at last, our promises – creative spark, sheffield hallam degree show 2012

ever since i gained an awareness of new art, i’ve known about the reputation of sheffield hallam as a school of art. this is the first chance i have had to take in the sheffield degree show since moving over here, and have spent a brilliant afternoon crossing the city to see some really exciting new work across a range of creative fields. admittedly, the nature of a degree show means that it was a pretty mixed bag, but i’m not writing this to put down people who have spent the best part of three/four years working towards this point. i’m just someone who has their own ideas of aesthetic, and i certainly wouldn’t want to make a negative comment about any of the upcoming artists on display as part of creative spark.

the fine art display at s1 artspace was the first time that i have seen the gallery space displaying work other than film, and it was fantastic to see the room so animated. with a mixture of sculptural works, painting, photography and film, the display took on a variety of different directions.

the standout pair of works for me came from jason mould and hannah sarah james. both artists’ work took seemed to deal with ideas of negotiation of landscape, though in contrasting manners. mould’s piece the debatable land takes on a richard long-esque quality, mixing a vinyl wall piece of the english-scottish border with a physical border between soil from both sides of the divide. i got a real sense of the importance of place from mould’s work, and was really impressed; i would really like to see more of this artist.

jason mould, the debatable land

hannah sarah james, 0.7

adjacent to mould’s work was hannah sarah james’ wall drawing 0.7, a wall drawing working around four sides of a supporting pillar. using the simplest of ideas, that vertical line, the artist creates undulating contours which spread around the pillar. it is probably a leap to far to suggest that these mountains were the peaks along mould’s border. a terrific placement of two of the best pieces i saw all day.

     

shifting around the corner from these pieces sarah simmonite’s progression offers another seemingly simple idea, blocks of colour moving from shade to shade, from a light ecru and moving towards muddy brown. it wasn’t the blocks that drew the eye and interest in this piece though; the spaces between the solid slabs danced with variations, a really nice touch to bring a sense of shared progress to the entire work.

sarah simmonite, progression

other standout work from the fine art show came from carole cluer, who reworked the ideas of kintsugi repairs using graphite in place of gold. cluer’s artist book complemented her ideas and plate work to great impact. dominating the entrance to the gallery space, annabel snowden’s parachute asked some interesting questions of the viewer, with the main thing lingering for me being an ongoing problem deciphering whether the parachute was falling towards or anchored by the fantastic print on the gallery floor. lastly, victoria bailey’s macintosh-esque wooden frame supporting punctured paper work worked perfectly this afternoon as light flooded through the miniscule holes, creating a sense of life. the texturing of bailey’s paper offered yet more contours, a theme which i really warmed to throughout the works which appealed most to me in this collection.

victoria bailey

moving on from the art show, i headed (via a swift trip to millenium gallery to partake in their £1 coffee deal) into the unknown for me, jewellery. i honestly can’t give you anything on the technical abilities of any of the artists on show, as i have no real terms of reference with which to describe what i saw. however, i can tell you which two artists really stood out to me as the ones whose work i really enjoyed. luana poerio’s collection hope of spring saw silver flowers arranged into wooden blocks, with lovely allusions to natural forms and window boxes at the same time.

from the natural to the very man-made, emma swailes’ the sea side memories collection was loads of fun. objects inspired by the british coast, with deckchairs and beach huts supporting some really lovely pieces working around aesthetics of the chip fork. ok, so it might not be ‘beautiful’ or ‘pretty’, but this work really grabbed me and stood out as something i would want to buy in the future for loved ones.

heading on from the jewellery i attempted to find the (very poorly signposted) architecture display. it must be really frustrating for the students to find that their work is displayed in such a chaotic manner, and indeed nigh on impossible to find. short of a sign on a door saying ‘beware of the leopard‘ it couldn’t have been much more difficult to actually find the 4th year architects work, which only discovered by dint of having looked at the 2nd year display from across the atrium and traced a vague line towards something across the way that looked like it might be more architecture. moan over, but seriously, shouldn’t the architecture department be the best at getting you into a space to see the work?

