A new evening of Live Art, Performance, Discussion and Debate coming to Bank Street Arts, Sheffield.

Introducing Last Saturday Live, a performance night taking place on the last Saturday of every month, bringing together audience and practitioners (artists, writers, performers etc.) to showcase work, discuss ideas and collaborate. Experimental and alternative work is encouraged, work in progress is welcome, pieces that defy labels have their platform here… Last Saturday Live is a place to try things out and receive feedback in a supportive, inquisitive and stimulating environment.

This is an open call for artists, groups and companies to participate. We are inviting submissions from anyone interested, for our nights on 31st March, 28th April, 26th May, 30th June, 28th July and 25th August. Please email lastSaturdaylive@bankstreetarts.com with a brief statement and contact details, and with any queries and suggestions. LAST SATURDAY LIVE will be whatever you make it….

A Photographic Exhibition by Jeremy Williams

Part of Sheffield’s celebration of LGBT History Month

“Coming Out: Emerging From Adolescence” is a series of six images documenting the stages of realisation that take individuals from youthful innocence through to adult awareness. Based on a conversation with singer/dancer Christopher Hall, who features as the model for the series, about his experience of coming out, Jeremy noted that his own journey from teenage insecurity to adult assurance mirrored many of Christopher’s stages.

LGBT History Month is an opportunity for all of us to learn more about the histories of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Britain and Northern Ireland.

Also showing;

Intertwined is the culmination of love and sex. When two beings simply become one.

City Living explores the defining character of various cities which have played ‘home’. As opposed to capturing crystal clear representations of defining features, the collection tries to capture the heart of the city and its defining energy.

Jeremy Williams

Since graduating from the University of Hull in 2005, Jeremy Williams has focused his energies on building a career in the creative industry. While his initial focus centred on acting and writing – with highlights including the staging of his debut play “Poppycock!”, performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company in “Henry V” and playing Claire in Genet’s “The Maids” in no less than three productions, he has more recently broadened his horizons to include journalism and photography.

The founder of www.thekaje.com, he discovered his love of photography while working as the central model for Levi Miller’s “Being Boys” and “StylePigs” collections. With the passion for photography sparked, he invested in his first ‘real’ camera just one and half years ago.

Since setting out as a photographer, Jeremy has seen his work fuse with his passion for music and his work has graced the pages of several magazines as well as album and single covers. Highlights include Hanson, Chris New, Sarah Blasko, Jai McDowall, Wynter Gordon and Lanu.

Having entered his first ever photography competition, Jeremy found his image “Demonstration” shortlisted for this year’s BSG Picture This prize. With positive feedback garnered for the image, he has been invited to showcase the series from which “Demonstration” was lifted at the BSG’s Photography Show.

More details about Jeremy Williams can be found at www.the-kaje.com

Operam VI is a collaboration of six creative art practice students studying at Sheffield Hallam University. Their new contemporary art exhibition aims to challenge the juxtaposing ideas surrounding beauty.

All six artists have a unique and contrasting way of producing art, with a wide variety of techniques, styles and ways of representing the visual world. The exhibition will include paintings, sculpture and drawing.

Phill Hopkins Statement

“Colour is seldom seen in my drawings, but of late traces have begun to appear. The introduction of vibrant yellow marks in this work may suggest the desert sun or even the renewed optimism of the Libyan people. The house motif that I use frequently in my work is that of the house I grew up in. It is a personal reference point and all happenings lead to or from it. It can be blank or transparent; strong or weak; it has the possibility to carry or hold ideas; it can be entered, but is also impenetrable; it can be filled or left empty.

Phill Hopkins is an artist based in Leeds and London. He trained at Goldsmiths College, in London. He has exhibited internationally and is represented by Galerie Pack of Patches, Jena, Germany. His work can be found in many public collections, including The Imperial War Museum, London; Stadt Dortmund, Germany; The Hungarian Museum of Photography, Kecskemet, Hungary; The Henry Moore Centre for the Study of Sculpture, Leeds; Leeds City Art Gallery; and Leeds City Council. Forthcoming exhibitions include Supermarket: Stockholm Art Fair, Sweden, Galerie Pack of Patches, Jena, Germany and Horsforth Modern Art, London.

Joanne Hummel Newell Statement

“My work is concerned with collage and the immediacy of spontaneous drawing. I’m fascinated by handwriting, children’s scribbles and telephone doodles and I strive to maintain this kind of spontaneity in my own work. Pasted found notes or manuscripts are occasionally employed because of my anthropological interest towards mark making. Collecting printed and handwritten ephemera is an important part of my creative process and this often dictates the subject matter.

Obsessive mark making, Spontaneity, accident and embracing the ‘naive line’, are continuous themes in my work. This playful approach allows me to explore the endless possibilities of composition, a nod towards my interest in the formalities of constructivism and the Russian Avante-Garde.

Snippets of photographic imagery and text are surrounded by hand made marks and line drawing suggesting a personal response to stories and narrative. These ‘drawing collages’ are best compared to the pages in a book, constructed from detailed marks and materials imploring a need to be held and viewed intimately.

