connections with artists and audiences from outside the city; a criticality that is not necessarily aligned with a defence of the local and a lack of curatorial rigour. Less established spaces such as Bank Street Arts and graduate-led Unit 3b and Cake are important additions to the city's art activity, yet whilst they are publicised on the artsheffield.org listings they are not acknowledged within the Art Sheffield event. It may not be feasible to include these spaces in the programme or SCAF board, but more support and a level of involvement in SCAF could be negotiated to form a mutually beneficial exchange.
Trevor Tomlin's Over To You exhibition 'Umbrella' goes further to highlight the exclusion of community events such as Sharrow Lantern Carnival and LGBT Pride from the contemporary art 'establishment'. Tomlin? carefully compiled archive of photographs, hung in a consciously low-tech display, document the vibrancy of these and other local events through a considered perspective and demonstrate their significance within varied communities. However, the independence and success of these events raises questions as to the benefit of amalgamating wider cultural activities with divergent critical priorities into a single programme. The scope for a city-wide cultural programme would require a greater level of co-ordination and will be tested if Sheffield receives the UK City of Culture status it has been shortlisted for, which has been met with varying cynicism regarding funding, leadership, representation of heritage and the possibility of creating an inclusive network of 'cultural' contacts.
International events and new venues positively and significantly contribute to the range of contexts and opportunities needed in a city to foster a dynamic community of practices with local and national connections. SCAF is a valuable body that contributes significantly to exposure and connections within Sheffield's art network and its relevance on an international level, and Bank Street Arts provide an important space for contemporary and decorative artists, writers and practitioners from a range of disciplines to work and exhibit alongside one another. Many local artists express a want for more venues, large-scale events and commercial opportunities, but larger scale development is dependent on a multiplicity of political and economic factors including support from the local council. Criticism surrounding Art Sheffield and Over To You confirms need for variety, and has the potential to inspire new spaces for collaboration and dialogue amongst artists and curators at all levels as part of an expanding, outward-looking network with widespread connections.
1 Many of these issues are addressed in 'Biennials and city-wide events', a 2008 a-n Collection edited by SCAF's Steve Dutton and Jeanine Griffin.
2 This contextual material is available to read at www.bankstreetarts.com, www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&ref=mf&gid=267371049645
3 The Over To You page has now been edited into an overview of Bank Street Arts' intention to instigate dialogue and criticism and their perspectives on the situation. Much of the initial writing cannot be viewed in its original context on the site.
4 'Art and Confrontation' by Robin Close will be distributed in venues around Sheffield and is available to read online at www.artandconfrontation.co.uk http://thereisnosolution.tumblr.com
Writer detail:
Charlotte A Morgan is an artist and writer based in Sheffield UK, with an interest in collaboration, narrative and the built environment. Charlotte is co-developer of the New Writing Collective Yorkshire and also works collaboratively with Kate Longman as Transit.
No comments:
Post a Comment