Join us on Friday 8th March, 6 - 8pm for the preview of Love in a Cold Climate, a group exhibition presenting works by Anna Barham, Liam Gillick, Scott King, Jamie Reid, Mandla Reuter, Hannah Rickards and Edward Wadsworth curated by Rob Tufnell. 


With coal seams beneath it and water running through, Sheffield has a surfeit of energy. Historically this energy has produced stainless steel and electro pop. Love in a Cold Climate reflects the latent energies within the city – both industrial and social. 

Works include post-Vorticist lithographs from 1919 by Edward Wadsworth depicting slag waste in the West Midlands and agit-prop designs by Jamie Reid produced during the 1973 Miner’s Strike and for the 1987 General Election. Reid’s posters were produced, respectively, to encourage people to support the miners by wasting rather than conserving electricity and on behalf of the Labour Party associated Red Wedge campaign.

Liam Gillick’s Discussion Island Preparation Zone is a residue left from mopping the gallery floor with a cocktail of vodka and glitter. The work might appear as a trace of David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust concert tour that is documented with a wall drawing by Scott King. The tour took Bowie to 43 venues across Britain in the summer of 1973 including Sheffield’s City Hall.

The exhibition is illuminated with wo rks by Anna Barham and Mandla Reuter that both methodically work through different lighting configurations in abstract exercises.

Hannah Rickards’, Some people say they think it sounds like aluminium foil but aluminium foil to me is not the sound 2007, is an installation that follows a series of interviews with people who have perceived the Northern Lights as being accompanied by a sound.

The title of the exhibition Love in a Cold Climate is taken from George Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying, 1936. The phrase was later adopted as the title of Nancy Mitford’s novel of 1949.