Joanne Hummel-Newell graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2006 and since then has exhibited in Galleries such as The Nomas Foundation in Rome, Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Berlin, Le Galleria London and most recently with WW Gallery at the 54th Venice Biennale. She was profiled in The Observer on the 22 May 2011. Her work can be found in the permanent collection of Quay Arts Gallery, Isle of Wight. She is currently exhibiting as part of group exhibition Say What you See at Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth and solo exhibition, Pocket Museum at The Lightbox, Woking. Joanne is representated by Newblood Art.

My work on paper, board and canvas consists of near-monochromatic forms which almost fill white grounds, pushing towards the edges. Small articulations of the edges of the forms, or incursions into the forms by the white ground recall memories of the effect of spaces and places. The curve made by the rooflines of buildings; the angle of a drainage ditch seen from a train window; incoming snow storms: all of these things flit through consciousness, or act as triggers in peripheral vision, drawing a glance. As traces in memory, they join up with other traces and persist. By locating the essence of visual experience in such contingent and fleeting things, I am seeking to account for what makes experiences stand out.

During the course of my residency,I will seek to expand my practice by concentrating on specific experiences – walks through Sheffield carried out at the start of each day of the residency – and by producing paintings directly on the walls of the gallery. No longer confined within the rectangle, the forms may expand across the space of the gallery walls, set up constellations, or shrink into corners. The idea is to see if the dynamics of working in a gallery space can articulate the experiences gathered in the walks. The effects of repeatedly, ‘ritualistically’ experiencing something will also be explored.

A new evening of Live Art, Performance, Discussion and Debate coming to Bank Street Arts, Sheffield.

Introducing Last Saturday Live, a performance night taking place on the last Saturday of every month, bringing together audience and practitioners (artists, writers, performers etc.) to showcase work, discuss ideas and collaborate. Experimental and alternative work is encouraged, work in progress is welcome, pieces that defy labels have their platform here… Last Saturday Live is a place to try things out and receive feedback in a supportive, inquisitive and stimulating environment.

This is an open call for artists, groups and companies to participate. We are inviting submissions from anyone interested, for our nights on 31^st March, 28^th April, 26^th May, 30^th June, 28^th July and 25^th August. Please email lastSaturdaylive@bankstreetarts.com with a brief statement and contact details, and with any queries and suggestions. LAST SATURDAY LIVE will be whatever you make it….

Andrew and Tom started the project in early February and already the children have risen to the challenge. This is a small selection of the photographs that they took:

PushPull is more of a celebration of good photography than a forum to discuss technical know-how. While we love cameras – and how they work – coming to a screening event is all about what the images communicate rather than how they were made. For us it doesn’t matter if we screen work made using high-grade, large format equipment, or a cheap and cheerful camera phone, so long as the photographs are striking and engaging.

PushPull is organised and hosted by photographers Jessa Fairbrother and Andrew Conroy. Jessa has a studio at S1 Artspace. Andrew is the current Photographer in Residence at Bank Street Arts.

A Photographic Exhibition by Jeremy Williams

Part of Sheffield’s celebration of LGBT History Month

“Coming Out: Emerging From Adolescence” is a series of six images documenting the stages of realisation that take individuals from youthful innocence through to adult awareness. Based on a conversation with singer/dancer Christopher Hall, who features as the model for the series, about his experience of coming out, Jeremy noted that his own journey from teenage insecurity to adult assurance mirrored many of Christopher’s stages.

LGBT History Month is an opportunity for all of us to learn more about the histories of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Britain and Northern Ireland.

Also showing;

Intertwined is the culmination of love and sex. When two beings simply become one.

City Living explores the defining character of various cities which have played ‘home’. As opposed to capturing crystal clear representations of defining features, the collection tries to capture the heart of the city and its defining energy.

Jeremy Williams

Since graduating from the University of Hull in 2005, Jeremy Williams has focused his energies on building a career in the creative industry. While his initial focus centred on acting and writing – with highlights including the staging of his debut play “Poppycock!”, performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company in “Henry V” and playing Claire in Genet’s “The Maids” in no less than three productions, he has more recently broadened his horizons to include journalism and photography.

The founder of www.thekaje.com, he discovered his love of photography while working as the central model for Levi Miller’s “Being Boys” and “StylePigs” collections. With the passion for photography sparked, he invested in his first ‘real’ camera just one and half years ago.

Since setting out as a photographer, Jeremy has seen his work fuse with his passion for music and his work has graced the pages of several magazines as well as album and single covers. Highlights include Hanson, Chris New, Sarah Blasko, Jai McDowall, Wynter Gordon and Lanu.

Having entered his first ever photography competition, Jeremy found his image “Demonstration” shortlisted for this year’s BSG Picture This prize. With positive feedback garnered for the image, he has been invited to showcase the series from which “Demonstration” was lifted at the BSG’s Photography Show.

More details about Jeremy Williams can be found at www.the-kaje.com