Seven decades of Sheffield music are taking over Memory Dance, with a free exhibition bringing together photographs, films, flyers and more from the city’s independent music history.
Running until 4 November at the Chapel Walk gallery, record shop and mini cinema, Groovy, Laidback & Nasty – The Exhibition sees Memory Dance team up with Sheffield journalist Daniel Dylan Wray to bring his acclaimed gospel on Steel City music off the page.
Published in May, Groovy, Laidback & Nasty: A History of Independent Music in Sheffield draws on more than 150 original interviews to trace the city’s musical development across seven decades. Its scope stretches from postwar dance halls to contemporary indie and electronic music, taking in post-punk, pop, metal, bassline and bleep techno along the way.
That breadth carries through to the exhibition, which gives bands and dance music space alongside each other. Expect material spanning Warp and Self Esteem, Pulp and The Human League, with ABC, Clock DVA, Richard Hawley and Arctic Monkeys among the other names represented.
There’s also a special nod to Cabaret Voltaire. With the exhibition coinciding with what’s being a group’s final UK show, Memory Dance’s basement mini cinema houses an audiovisual wall recognising their pioneering use of film and video. A rotating selection of films and music videos changes each week, giving returning visitors something different to catch.
Beyond the familiar faces, the exhibition explores the clubs, labels and institutions that helped make those sounds possible. Photographs, posters, flyers and other ephemera offer a route into the spaces and scenes where Sheffield’s musical identity took shape, while films and music videos add another dimension to the story.
In a city whose musical history is often told through its biggest bands, the emphasis on club culture is somewhat unique. Heaving dancefloors industrial settings and innovative electronic experimentation are given the same weight of importance to the narrative.
The Memory Dance venue, which can be found at 21 Chapel Walk, opened in June this year and brings together several ways of discovering music culture under one roof: a gallery to explore, records to browse and a subterranean cinema in which to spend a little longer with the moving-image material.
Groovy, Laidback & Nasty runs until 4 November at Memory Dance, Chapel Walk, Sheffield city centre. Entry is free.
WHAT’S NEXT?
Running 5–28 November at Memory Dance, Black Lodge Press’s The Anarchist Prayer Quilts combines traditional quilting with protest politics across 14 large-scale fabric works, alongside archive films exploring activism in Sheffield and South Yorkshire.