once the final year projects were found, it was worth the trip. working to a brief of designing an international hub for learning on the dearne valley/river don corridor which showcased environmental features, there were some brilliantly thought out buildings here.

liam gladwin’s building made fantastic use of space, placing the public circulation areas at the heart of the design, yet without impinging on the practical usage of area. alongside a very clean and considered interior, gladwin’s exterior seemed thoroughly planned to at once make a strong statement on its materials whilst also blending into the natural world around it. really impressive stuff.

liam gladwin

just as impressive in my eyes was tony buck’s concept which combined wood frame, glass and local stone with a green roof to create a building of striking qualities which somehow took me straight back to the moorland visitor centre in edale. i’m a massive fan of said building in edale, and someone buck managed to maintain this combination of the natural, great design and a certain softness throughout his project.

tony buck

the creative spark exhibitions run until saturday 23rd june, and i would heartily recommend that you find the time to go and give them a look before the weekend. it is really encouraging to see so much great new work going on in sheffield, and i am honestly looking forward to seeing where all of the artists i’ve spoken about above go next. keep your eyes peeled folks.

berlin – city in memorial

as a city which has been torn apart by conflict, it would be impossible to write about berlin and not consider how war has impacted upon the place, and how it is remembered. unsurprisingly there are memorials to the loss of life right across the city, with the spectre of the second world war and ongoing loss of life which resulted from the occupation of berlin displayed with a blunt matter of factness which i think few cities would attempt. berlin knows that it has a lot to remember, and doesn’t hide the fact. here i am going to consider two very different, but just as powerful approaches to memory and the differing traces, footprints and impressions they place into the context of the city.

the soviet war memorial at treptower park, like much of architecture of the former russian side of berlin, is about memory and scale. moving from the weeping russian motherland at one end, through to the gigantic red army soldier at the zenith of the gardens, this is an act of the soviet union states remembering those who fought in the battle of berlin, the role they played in the defeat of facisim, and more importantly acting as a ground on which to celebrate the lives of the 5000 men buried here.

the establishment of soviet strength cries out from each different facet of this monument. the weeping mother represents russia, morning her lost sons; looking on from here the scale begins to strike home. the shattered russian flags, fronted by red army soldiers bowed in reverence, cut perfect lines, furthering the sense of how small the individual is in the face of both the war, and the soviet state.

sixteen stone sarcophagi representing the states of the ussr carry the words of stalin, and in places the great leader manages to sneak in as a soviet worker; even in commemorating her dead the russian state was furthering stalin’s image – any opportunity is a propaganda opportunity. yet of these murals it is the image of lenin above a row of red army troops which is most powerful. the perfectly straight line appear once again, with a sense of perspective enforcing the strength of the succesful soviet army.

however, this all shrinks away in comparison with the twelve metre tall statue of a soviet soldier , holding a child, a sword (which held surprisingly tsarist overtones in my opinion…) and standing atop a broken swastika. the statue purports to represent nikolia masalov, a sergant of the guards who risked german machine gun fire to rescue a three year old german child whose mother was missing. this may be the tale behind the monument, but the unmissable message is that the soviet state is powerful, that you are insignificant in the shadow of it, but that it is also at its heart caring for you. a hugely powerful monument, a fitting memorial of those russians who died to defeat nazism, but steeped in hugely political overtones.

moving across the city, the second memorial i’d like to consider is denkmal für die ermordeten juden europas, which directly translates as the memorial to the murdered jews of europe. located right in the heart of berlin’s district of historic power, just down the road from the reichstag and brandenberg gate, this memorial is at the heart of the city, and in a way could be seen to define how berlin, and possibly germany or indeed europe at large, is seeking to bring a different manner of thought into memorial . scale is once again at play here, though in a hugely different manner to that seen at treptower park.

