Trish O’Shea and Katie Davies were in residence at the Grade I listed Town Hall between July and December 2008 – the first time the building has been used for such a purpose – and the result is a series of pieces based on their time there.
O’Shea is interested in exploring the emotional and physical impact the Town Hall building has on people, so she set herself the task of involving local people in the process.
She collected stories from those who work there, took photographs of the building’s design and architecture and considered if the Victorian values inscribed on the building still have meaning. To investigate this idea further she asked members of the public to bring in gifts, which signify what the building means to them.
She says: “I thought about how I could engage with people in official places in a creative, thoughtful and gentle way. It’s about intervention with architecture. Some things people brought in were very personal, I was touched.”
The installation includes objects such as a doll which represents the children of Sheffield and an empty plastic box symbolising the city’s open spaces.
O’Shea also photographed local people with their gifts in the Town Hall, sitting in the chair of Sheffield City Councillor Paul Scriven.
She adds: “I was considering how one can occupy space. I wanted the foyer to be like someone’s front room.”
The photographs and gifts will accompany a book documenting O’Shea’s Town Hall residency as part of her installation.
Fellow visual artist Davies is interested in procedure and protocol and produced a ten-minute film during her residency through October and November.
The film, entitled ‘Commonwealth’, primarily focuses on the Town Hall’s weekly Citizenship Ceremonies. It considers the Town Hall itself as if it were an object, shaped by customs and routine.
Sheffield Contemporary Art Forum has selected Davies’s film for their next Pavilion Project exhibition in Istanbul in the summer.
The work of O’Shea and Davies will be exhibited in the Town Hall’s foyer from Friday February 6 to Friday February 20 2009.
A special pre-view screening of Katie’s film ‘Commonwealth’ will take place at the Showroom Cinema on the evening of Thursday 5th February. Free tickets are available from the Showroom Cinema box office (places are limited). Showroom Cinema box office 0114 275 7727, www.showroom.org.uk.
The Town Hall Residencies were part of Yorkshire ArtSpace Society’s Artists’ Residency Programme. For more information see www.artspace.org.uk.
