‘Steel City, City on the Move’

SOLO EXHIBITION BY JO PEEL July - October 2015

Millennium Gallery - Sheffield

This solo exhibition by Jo Peel examines present day narratives around steel in Sheffield and its twin city of Pittsburgh, USA, formally the steel capital of the world. 

‘Steel City, City on the Move’ examines present day narratives around steel in Sheffield, UK and Pittsburgh, USA. Focused on the present but drawing on the cities parallel heritage, Jo has produced an immersive body of work exploring how far the socio-economic landscape within the ‘Steel Cities’ has moved away from the community of the factory. By looking at traditional recreation grounds such as cafes and public houses and talking to the people within them, Jo is looking to see how strong links to tradition going back to the steel making past are and how things are changing.

The exhibition attempts to reclaim as a positive the epithet  ‘Steel City’, in some minds tied to industrial failure and collapse and looks at the immense variety of community and culture within the two cities. The ‘Steel Cities’ project is a culmination of themes that Jo has been exploring in her work for several years; how architecture tells a story and how communities engage with and are shaped by their environment.

Within the film, made in Pittsburgh and Sheffield, Jo has for the first time focused on the faces and stories of the people using the spaces which she paints.

The comparison between Sheffield and Pittsburgh in the work gives a way of looking at everyday components of the city within a new and wider context.

Kraynicks Bike Shop, 2015

The Hungry Wolf, 2015