ENCOUNTERS PRESS PAGE

 

ENCOUNTERS AT THE CRUCIBLE

click on the images below for hi-res press images

 

Crucible Shop, Sheffield
Wednesday 7 February – Saturday 31 March 2007

ENCOUNTERS with writers from GO, will be taking up residence in the Crucible Shop for two months, peeling back the layers of the theatre, collecting evidence, memories, stories, images, samples, lost objects and observations that will capture a unique snapshot of the life of the theatre before it is re-developed.

The artists, Ruth Ben-Tovim and Trish O’Shea, hope that the evidence will reveal the everyday experiences of the diverse people who work in, visit, or pass by the Crucible Theatre, as well as both the physical and imaginary world of the theatre itself.

In the shop, Encounters will deliver a series of playful interventions, activities and art installations that aim to engage and reach hundreds of people. Amongst other activities; visitors will be able to vote for a costume, prop or piece of archive material to be displayed each week, maps of the theatres will invite people to leave a memory associated with a specific place in the building, a huge empty frame will gradually fill up as visitors cut out segments from hundreds of photographs of the theatre and put them in the picture, and cameras will be available for people to go and record favorite spaces around the building which will help the architects in their design process.

Each week fanzine writers GO will write newssheets and Encounters will create a themed installation using objects or clothing taken from the stores and there will be two transformation days on March 3 and 22 when Encounters and friends will slowly change the surrounding area as archive material, furniture props and live volunteers go walkabout.

In the build up to the opening, Encounters have been working with Sheffield Theatres staff, setting them various collecting tasks. The results of this will be displayed in the shop and will include; samples of costume cuttings, drawings, and materials used to make props in the build up to As You Like It, fingerprints of everyone the Chief Executive, Angela Galvin has met in a month, sweet wrappers and other items collected by the cleaners on their morning rounds, photographs taken by the finance department looking out of their window on the third floor, written observations of the actions of audience members by front of house staff, audio recordings of beer deliveries, back stage snaps, unusual queries of the day from the Ticket Office, recorded nuggets that generate creative ideas from the creative team, extracts of emails to and from the marketing department, diaries, thoughts of the day, and more….

During the two-month shop residency, Encounters will be exploring how the material generated can be used as stimulus and content for the image and projection-based public art-programme that will be part of the theatres’ re-development.

/Ends

NOTES FOR EDITORS

For further information interviews or photographs please contact:

• Jo Hodgson, Encounters: to arrange interviews or photo shoots with the artists. 07952 563451 info@encounters-arts.org.uk

• Michael Eppy, Media Officer: Sheffield Theatres:
0114 201 3842 l m.eppy@sheffieldtheatres.co.uk

Encounters at the Crucible
Will be open to the public 7 February – 31 March 07

Open 1.30 – 9.30 on the following dates:
February: Wed 7- Sat 10, Thu 15 - Sat 17, Wed 21, Fri 23 & Sat 24
March: Thu 1 - Sat 3, Sat 10, Sat 17, Tue 20, Thu 22 - Sat 24, Wed 28 - Sat 31
Free entrance

Background to Encounters

Encounters are Ruth Ben-Tovim and Trish O’Shea, Sheffield-based artists, who have developed a pioneering programme of arts projects that involve community participation and urban histories. They use disused spaces, interventions, interactive media, text, performance and photography to map and collect traces of everyday urban life. From 2003 - 2005 they took over three disused shop spaces in Sharrow, Sheffield and opened the shop to visitors. Hundreds of people came in and they created a vast urban catalogue of stories, memories, journeys, objects, sounds, images which can be seen in the recently published book Encounters: The shop collections.

The shop collections have recently been exhibited at the 10th Biennale of Architecture, Venice in the British Pavilion as part Echo/City, September - November 2006.

The shop residency will then be followed by Sharrow Stories, a multi media performance piece based on the hundreds of verbatim stories we collected in the Sharrow shops. This project will involve both professional and non-professional performers, and will be presented in the Studio Theatre. Tuesday 13 – Saturday 16 June 2007.

In addition, Encounters have been selected to work with Liverpool 2008, Capital of Culture and will be delivering a mobile shop in South Liverpool in May 07 as part of the build up to 2008.

Information about Encounters at the Crucible will be posted online at www.sharrowencounters.org.uk throughout the project.