next to the shining american embassy, and just across the road from the tiergarten, the holocaust memorial appears far more understated in comparison to the soviet memorial. there is no huge statue dominating proceedings. in fact, from the street the 19,000 square metre site appears understated to say the least. 2711 grey concrete blocks, seemingly of minute difference across the vast area seem to lack a real impact. at first glance, other than the fact that a site of such size has been set aside for a memorial site rather than maximised for commercial opportunity, this is a possibly too understated monument.

yet the power of the holocaust memorial is evident as soon as you start to move throughout the maze of grey stelae. starting as low level protrusions, indeed seeming not much more than a series of concrete benches, as you move further into the memorial site the stelae slabs become more and more imposing, as the ground level undulates creating a sense of scale and loss. the concrete blocks vary in height from 20cm up to just short of 5 metres, and as you move further into the maze of monuments to lost life you find an inescapable sense of uneasiness, somewhere between loss, claustrophobia and confusion. where the memorial at treptower park makes its point by placing the viewing in a relationship of awe, here you are forced to face a grid system which appears ordered, but offers no support.

in amongst the concrete labyrinth there is a bunkered ‘place of information’, which i’ll be honest, i didn’t find. that said, i didn’t know it was there until i read about it later. what struck me most about this monument was the sense of peace which is created by the downward slope of the floor, which leaves you standing some way below street level and surrounded by concrete which muffles the city. you are faced with this contemplative silence, whilst also facing the anxieties which the structure itself brings on. i know that this memorial has caused a fair amount of controversy due to its lack of a monument or recognised symbols of grief/remembrance, but the questioning of a system of order, brought about by human design, is massively powerful when considering the lives of those taken away during the holocaust.

having spent the best part of half an hour getting deeper into the monolithic towers of the stelae, the sombre mood was shattered by a group of school children tearing around the memorial screaming and shouting. at the time i was really quite offended by this, they were clearly not respecting what this space was all about. yet after i got back i started to think about this memorial in a different way; the central positioning of this site places it very much in a role as an active role as part of the fabric of the city. would stopping kids from using a public space in the manner that they would naturally not be a tiny tiny tiny baby step vaguely in the direction of the problem that this memorial is here to recognise? the decision not to have an obvious entrance point with directions, signage and rules has been very carefully taken, so the means of use must be openly considered. one thing is for certain, this isn’t the kind of behavior that the imposing red guard soldier would abide…

berlin and that…

i have recently returned from a short break in berlin, and want to write about a few of the things i saw there, and the impact they had on me. i guess that this is going to spread into a few posts about specific points, so i’ll use this one to give my general sense of the city.

    

berlin has always been a city which has interested me. as an undergrad history student with a particular interest in the birth of modern europe, the unification of nineteenth germany was always one of my key interest. berlin has been a city with the weight of modern history place well and truly upon its shoulders, from the rise of fascism, the collapse of hitler’s germany through the escalation of the cold war, up to the unification of germany and the current role of the german government in the future of europe. this is a city which is important.

lets start with the people. the cosmopolitan attitude of the people i encountered was pretty reminiscent of places like barcelona and manchester. bar culture meant that sitting with a beer until whenever you wanted to was pretty easy to achieve, and in the morning/afternoon afterwards nobody would bat that much of an eyelid as you tucked into your first bockwurst of the day. berlin seemed like the kind of place you could set yourself up pretty easily if you wanted to, which was pretty much confirmed by the fact i was staying with a friend who had done just that.

so, onto the city itself. i think big and heavy is the way to describe it best. yes, going in january meant that the oppressive nature of much of the architecture was accentuated by a foreboding winter sky and chilling temperature, but the thing that strikes you as you walk done streets in the east of the city is that this is a city which has no consistency to it at all. berlin is a place which has been torn apart and put back together so many times, by so many different people, that a true sense of architectural identity is pretty much nul.

yet in places where a swathe of one style dominates, you really do get a sense of what different ‘owners’ have tried to do with the place. around the brandenburg gate and the reichstag the influence of western victors is clear in some pretty bland, pretty corporate looking bits of shiney-ness. the real interest is when you hit the former soviet areas.

