Artwork
Shaping the landscape through street art
The streets of northern Sheffield are filled with murals and street art, including the Kurbart gallery along Green lane. We spoke with artists who helped shaped the heritage of the area through their pieces. Here is some of what they had to say about their relationship to the city, heritage, their creative processes, and their sense of community.
Joanna Whittle
On Sheffield
Sheffield has been amazing for both developing and sustaining my practice. I think Kelham Island is a really interesting place where history, art and nature all work together within one community.
The Kurbart pieces (both the tiles and the mural) reference the industrial, cultural and environmental history of Sheffield and the area of Kelham Island. I was interested in how these three aspects intertwine both within Sheffield and Kelham specifically.
On the pieces
In the Kurbart tile piece I was particularly interested in the heritage of the circus and fairground within Sheffield's history. The painted mural reflects the natural history of the area alongside the industrial history , hence an industrial building is islanded by the river. I am fascinated by the crossover of nature and industry such as the fig forests to be found along the river Don due to the runoff from the steelworks containing fig seeds from the worker's biscuits which grew due to the warmer temperatures of the water coming out of the forges.
Community contributed photos of Island and Water Stone Steel.
Pete McKee
On heritage
Heritage is having an awareness of your past, understanding the origins of what got you and the place where you live to this point in the present. It's knowing what you should be proud of. The struggle your parents and their forefathers went through and knowing what needs preserving and what can be set aside in order to maintain progress.
On his process
Reading comics made me understand that art was a tool for communication, it can make you laugh and it can make you cry without a single word being written. But I also knew that my art benefited from an additional narrative to help tell more complex stories when using a minimal art style.
On community
Intrinsically my work is about people who live in a working class community. People I grew up with. Their compassion, struggle and humour are essential. Their shared experience of the work I paint brings the work to life.
Community contributed photo of Frank.
Simon Wigglesworth-Baker
On heritage
I'm aware of the heritage of the area and I've done work with KINCA (Kelham Island and Neepsend Community Association) and I understand some of the history of the area to try to pass on the heritage to the people living here. History is being made at the moment, and heritage isn't static. This is a work in progress and it's important to celebrate that and understand that it's still moving. My art is inspired by my time working for a scissors manufacturing company, which also ties into the idea of industrial heritage.
On community
Around 10 years ago, I founded my own studio and started inviting local artists. This eventually became the Kelham Island Arts Collective (KIAC). It was not a planned process and sort of happened randomly. Eventually, we also started working with KINCA which brought in the community aspect through involving members of the public,
Community contributed photo of Sunrise, Sunset over Kelham Island.
Broken World
Constructed of several pieces, the picture shows people in migration, as a comment on the human cost of climate change. The planet is not coloured in, we have no idea what it will be until we decide how we want to draw it. The overall shape of the mural is inspired by the ornamental gates of a gated community, referencing the barriers the first world are erecting to avoid dealing with the human cost of climate change.
Photo by Cheryl Bowen.
John Wilkinson
On Sheffield
I currently reside in Nether Edge. I quickly grew to love Sheffield, so much friendlier (and cleaner) than the London I had left behind, and so much more affordable. I began my working career here as a volunteer research worker for the trade union unemployed centre. My working experience had helped develop my understanding of the city, its heritage, and the meaning of that heritage to its population. This tended to inform my creativity, so I started to produce narrative works drawn from that experience, and the history that still existed as relic, or still in operation and struggling to reinvent itself.
On heritage
For me heritage is a resource, to be learned from, to be a source of pride but also embarrassment and grief, to underpin the meaning we attach to our lives and to inform our progression. It is a double edged sword, in that it can be used to stifle social development as much as enable it.
On his work
The Green Lane murals are a response to the changing Kelham Island area, and are an attempt to link the new with the old. Like all art they can be read in a variety of ways, and several of them have multiple intended meanings conveyed through composition, overall shape and design elements.
On Kurbart and community
Simon Wigglesworth-Baker and I collectively came up with the idea of the Green Lane Wall as an outdoor art gallery, showing large scale artworks that brought art to people, rather than them having to seek it out. Being part of a collective response to the brief was important, strengthening the overall approach by offering several different styles of work, and also acting as a showcase for artists who, at the time, were not represented within the traditional art scene. KIAC members play an active role in the local community.. As such the organisation sits entirely with my view of community, which is a group of people with mutual self-interest all contributing to the social wellbeing of their environment.