Issue 1 of Now Then.

There are no tea stains in the
Millenium Galleries. I think this
is a problem. Before I’ve even
mentioned the words ‘contextual
essay’ your eyes have glazed
over. German art critic Jan
Verhoert possibly noticed the
lack of telling brown rings when
he was asked to partake in
putting together Art Sheffield
08, but this was swiftly overlooked.
The irritating thing is that an
outsider came in and actually
picked a topic for the show
so very pertinent to Sheffield,
and then the insiders (Sheffield
Contemporary Art Forum) gave
him The Millenium Galleries
as his central space. Not very
pertinent to Sheffield is it?
Yes No Other Options* points a
finger at our need to perform at
the highest levels in all aspects
of our lives. Whilst as a people
and as a city (and a society
and the world we fall off our
chairs at our own profundity),
Sheffield, a post industrial city,
is thrown like the rest of The
North, into an apocalyptic image
crisis created by this thing
we call ‘regeneration’
In his preview to the exhibition
Birmingham-based art critic
Andrew Hunt claimed Verhoert
worked towards opening up
‘the latent energy of Sheffield’.
With opinions based on his
experience of the city 20 odd
years ago, (yeah we’ve heard
that one before, go on use the
word grim, we love it) Hunt
suggests Verheort asks, ‘What
would it mean to resist the
need to perform?’
There was a well-balanced
selection of artists with locals
such as Katie Davies and Tim
Etchells showcased next to
international names that will
pull in the punters, (I personally
adore Wolfgang Tillmanns as a
hero of mundane ponderings
and sock drying). Of course
the selection is catered towards
the art bubble (the
institution of individuals constantly
fluffing their peacock
feathers for like-minded asslickers).
Two of the artists are
Turner Prize winners and one
was a nominee, but there was
at least a variety of (sometimes
intelligent) takes on resisting
performitivity.
However most of the really
good work was in the smaller
galleries, and besides a few
token gestures of ambiguous
billboard statements and lighting
up The Park Hill housing estate,
there was little attempt to
engage with Sheffield outside
of these (performative) gallery
spaces.
The small galleries that did
accompany the afore-mentioned
void of creativity did
indeed evoke the latencies
of Sheffield. However nestled
as they are, amongst semiderelict
buildings in the nooks
of the city, most of the culturecurious
general public are
unlikely to find the time to visit
them in their hectic schedule
of ‘complete exhaustion and
total burnout’. When happily
sniffed out on a day of puddledodging
and tea sipping, these
aspects of the exhibition did
prove truly rewarding. But in
all its glossy clean soullessness,
The Millenium Galleries
instantly killed the topic dead.
It comes across as dry, even
to an art-educated individual,
and is full of words; not everybody
likes to be served a lot of
words with their consumption
of art.
But at the root of all the words
(that the gallery has somewhat
failed to engage you with) is
an interesting notion, the idea
of ‘latency. The word ‘latent’
is repeated often in the catalogue,
and to understand why
you must delve much further
into words than most will, by
reading Verhoert’s thesis (yeah
there’s not just a contextual
essay, there’s a thesis too, I can
see you falling over yourself
with excitement).
In the section ‘The Beauty of
Latency’ from ‘Exhaustion &
Exuberance – Ways to Defy the
Pressure to Perform’, Verhoert
claims, ‘To embrace latency
goes against the grain and
logic of high performance (…)
the current social order denies
the value of latency, the value
of a potentiality that remains
presently unactualised and
quite possibly can’t ever be
exhaustively actualised’.
In the beauty of latency is the
beauty of Sheffield, (I’m feeling
quite sentimental at this point,
maybe it’s the drugs…). Sheffield’s
beauty lies in the
vagueness of all the potential
possibilities of tomorrow, and
really, it’s all about the brew. Be
it beer or tea, it’s about sitting
and thinking and mooching
in a way you just can’t do in a
glossy high performance city, in
a glossy high performance gallery,
in a glossy high performance
institution, that systematically
fails to engage with the
general public…and has no
idea why.
KIrSTY FOx
ArT08.
CONTEMPLATION ON TEA STAINS.
PAGE EIGHTEEN.