Exhibition preview: Love in a Cold Climate, S1 Artspace, Sheffield, March 8 – May 4 2013

The coal seams and passing bywaters of Sheffield have repeatedly fired and quenched artistic desires. Taking the “latent energies” of the city – and throwing in the timeless inspirations of stainless steel and electro-pop for good measure – this group show features works by Anna Barham, Liam Gillick, Scott King, Jamie Reid, Mandla Reuter, Edward Wadsworth and Hannah Rickards.

Wadsworth’s precise points of imagery are taken from post-Vorticist lithographs from the West Midlands, in 1919, showing slag waste. Reid, meanwhile, goes for retrospective provocation, producing posters encouraging people to support miners by wasting electricity during the 1973 Miners' Strike and the 1987 General Election.

The very modern gallery floor of S1 is the plot for Gillick’s Discussion Island Preparation Zone, in which a residue left from mopping the venue with a vodka-glitter cocktail creates a trace of David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust tour, which took the artist to Sheffield’s City Hall as one of 43 gigs way back in 1973.

Cosmic stardust also interest Rickards, whose installation, Some people say they think it sounds like aluminium foil but aluminium foil to me is not the sound, features interviews with skywatchers perceiving the Northern Lights as being accompanied by sound.

Barham and the Berlin-based Reuter – previously seen introducing a controllable fizzy pop vending machine to a Dutch gallery in 2011 – provide illuminations through a series of abstract lighting designs.

• Open Wednesday-Saturday 12pm-6pm. Admission free. Follow the gallery on Twitter @S1Artspace.

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