    

karl-marx allee is probably the part of berlin which will stick with me most in terms of scale and scope. here is a road which was designed to remind the people of east berlin that they were very very very small, and that the soviet union of which they were a part was really really really big. this grand statement of soviet strength, saw a whole street dominated by huge modernist architecture, with the boulevard being mostly constructed over the 1950s at which point it was still named after stalin.

haus der stastistik

the soviet process of destroying the cult of stalin led to marx’s name being added to this stretch of road in 1961. the huge buildings, housing everyone from workers up to luxury apartments, have mostly been refreshed to reflect their former grandeur – though the haus der stastistik, former home of the stasi, is notable by its emptiness. probably the highlight of the street is a 1960s addition though, the kino international cinema.

yet once you stop looking up and being generally overawed by the size of the city, and the weight of events and history upon it, berlin is really accommodating. the rumours of having to know which unmarked doors to go through to find the best bits are definitely true, and this trip benefited from knowing someone who know where these doors were. great little coffee shop lurk behind curtains, bars playing nondescript (but exactly what was needed) house music are just off staircases that would be better suited to a multi-storey car park.

in terms of culture the place really came up trumps. my own stupid decision to not see enough stuff over the weekend meant that a lot of the galleries i wanted to see were closed on the monday, but visits to both the neues museum, recently reopened after being very thoughtfully restored by david chipperfield, and the hamburger bahnhof were both excellent.

tomas saraceno at hamburger bahnhof

tomas saraceno at hamburger bahnhof

i don’t think enjoyed is the right word to describe the emotion i felt after this trip. under conventional circumstances it would be, but it seems to be a bit remiss to describe a trip in which you’ve spent a good chunk of time crying about the horrors of very recent european history as enjoyable. if you don’t know the place already i would highly recommend berlin.

museums sheffield: the arts council funding fallout

*this whole story is developing all the time, see the comments at the bottom for the latest*

fairly regular readers of this blog will know that over the summer i moved over the hills from manchester to sheffield. since arriving in sheffield i have been enjoying getting to know a brand new set of museums and galleries, which i have generally been impressed by. yes, everything is on a much smaller scale than those which i used to frequent on a near daily basis whilst studying for my MA whilst in manchester, but i try not to see them as comparable institutions. weston park museum is a very well curated introduction to a city, and includes some really nice flourishes of delivery including the gallery built around snowy the polar bear. in the city centre the millennium gallery has proved a reliable place to head for when i’ve needed to see things to either calm thoughts or spark inspiration – in particular the kid acne exhibition and the ruskin gallery struck me last year.

there is one gallery which i have not yet fully got to grips with, and that is the graves gallery. working in an art gallery means that you sometimes end up completely missing others, especially when they have restricted opening hours. this has been my issue with the graves gallery, which i have seen a total of three rooms in. i was a bit shocked at how much work there was in the gallery when i first stepped in, presuming that their limited opening hours belied a limited collection. instead, i think that they may be the tip of an iceberg which sheffield is unfortunately ploughing straight towards.

last week the arts council announced that, despite a very strong bid, museums sheffield has missed out on £4.2million of funding over the next three years – which represents a cut of at least 30% in funding for the city. reports suggest that this leaves funding for the arts in sheffield at around £4 per head, whereas nearby leeds is sitting pretty with over £20 per person. it is frankly shocking that a city of sheffield’s stature, with an arts scene which seems to be growing around the work of museums sheffield, has been cut adrift.

