Yorkshire Artspace

OPEN THIS WEEKEND Bringing together multiple voices and perspectives, Silent Language reflects on what it means to be a woman today, and how lived experience can be translated into material form. Supported by a British Council Connections Through Culture 2025 award, this international collaboration is curated by artists and jewellers Xinru Dai, Maria Hanson, Yusi Wang and Yuxiao Zhu. Working across the UK and China, the project responds to the complex challenges women continue to navigate within work, society and the home. The exhibition presents the outcomes of a series of participatory workshops held in Sheffield and Wuhan, where jewellery-making became a means of connection, exchange, and storytelling. 12.00–17.00 Persistence Works Free entry

We are pleased to be hosting Silent Language, an exhibition of art jewellery curated by Xinru Dai, Maria Hanson, Yusi Wang and Yuxiao Zhu. Bringing together multiple voices and perspectives, Silent Language reflects on what it means to be a woman today, and how lived experience can be translated into material form. The work has emerged from a series of creative workshops in Sheffield and Wuhan, inviting women to share their stories through objects. The project is supported by a Connections Through Culture award from @britishcouncil and brings together artists from the UK and China. 12—19 May, 12.00–17.00. Persistence Works, S1 2BS.

Join us this Friday 8 and Saturday 9 May for two studio Open Days at Exchange Place (12.00 — 16.00). These Open Days form part of Testing Ground #007 with artist-in-residence Lucie Kordačová. Drop in to the Project Space where you’ll find Lucie developing new work and chatting with visitors. She has been experimenting with a wide range of materials, sculpting them around metal armatures and considering how their symbolic meanings shift in proximity to one another. A series of bodily sculptures made from hemp wool has emerged, which might become part of a sound installation in collaboration with flautist @kristyna.farag . Come and see for yourself in these relaxed sessions ahead of our Closing Event on 22 May (save the date!). 📸 @kordacovalucie

🌊 Opening 13 June: Apophenia is a new co-commission and the first major solo exhibition in the UK by London-based artist Leah Clements (@leah_r_clements ), produced by Arts Catalyst (@artscatalyst ) and Peer Gallery (@peergallery ). Leah Clements works primarily in moving image, photography, and sculpture to embody moments of transcendence. Her work is concerned with the relationship between psychological, emotional, and physical states, and focuses on sickness, cripness (a term being reclaimed by some disability activists), and disability in art, and how real and imaginary realms can operate as radical spaces to address collective experiences. For Apophenia, Leah has produced a new single-channel film with the same title, alongside a series of sculptural and audio works. The film travels to sites founded across time, in an attempt to discover meaning in the context of illness. It follows the voice of author Jenn Ashworth (@jenashworth82 ) slipping into a state of apophenia, which she describes as a ‘relentless, out-of-control pattern recognition’. 🗓️ Exhibition Dates: 18 June - 1 August 🎉 Opening event: 13 June, 2–4pm 📍 Location: Exchange Place Video description: A Black woman in her 30s walking slowly around roman baths, a historic well, and a spa bathed in golden light. She looks intensely around herself and at us but we can never be sure if what she is looking at is actually there or not. There are images that flash of ancient gargoyles. The woman holds a red light therapy face mask in front of her mirroring her own face. She swims in a blue pool lit with orange light and lays on a bed staring upwards at white shapes that move above her. The trailer ends with the title Apophenia.

YAS is home to a vibrant, experienced and highly skilled ceramics community, so we’re really pleased that some of them will be taking part in Open Up Sheffield this year. This offers you the opportunity to explore their studios and our unique kiln facilities, meet our talented makers, and buy their work. Ceramic work will be shared across a broad range of styles, from wheel-thrown pottery with gas-fired finishes to sculptural pieces with intricate mark-making, showcasing the wide variety of ways clay is used at YAS. Participating artists: @evelyna86 , @allamclaire , @george.baggaley.pottery , @janetbarnesceramics , @burntcrustpottery , @echinoceramics , @brianhollandceramics , @hil.pots , @evegnoyke , @mikescownceramics , @bevseth , @pennywithers . The event is hosted in our Basement Studios and our Kiln Yard, featuring a sheltered workspace and urban garden. It is located at the back of our Persistence Works, near BBC Radio Sheffield (please note there is no entry via gallery or studio entrances). — OPEN DAYS (11.00–17.00) Saturday 2nd May Sunday 3rd May Monday 4th May Saturday 9th May Sunday 10th May — Free to visit, everyone welcome. For more information, visit openupsheffield.co.uk @openupsheffield

