Art Sheffield 03 was the first city-wide contemporary art event of it’s scale to take place in Sheffield. During March/April 2003 contemporary art events took place within the city’s major galleries, project spaces, non-gallery venues and public sites. The programme included contemporary art by national and international artists which related to the urban experience.
During Art Sheffield 03, Site Gallery worked in collaboration with Sheffield Contemporary Art Forum to bring international artists to Sheffield. The following works were sited in Fletcher Works, Arundel Street, Sheffield.
Georgina Starr – Bunny Lake Drive-In. The Bunny Lake Drive-in forms the third part of the Bunny Lake trilogy. As with earlier works by Starr, it finds it’s references in film and the interplay between fiction and reality. In this case, the work is partly inspired by two films of the sixties, Bunny Lake Is Missing (Otto Preminger, 1965) and Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets (1967). For this major installation, Starr reconstructs a drive-in cinema complete with a customised open top car, listening posts and 3 large scale projections.
Smith & Stewart present a new version of their work A Black Thread. The installation space reveals itself to be a studio, a stage set, an interrogation room for the viewer to experience the extremes of the piece. Smith & Stewart’s powerful videoworks explore physical and psychological experience and intense acts of communication. The viewer is also a fundamental participant in constructing the work, rather than remaining a mere spectator.
Also part of the event were installations and exhibitions at The Graves & Millennium Galleries, Sheffield Independent Film studio, Persistence Works, Bloc Space, S1 Artspace, as well as events and performances.