i can still recall the consternation of the last round of funding cuts when i was working in a manchester arts venue (which was allocated its money), and the issues which were faced by those who missed out. at least one major venue has gone the way of dust as far as i know. sheffield is now facing a situation where the museum service must find ways of meeting an £800,000 shortfall for their current budget, let alone the dark times yet to come. talk is of around 50 jobs going, an end to the expansive exhibitions policy which has seen major national shows exhibited in the city, and potentially worse.

museums sheffield have been very upfront about what this funding decision means for their service. combative posters have appeared across their venues appealing for the people of the city to support them in this dark time, and they have made realistic announcements about what these cuts mean. an end to big name exhibitions, cuts to family engagement, the wrapping up of outreach programmes.

yesterday i attended sheffield council’s public consultation on the budget cuts it is facing itself. the council is losing around £24million of their own budget from central government, and is thus being forced into cuts of around 10% across all its’ services. yet they chose not to apply this to museums sheffield, instead implementing a cash standstill which would support the outstanding arts council bid, and the industrial museums’ hlf bid. so here we are with a council which is willing to draw back on other areas to support the visual arts and heritage, but even that is not enough to see these vital services protected.*

so what next? museums sheffield held discussions with arts council england’s yorkshire team yesterday to discuss the short term issues, and the application of ‘transitional funding’ parachute payments which are being rolled out to those renaissance funded institutions who have missed out on the current round of funding. talks are also ongoing about an appeal to overturn the decision, which whilst i support in principle of the need of these funds in the city, you have to wonder how the arts council could begin to find the money to offer sheffield any form of funding? remove it from services who were successful in the initial bidding process?

i am hopeful that a solution can be found, whether via an appeal process or through a succesful application by museums sheffield for the arts council’s renaissance strategic support fund. either way, action is going to be needed from the people of sheffield to show their support for their arts institutions. now is the time to make use of those politicians who you put in power, be it at local or national level. make a noise about how important these museums and galleries are to the city, to you personally, and to the lives of those who need them most. contact you mp. write to your councillor. go direct to the arts council.

most of all, get to the museums and galleries. you know those gift aid envelopes you normally walk past? use them. that family birthday coming up – get them something from the gallery shop. sheffield, support your cultural institutions now, whilst you still can.

museums sheffield blog – help us make the case for culture in sheffield

*it must be noted that sheffield theatres and site gallery have both seen their funding cut in line with sheffield council’s budget cuts.

too sick to pray: sheffield cholera monument

“a neat and appropriate monument has been erected in norfolk-road, opposite the shrewsbury hospitals, in memory of those who died in sheffield from the ravages of the cholera in 1832, and who were buried on this spot. the disease ravaged from the beginning of july till the end of october. the numbers attacked were 1,347, of whom 402 dead.”
illustrated guide to sheffield, pawson and brailsford (1879)

1832 was the year which the asiatic cholera pandemic, at the time simply the second pandemic, reached the uk. the disease swept through cities indiscriminately, decimating east london, manchester, swathes of nottingham and sheffield to focus on but a few. around 22,000 died across the country, of whom 402 were buried in the cholera pit in the norfolk park area of sheffield, just off from park hill. the disease reached the city in july of 1832, and was considered somewhat under control by november; reportedly the dispensery at sheffield university issued over 3500 leeches that year, against a normal figure of around 100.

by 1834 construction had begun on this monument to the dead, financed in part by sales of models of the sculpture, and also with the support of the duke of norfolk. the monument itself was completed in 1835, with the gardens around it following in 1850. by 1930 the norfolk estate had handed the grounds over to the city, and the monument has since been struck by lightning, seen its top scattered around the gardens by the weather, been rebuilt and grade II listed, alongside a green flag for the park.

this was my first walk up to this area of the city, looking out across sheffield from a brand new perspective. this is going to keep happening, as i discover new ways of viewing a city which i now call home. coming down through the city i crossed the train station bridge, which is under threat as a public access route thanks to the lovely folks at east midlands trains, and came out at the base of the steel steps which rise up to park hill.  carrying on up and to the right, you follow signs for the memorial, and after a brief wrong turn reach a real haven on tranquility within five minutes of the city centre.