LAST DAY
 GEORGE SHAW Small Returns Exhibition ends Saturday 25 April Open 12.00 - 17.00 Yorkshire Artspace - Persistence Works Sheffield Image: Coming Up for Air, 2017 Humbrol enamel on canvas 92 x 121 cm @yartspace @georgeshaw_artist #georgeshaw @anthonywilkinsongallery #anthonywilkinsongallery #contemporarybritishpainting #contemporarypainting #contempoararyart

SMALL RETURNS — FINAL FEW DAYS DON’T MISS OUT… All good things come to an end, and that includes our current exhibition George Shaw: Small Returns. This Saturday is your final chance to see this brilliant exhibition by an iconic British artist, so make sure to visit before we close the doors. Our final open days are Friday 24 and Saturday 25 April, 12.00–17.00. Entry is free. The exhibition features three never-before-seen paintings — ‘ACAB’, ‘Nostalgia’, and ‘Small Returns’ — created for this exhibition & revisiting his roots in Coventry’s Tile Hill estate. He describes the process as following a fictional character, “Small”, as they write their way across a landscape of returning. As the exhibition title suggests, such journeys through life may be futile, yet they can also testify to an ancient and natural desire to assert our presence against the cruel and inevitable passage of time. These new works have been really popular with visitors and we are pleased that one of them has already found a new home. Come down to Persistence Works to see them for yourself and email [email protected] if you’re interested in seeing a price list. 📸 @george.baggaley 1: Small Returns, 2025 2: ACAB, 2025 3: Nostalgia, 2025

George Shaw: Small Returns is open today, 12.00–17.00, at Persistence Works Gallery. If you’re in Sheffield for the #worldsnooker championship and wanting to also see some amazing art, head on down. We’d love to have you. Shaw’s paintings capture moments in time from the council estate in Coventry where he grew up. This exhibition reflects on his experiences of leaving and returning — revisiting places from his past as well as images, motifs, themes, and memories. Rooting the exhibition in Sheffield, Small Returns also features a display of early work made during Shaw’s time as a student at Sheffield Polytechnic in the late 1980s, and archival material from that period. This formative era and the themes of the exhibition are further captured in a @spotify playlist curated by Shaw. In an interview with Adelle Stripe for @thequietus , Shaw “rifles through a bag of vinyl[…] telling stories connected to works exhibited in Small Returns, he reveals how these 13 records helped inform the neurotic boy outsider who one day became the master of ‘finding poetry in the mundane’.” Links to both the playlist and the interview are available in our bio. Happy listening/reading! Next week is your last chance to see the show, so don’t delay… 📸 @georgeshaw_artist

“…something in George Shaw’s spiky capitalised handwriting commands the eye[…] Twenty minutes pass and I’m still rooted to the spot, glued to his exuberant coming-of-age tale, a perfect snapshot of late 1980s Sheffield but also that feeling of being nineteen and seeing all the possibilities of the world fly toward you as you stare out of the window of a train…” — @orla.fos for @corridor8 (link in bio) For his current exhibition at Persistence Works, George Shaw spent several days writing an 8,000-word text on the gallery wall. Entitled ‘Small Returns: Art, Ambition and Awful Pies’, the text reflects on his experiences arriving in, leaving, and returning to Sheffield, capturing a formative period in Shaw’s life as an artist and student at Sheffield Polytechnic. The complete text is featured in our limited edition publication, ‘George Shaw: Sort Of’, alongside extracts from Shaw’s archive. Designed by @j_o_n_c_a_n , the publication is available to purchase in the gallery (£15). ‘George Shaw: Small Returns’ is open Thu—Sat, 12.00–17.00, until 25 April. Entry is free. Link in bio to find out more. 📸 @george.baggaley

