After its relocation to larger premises on Park Hill, S1 Artspace will reopen next month with an exhibition documenting the lives of residents living on the estate and the nearby Hyde Park complex from the early-60s through to the late-80s.
Inside the new venue, situated in a renovated garage block overlooking the sculpture park, Love Among the Ruins: A Romance of the Near Future will feature archival photography and film from social documentarians Roger Mayne and Bill Stephenson, whose work focused on the first residents of Park Hill from 1961-65 and the last remaining residents of its sister building Hyde Park in 1988.
There will be rare documents and previously unseen material from Mayne and Stephenson’s 1988 ‘Streets in the Sky’ exhibition, which provided an insight into the strong sense of community felt throughout the area, while 1965 landmark BBC Park Hill documentary ‘The Fortress’ will also be shown.
Love Among the Ruins will largely reflect on the ideals etched into the estates’ distinctive brutalist architecture, the deterioration suffered as the decades passed by, changing attitudes towards social housing, and the next phases in the evolution of the building so embedded in Sheffield culture.
The exhibition will open 20 July – 15 September. For further information or any enquiries, please contact laura@s1artspace.org / +44 (0)114 275 6131 / s1artspace.org
Want to hear more about the Urban Splash redevelopment? Read our recent feature ‘Park Hill: Looking Back, Moving Forward’.
