- Venue
- The Furnival Building
- Location
- Yorkshire
When is a show not a show?
At Sheffield Hallam University’s new Furnival Building a group of curators have produced a set of work that is fugitive and evasive. The work is distributed throughout the building and hard to trace. An exhaustive catalogue eases the way, though this was itself tricky to find, resembling as it does the corporate style of the university’s own publications.
The works – 13 in all – are embedded into the building’s fabric. Seeds have been placed into the plant pots, notices exhorting intellectuals to “come on!” placed on the backs of toilet doors and several pieces use water and its transparency to signify absence, or at most, a slight presence.
By embedding works like this we seem to be asked to consider the nature of art’s materiality. How does it inhabit space? Ought it be imposed on a passing public? (There is a gallery in this building but none of the work is in there). The catalogue seems to be the most concrete part of the whole experience and so the works live on after the event in record and rumour only. Perhaps it was ever thus. Were you at the Armory Show in 1913? No, nor me.
I’ll be honest and admit that I didn’t manage to see any of the work as it appears to have been removed by the university management. This show, then, is not so much a question of “where’s the art in art?”, but simply “where’s the art?”. I’m happy to keep hold of the catalogue as realised part of the show and trust to memory for the rest.