this is the kind of place that i always bemoaned the lack of in manchester city centre, an area of green, quiet, contemplation, and no sign at all of offices, fast food, pedestrian crossings or chuggers. the memorial grounds lead off a quiet residential street, which by the bye has some beautiful tudor style villas on it, and once through the gate you are drawn straight through the park towards the monument. the die straight path, and trees on either side, work brilliantly to accentuate the monument, which appears to be rising up from just below the level of the path – a really nice piece of planning from those who put the grounds together nearly 200 years ago.

the pevsner guide to sheffield sums the monument up as ‘an earth-bound gothic pinnacle or spire,’ with the man himself suggesting it as a gothicist’s obelisk. in fact, there are probably a few links that can be drawn between the cholera monument and darwen tower, the rocket-esque beacon that looks over east lancashire. much as darwen tower is currently lacking it’s nose-cone (nb – it was actually replaced only two days ago!), the cholera monument was only restored to past/current glories in 2005.

alongside the great views of the monument itself, this spot is a fantastic spot to take in the geography of sheffield city centre, and acknowledge just how dominated by the hills around it the city really is. in every direction from here you can see the land rising above the city, and on a crisp cold january afternoon it looked stunning. with just the sound of birdsong, and the odd rumble of a tram, this was as far from life in a city centre as i’ve found thus far in sheffield, and way more than anything i ever found in manchester. the city of hills is starting to show her cards a bit…

sky phenomenon

over the past couple of months i have started to experiment with my style of writing, which has recently come to a head. last week i sat down with a typewriter, two sheets of paper, and wrote a story. this is the first piece of fiction which i have written since i was researching for my undergraduate dissertation six years ago. i can place that so well because i can picture the exact moment i last wrote a short story, sat drinking a cup of coffee in a cafe in temple bar before watching a film at the irish film institute. as i finished writing it i realised that i really didn’t enjoy putting the piece together, disliked creating the character, hated the situation which i had placed them in. with that, i moved away from fiction writing.

yet recently i have started to explore what it is about fiction writing i did/do still enjoy. my little brown moleskin of writing has seen a few fleeting glimpse of events or situations hitting the page which have come mainly from my head. last week i sat down, and it happened; for three or four days preceding this i couldn’t get the first few lines out of my head, so i wanted to commit them to paper, but i certainly didn’t expect what happened next. the words kept coming, all of a sudden the situation had an atmosphere, and then there was movement – a story was starting to emerge on the page.

reading it back i realised that the story i had produced was looking a lot like the photographs which i tend to take. i’ve never been one for capturing people and/or places in my photos, and more likely than not they will contain a vast expanse of sky. here are a few examples which have been on this blog before as proof…

on reading back ‘the dam,’ the piece which i had produced, i found that it was full of sky. even at this stage i’m not really sure how many characters there are in the story, but it is quite clear that a moment, an event, has been captured. i’ve found that on my return to fiction writing i have done more to create a sense of place and atmosphere than build personnel, probably not that much of a surprise given the characters who forced this pen down in the first place.

an interesting start to the year, and possibly the start to a new adventure. alongside starting to re-wander down this path, i have been speaking to some other creative types whose work i really admire about their process, so hopefully this recently discovered vein of inspiration will continue to bring forth the goods.

fake empire – a year in art

this has been a really interesting year. i’ll admit, 12 months ago i never saw myself reflecting on a year in which i’ve started working at one of the best new  art galleries in europe and as a result have an ever growing interest in the visual arts. i don’t think i have ever seen myself as a ‘art’ person. during my masters course i stuck far more closely to the museum studies side of things, yet since april i have been delving further into the world of art. and i’ve been really enjoying it. so, here as a quick roundup of the shows that have really grabbed me over the course of 2011…

rachel goodyear, yorkshire sculpture park

wanderers - rachel goodyear

this is easily one of the most beautiful things i have seen this year. goodyear’s drawings are somewhere between mundane and macabre, creating a world inhabited by mostly animalistic characters living lives somewhere between love, death and pain. her simple-looking drawings contain such a sense of atmosphere, which is heightened even more by the small sculptural pieces which see her drawings sliding off the page and into the three dimensional world. i can’t put into words how much i enjoyed this exhibition, which you can still see until the third of january.

