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A snapshot of the conversations I have with Londoners about art beyond the boundaries of their city would include such statements as: “I have never thought to visit an exhibition outside London”; “How far is it from London?” and (in a particularly sour exchange about a show in Yorkshire) “That’s a shame”. The Freelands Foundation must have caught wind of this pervasive London-centric attitude when it launched a programme that funds artists and galleries outside the capital. G39 in Cardiff, PS² in Belfast, Site Gallery in Sheffield and Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh received a total of £1.5m to support emerging artists, inviting them to develop new work and a network of contacts that will hopefully see them thrive in the city they call home.
Halfway into the first two-year residencies, Site Gallery opens Platform 2019, a works-in-progress exhibition offering a sneak preview of the practices of the six artists they are nurturing. The showcase spans two other nearby galleries for a mini-takeover of Sheffield; Site hosts Zoyander Street, Siân Williams and Lucy Vann, while Bloc Projects houses Alison J Carr and Yorkshire Artspace takes Yuen Fong Ling.
With the largest space, Site has the hardest job of transforming half-formed artistic thoughts into a vivacious presentation of confident voices and intriguing visuals with the impact necessary to fill its gigantic white box. It is partially successful. Williams’ full-height woven foil curtains dazzle, evoking a childlike joy when rustled; Street’s interviews with members of the trans community are all the more engaging when inserted into a Tamagotchi-style device to be “played”, and Vann’s short videos of her everyday life are as entrancing as they would be on Instagram.
But there is a lot of space in this room, a huge number of strides to be made between Street’s sinister Victorian pram and Vann’s little iPhone with only two sets of headphones. On the wall, names from Donna Harraway’s scholarly article Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin are projected on a blank sheet of white paper. Street tells me it is a cyber-Bayeux Tapestry – this sounds spectacular, but I can’t tell whether it is finished or not.
Down the road at Bloc Projects, Carr’s cinematic photographs of northern theatres mesmerise. The familiar rows of luxurious velvet seating, the draped curtains and gold-painted detailing are captivating through Carr’s colour-soaked lens. Each image focuses on the staircase that leads to the stage – a bridge between reality and creativity, especially for women. She who climbs it may have a moment of artistic freedom, she is to return to her expected role.
This final stop is Ling’s “shoe shop” at Yorkshire Artspace. Towards Memorial is a celebration of the life of Edward Carpenter, a socialist writer, poet and activist who lived openly with his partner just outside Sheffield when homosexuality was still illegal in the UK. Carpenter was criticised by George Orwell for being a “sandal-wearing lefty” so – on finding the original pattern for Carpenter’s sandals in an archive – Ling commissioned a local shoemaker to recreate several pairs for The Friends of Edward Carpenter. The immaculately crafted sandals line up next to videos of activism in Sheffield and photographic prints of Carpenter that Ling has inserted in his own shoes and moulded to the shape of his feet.
Towards Memorial is the most developed of these works. Ling’s mixed-media presentation, which mines Sheffield’s history for inspiration and utilises the skills of local artisans, is presumably just what the Freelands Foundation was hoping for.
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