Sheffield Contemporary Art Forum
AN ARTISTS BOOK AND DVD
Presenting work by Sheffield-based artists
Distributed at The Venice Biennale and Documenta XII, 2007
LAUNCH: Bar Margaret Duchamp, Campo Santa Margherita, Venice, Friday 8th June, from 8pm
The Sheffield Pavilion is a project designed to take advantage of the harmonic convergence of super exhibitions – The Venice Biennale, Documenta XII, Skulptur Projekte Münster 07 – in June 2007. This nexus of projects falling together (an event which only occurs once every 10 years) offers a unique opportunity to symbiotically present the work of Sheffield-based artists and promote the contemporary art activity taking place in Sheffield, UK in an international context.
The Sheffield Pavilion is a new format for a citys involvement in events such as the Venice Biennale. A pavilion in book form is a structure curiously attentive to the roots of the word, in the Latin for butterfly, and in its subsequent usage to signify a tent or temporary structure used for leisure, entertainment or exhibition. The Sheffield Pavilion is similarly airborne and nomadic, a peripatetic exhibition in book form or a paper based architecture for art.
Artists: Farhad Ahrarnia, Maud Haya Baviera, Tim Etchells, Matthew Harrison, Meriel Herbert, Host Artists Group, Penny McCarthy, Sarah Staton, Neil Webb, Katy Woods
The selected artists have presented new projects designed specifically for the book form. Tim Etchells has worked on a text that bears the marks of his changes to it, as it mutates through several colour-coded versions, Penny McCarthys drawings include a facsimile of a letter from the NASA archive drafted should the crew of the first moon landing be lost in space, Matthew Harrison documents the production and progress of an unsolicited desk nameplate for Professor Colin Pillinger of the ill-fated UK Beagle 2 Mars probe, Farhad Ahrarnia presents a collage of extracts of articles and drawings by writer/journalist Maggie Lett for Tehran Journal in 1969, Neil Webb has produced a spectrographic and sound mapping of a microcosmic selection of Sheffield urban terrain, Maud Haya Baviera collects a series of illustrated short stories about a protagonist called Liberty, Katy Woods displaces and re-presents an intriguing collection of found images and text, Sarah Staton offers a photograph of a building in Sheffield whose collision of styles, age and function in one structure reflects the city as a whole, Meriel Herberts photographic imagery of a human gesture was made in direct response to the physicality of the book, and Host Artists Group presents a curated exploration of multiple artists responses to the notion of beauty.
The Sheffield Pavilion is designed by the citys renowned The Designers Republic and the artists broader practice is represented on a DVD presented alongside it. The book is not intended as an audit of artistic practice in Sheffield, but the first of, hopefully, many different ways of presenting aspects of the Sheffield art scene to a wider audience. The aim is that the project will act as a portal to contemporary art in Sheffield, representing artists work, practice and methodology as a vital part of the city and making Sheffieldbased artists more visible to an international network.
The Sheffield Pavilion will continue the citys international visibility after Echo/City an exhibition of works about Sheffield – was selected to represent Britain in last years Venice Architecture Biennale.
The book will be launched in Venice at Bar Margaret Duchamp, Campo Santa Margherita, Dorsoduro, from 8pm Friday 8th June (and will be available from the bar from 7-10 June) and will also be distributed in Kassel, concurrent with the Documenta 12 festival.
For further details or to receive a copy of the book by post email contact@artsheffield.org
The Sheffield Pavilion was selected and produced by Sheffield Contemporary Art Forum – a not-for-profit company working to further the presence and awareness of contemporary art in Sheffield through joint programming, audience development and profile raising activities. The forum also runs the ART SHEFFIELD festivals. The directors of the company are representatives of Bloc Studios, Sheffield Galleries & Museums Trust, Sheffield Hallam University, Site Gallery, S1 Projects, Yorkshire ArtSpace Society and independent artists and practitioners.
More information about Sheffield Contemporary Art Forum and its activities can be found at www.artsheffield.org
For further information please contact
Jeanine Griffin
Sheffield Contemporary Art Forum
PO Box 3754, Sheffield, S1 9AH
contact@artsheffield.org
0114 281 2013
Funded by Arts Council England, Yorkshire.
