ART SHEFFIELD 08 takes place from February 16 - March 30 2008.
A mix of emerging and established Sheffield-based and nationally and internationally-based artists have been selected for the contemporary art festival ART SHEFFIELD 08.
The festival takes place from February 16 - March 30 2008 in venues across the city including Bloc, End Gallery, Millennium Galleries, S1 Artspace, Site Gallery, Yorkshire ArtSpace, as well as temporary venues and the public realm.
Taking as its foundation a specially commissioned text by Berlin art critic Jan Verwoert, the city-wide exhibition addresses the fact that in a post-industrial condition we have entered into a service culture where we no longer just work, but perform in a perpetual mode of ‘I Can’. (Even advertising tells us that ‘Life gets more exciting when you say yes’).
Katie Davies - new commission for ART SHEFFIELD 08. © Art Sheffield
Verwoert asks, “What would it mean to put up resistance against a social order in which high performance and performance-related evaluation has become a growing demand, if not a norm? What would it mean to resist the need to perform?”
He suggests that certain means of resisting are in themselves creative - art can say ‘I can’t’ by creating moments where the flow of action is interrupted, established meanings are suspended and alternative ways to act become imaginable. He suggests that as well as yes and no, there may be other options.
Artists who are going to grapple with this knotty conundrum include those working in a range of media, from site specific to painting, sculpture and video.
Deimantas Narkevicius, from the film Revisiting Solaris, 2006. Image courtesy Jan Mot, Brussels
They include Turner Prize winners Tomma Abts and Wolfgang Tillmans together with an impressive roster of artists from across the globe including Kan Xuan, Jiri Kovanda, Ruth Legg, Frances Stark, Tsui Kuang-Yu, Gitte Villesen, Nicole Wermers, and Xu Tan.
Each has been selected as their work was felt to have a close relationship to Verweort’s contextual text.
This is the fourth incarnation of a multi-venue festival of contemporary art in the steel city and organisers Sheffield Contemporary Art Forum are hopeful that visitor figures will continue to rise. 39,000 visitors attended in 2003, whilst 2005 drew a total of 48,446 visits.
Tim Etchells, wait here I have gone to help. A new commission for Art Sheffield 08. © Art Sheffield
The Forum’s aims are to develop Sheffield’s reputation regionally, nationally and internationally as a centre for contemporary art; build and develop the audiences for contemporary art; and create opportunities for the professional development of artists.
See www.artsheffield.org for more details.
