Blank Media Collective

Upcoming Event: [Recommends] Cityscape

Wednesday 9 February 2011 - Tuesday 8 March 2011

Blue Moon Cafe, Sheffield

New paintings about ‘The City’ by Patrick Bridge, Frances Lewis, Jane Walker & Sean Williams

‘Cityscape’ brings together work by four Sheffield-based artists, linked by their interest in urban life and the stories that emerge from ‘the city’.

The title ‘cityscape’ implies a broad vision, one capable of seeing the city in one image or painting, and thus being able to hold the idea of the city in your head. Jane Walkers’ work depicts the entire city to the horizon, beautiful yet with a sense of claustrophobia or being overwhelmed by its vastness. In contrast, Frances Lewis shows often painful personal details based on memories - the idea of the city can be seen in both visions. Patrick Bridge has produced a series of small, intimate watercolour studies of urban views. The air of menace they contain seems at odds with the delicate nature of the medium in which they are rendered.

There are paintings of different cities in this show to give an outside view of the city we are in. The works on show are paintings, an antiquated and slow way of producing art, but then the city develops organically over time like an accumulation. Sean Williams describes the city as a vast staggering crucible where stories, salacious, joyous and tragic, evolve and unfold, he paints different cities, straightforward, vulnerable, focussing on architectural development. His contention is that change can have a dramatic psychological effect on its citizens, so he points towards the shift. The aim of this exhibition is to look at personal experiences that contain the city within them, and explore the relationship between its architecture, its inhabitants and the geography with which it co-exists.