📣 The artists for British Art Show 10: A Chorus of Strangers have been announced! 📣 The prestigious multi-site exhibition will go on display in venues across Sheffield in October 2027 as part of a five-city tour launching in Coventry later this year and including Swansea, Bristol and Newcastle Gateshead. This landmark tenth edition comes to the city through a multi-venue partnership between @sheffieldcitycouncil Sheffield Museums, @sitegallery @yartspace and @artscatalyst @ekoweshun curatorial vision will bring together over 30 artists to provide a vital overview of the most exciting art produced in the UK during the past five years, including: @okikiakinfe ; @olddrag ; @lizjohnsonartur ; @alvarobarrington ; @shirazbayjoo ; @lubnachowdhary ; Shawanda Corbett; @jessedarling ; @ufuoma.essi ; @joygerrard ; @louise___giovanelli ; @hannah_quinlan_ and @rosiebhastings ; @mwana.wevhu ; Nnena Kalu; @_jasleen.kaur_ @itskimeze @julianknxx @matthewkrishanu ; Alastair Mackinven; @melaniemanchot ; @lindseymendick ; @e_m___m_a_ ; Dala Nasser; @_jackobrien_ ; @nengiomuku ; @devilintraining_ ; @hannahperryhannahperry ; Mohammed Sami; @raeyensong @talbot.emma Nicole Wermers; @osmanstudio . British Art Show 10: A Chorus of Strangers takes place against a backdrop of heightened anxiety intensified by a divisive political culture, an accelerating climate crisis, and growing public distrust in institutions. In polarising times, the exhibition asks: what forms might empathy or shared imagination take? At its core, it considers how art can challenge fears of difference often sparked in periods of uncertainty or change. Rather than framing the outsider or stranger figure as a threat, British Art Show 10 invites a shift towards empathy to explore the variety of perspectives that comes from looking through the eyes of others. You can find full details of the exhibition and its themes here in the link in our bio.

We are pleased to introduce you to our current Testing Ground artist-in-residence, Lucie Kordačová, through a series of Open Days at Exchange Place. — Lucie has spent the first two weeks of her residency exploring and experimenting with different materials including cotton, latex, wax, polyester, hemp, silk, oat, barley, wheat and more. The studio is a feast for the senses with lots of colour, textures, and smells. And now you’re invited to visit! On Friday 24 and Saturday 25 April, 12.00–16.00, drop in to the Project Space where you’ll find Lucie developing new work and chatting with visitors. Lucie will also be rehearsing a new performance with flautist Kristýna Farag, which visitors are welcome to watch as they develop this live. (Please note Lucie won’t be able to chat during these times, but there will be a member of staff able to talk with you about Lucie’s developing work). — 12.00 — Open Rehearsal (please watch) 13.00 — Open Studio (please ask questions) 14.00 — Open Rehearsal (please watch) 15.00 — Open Studio (please ask questions) — No need to book, just drop in and out as you please. This is a relaxed event. We look forward to welcoming you. Testing Ground is funded by @aceagrams . #acesupported @kordacovalucie @kristyna.farag

Last few weeks to view George Shaw: Small Returns in our Persistence Works Gallery, open Thu—Sat, 12.00–17.00 until 25 April. If you visit, you’ll be able to browse three new limited edition prints that @georgeshaw_artist has made for the exhibition with renowned printmaker @neilwoodall.etching . These are available to purchase in the gallery (from £450) or online via @artsy (link in bio). Each comes with a Certificate of Authenticity. If you purchase a print and are looking to get it framed, ours on display are by the talented Libby at @joinframes . Some original works in the exhibition are also for sale — email [email protected] to request a price list. 📸 1: George Baggaley 📸 2-4: High quality artwork scans by @untitled.print.studio