Last week and for one night only Sheffield seemed to turn into Hoxton. Well Hoxton five years ago maybe. The creative industries quarter was awash with outré facial hair, louche knitware and thick-rimmed glasses as the art crowd descended for the New Contemporaries exhibition at Site Gallery and S1 Artspace.
New Contemporaries is a pleasingly democratic and generous concept. An annual institution since 1949, three selectors approach a veritable jumble sale of artworks from recent graduates and post-graduates of British art colleges. Working ‘blind’ – without a clue as to the age, sex, biography and alumni of the artist – the selectors look at each piece of art on its own merits and from an initial entry of 5000 whittle them down to the most promising few, just 40 artists this year. Selectors in previous years have discovered the now much vaunted talents of David Hockney, Damien Hirst, Paula Rego and, in a slightly leftfield 1965 selection, Mel Brooks.
The 2011 stats make for interesting reading – 40 artists, with less than half born in the UK telling of the international flavour of British art schools. And with a win for the home team – no less than 3 Sheffielders compared with just one artist from the capital. There’s also a varied mix of media, with more traditional painterly works next to film, sculpture and even digital animation.
Particularly striking is Poppy Whatmore’s witty I don’t come prepared at Site, a spatch-cocked, wall mounted chair inset with bright squares of paint like a make-shift Mondrian. At S1 there’s a very polished film, Night Worker, in which two screens simultaneously narrate different night shifts like the unblinking eyes of an insomniac. Cornelia Baltes’ print ‘Untitled (bird)’ distils a photograph into a shining intersection of colour and shape.
As Site’s patron and local boy done good, Jarvis Cocker said in an ad hoc address at the press launch en route to a weekend in the country, ‘In the last two or three years Sheffield’s arts scene has really stepped up a gear.’ The exhibition’s presence here is certainly a testimony to Sheffield’s contemporary clout, exemplified in the ambitions of Site Gallery’s new Director Laura Sillars. She’s also a driving force behind All Points North, a new initiative to strengthen the profile of contemporary arts across the North through collaboration and imaginative programming.
The glorious new space at S1 proved to be not only a fitting showcase for the New Contemporaries but a perfect opening night party venue. Deep in the industrial chic of the basement the evening’s entertainment came from neo scoto-irish band Django Django whose staging was suitably conceptual for the occasion. They started their set entirely encased in Venetian blinds which gradually twitched open and then were torn down as they warmed to their theme. All this made for a compelling soundtrack to what might just have been Sheffield’s art event of the year, only excepting the Kid Acne launch at Museums Sheffield.
You can see New Contemporaries at Site Gallery and S1 Artspace until 5 November.
You can read about All Points North here.
