Site Canteen at Site Gallery - NEW frieze

Last week a rather spectacular dinner party was held at Site Gallery to introduce new Director Laura Sillars, previously programme Director at FACT Liverpool. The dinner saw the launch of Site’s ‘Ex-Libris’ - a public library housed in the gallery. Offering a stock of titles donated by creative talent in the city, with handwritten  personal accounts inside the covers to inspire the reader. Note that Jarvis Cocker, Ian Anderson, Tim Etchells and Russel Senior have obliged!

Site Canteen where the library is based has undergone a whirlwind transformation. Wooden furniture maker Finbar, and Sheffield’s hot young design trio ’We are Click’ (who have built a stunning shelving structure for the new library, with books stacked between silver birch trees on steel angular shelves. It's a gorgeous creation. Dotted around the space are their wool and resin lights hung at varied heights for reading/coffee drinking/boozing.

I was commissioned to work alongside We are Click to produce a frieze for the wall of the Canteen.  PJ Taste are the local food connoisseurs resident at Site Canteen. Sourcing produce from all over Sheffield, foraging in the woodlands, digging up from their own allotments and supporting Sheffield’s city farms. Their ethical production and commitment to source locally, preparing fresh food in a responsible way with notable creativity,  led to the idea of a frieze. The work combines a map of Sheffield and their key producers with a menu board of sorts, to narrate the process from planting to devouring!

The wall is surfaced with peg board, so the frieze is in flux and goes with the seasons -  I'll produce new fruits to grow from the tree, or animals to graze the farmland. We Are Click cut these pieces from plywood based on my drawings, and inserted dowel for them to be plugged in anywhere on the pegboard. 

I painted seven hills of Sheffield (including a hill of milk bottles!) as an underlay environment for a varied foreground of food, farms and local contributors to the PJ Taste table. 

It was a real privilege to help transform Site’s café into Site Canteen, a hot-spot for Sheffield where inspirational ideas, talent & happenings will find a base over the coming years. You really have to see it, you probably can’t miss it actually - there’s a new neon artwork installed by artist Richard William Wheater screaming OPEN at you from the window.