dark matters, whitworth art gallery

hiroshima flowers - elin o'hara slavick

i have always enjoyed visiting the whitworth, so upon coming back to manchester for a weekend recently it was always high on my list of things to do. i’m really glad that i did get up early on a monday morning to see dark matters, an exhibition bringing together the work of ten artists dealing with themes of shadow, darkness and wonder. i was particularly taken by how well the different media of this display fitted together, from daniel rozin’s interactive pieces through two stunning videos from r. luke dubois and hiraki sawa. for me the most impact came from elin o’hara slavick’s series of cyanotopes featuring objects left over from the debris of hiroshima – a powerful sense of what shadow can mean. once again, you can catch this at the start of 2012, it is still on until 15th january.

adolphe valette: a pioneer of impressionism in manchester, the lowry

manchester ship canal, adolphe valette

i love valette. i have done since the first time i saw his work in manchester art gallery the first time i went in there years ago. this exhibition brought together work from across his career, delving further than the usual ‘manchesterscapes’ which meant so much to me. this was a very well put together show, with a great flow to it around the gallery spaces. ok, so at points it made a bit too much of a point about valette being one of lowry’s art teachers, but you can hardly blame them. a fantastic collection of work from one of my favourite artists – must see. oh, and this one is still on next month too, till the end of january.

kid acne: kill your darlings, millennium gallery

stick to the plan, kid acne

i went to this expecting to enjoy it, but get that ‘ohimanindieboylookingaturbanartimabitoutofmydepthhere’ feeling. which i didn’t get at all. kid acne is sheffield’s foremost urban artist, and his work has a really dark edge which chimed perfectly for me. alongside photographs of his large scale outdoor work, this exhibition saw kid acne’s stabby women leap off the page and into film and installations in the gallery space. a small but perfectly captured show, and a fantastic introduction to my new city.

lucy crouch, westgate studios

lucy crouch

i’ve never really known any artists that well before, so this year is the first time that i’ve seen someone going through the process of putting their heart and soul into a collection of work for all to see. i’ve known enough musicians to understand the emotions folks go through, but seeing my good friend lucy putting this exhibition together felt different to that. it was a bloody brilliant show too. lucy’s work captures a real sense of trace, with fractured globes and memories of trees offering a story of a moment in time which may or may not lost to the ether. inspirational stuff for me, and i was really proud of her.

darrell viner: early work, henry moore institute

computer drawing, darrell viner

this was a real unexpected treat. i had never visited the henry moore institute before, so felt like i should give it a go. having been left a touch underwhelmed by the mario merz exhibition, i stumbled upon this display of viner’s experimental voyages into computer based art. as with crouch, viner creates a sense of trace which i really enjoyed. not an artist i knew anything about, but really glad to have discovered.

the hepworth wakefield

mother and child, barbara hepworth

and finally, the place that has seen me really developing my arty side. having been working at the hepworth since april, i have become quite used to spending the day with some of the most brilliant art around; sometimes you need a jolt to remind you of just how great this is. i got said jolt last week, watching the culture show’s end of year review that included the gallery as one of the highlights of the art world in 2011. the place that i work, every day, is one of the bbc’s highlights of the year. this kind of swept away the snowblindness a bit for me, and left me felling really proud. if you haven’t visited yet, i can’t recommend the hepworth enough. galleries 3 and 6 are so inspiring, and i can’t wait for our spring exhibitions which open in february, promising some post-apocalyptic views of the future – really exciting stuff.