Caught with an hour to kill in Sheffield between having my hair cut and taking Stan to a party at the Ski Village I plumped for taking my kids to the Winter Gardens and Millennium Gallery in Sheffield. It’s an oft trod path for me and them. After taking Stan to the loo (again) and swerving the gift shop (Nell’s affliction) we wandered into the Kid Acne exhibition, tucked between the ever-present history of Steel and the obligatory Ruskin room.
I was drawn in by the simple lines of the illustrations and the comic books hanging from the ceiling (not a great way to categorise them, but handy for swinging I guess?). We just wandered in out of curiosity, there was no glaring sign stating “Sheffield Artist” in fact I really had to look for whose work it was. Once inside it all came together, the large-scale graffiti with typical South Yorkshire dry wit, the sado-masochist women with birds for heads painted on old spray cans and the huge Ouija board with flying chairs and ghosts. All beautifully laid out and rendered.
As well as all the usual graphic art and a great take on what can only be described as art Moshi Monsters, including collectors cards, was a scary, surreal film which had the vaguest of plots but managed to include pretty much all of the material in the show – the sado-masochist women with birds for heads and the Ouija board and some cartoon swords. My kids loved this, don’t think the said ladies registered. They asked questions in short they engaged, my kids are pretty well versed in Daddy’s love of galleries and aren’t easily impressed, so this is praise indeed.
Later as we arrived at the Ski Village, we drove past one of Kid Acne’s larger pieces and I and Nell jumped out of the car and took shots of it (see above). Again a sure sign of engagement.
Anyway, the more I thought about this, the more I wondered why stumbling over an exhibition like this in Sheffield wasn’t a surprise but had this happened in Leeds I would have been amazed. As an in comer I have a great love of Leeds, but the Leeds Gallery plays a very straight bat. Damien Hirst, isn’t exactly the enfant terrible any more. Why has respectability had to come before Leeds will run his show, and even when it’s shown it alarmed to death. Leeds Gallery has lots of smaller rooms which could be given over to up and coming artists but what do we get in the little room next to the (poor) gift shop? 18th Century etchings mainly, that’s what.
Maybe it not fair to keep digging at the gallery, in effect it’s the only mainstream thing we have in Leeds. But that leads to the next question, why is it the only thing Leeds has? The cities people keep banging on about on these and other pages, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle and even Bradford have more diverse galleries which are accessible.
Since my tweets I’ve been finding out more about local artists as people have agreed/argued/poked holes. These people deserve, and Leeds deserves a major place for them to shine …or maybe we just need a John Lewis… (I despair).
Leeds will never understand what Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle or to use the authors term ‘even Bradford’, has, and it doesn’t. No amount of city planning will change that.