Meandering reflections
The rivers that have shaped Sheffield over the centuries are being celebrated in a new exhibition, aptly titled City of Rivers, at Weston Park Museum. Catherine Scott reports.
SHEFFIELD is a city born from its rivers, sculpting the landscape and powering the industries that made it prosper. Today they are the arteries that flow through the urban sprawl, continuing to shape the character of the city and the lives that are lived in it. From vast reservoirs and cascading weirs to the brooks that trickle through the Steel City’s many green spaces, they also provide a home to a rich abundance of local wildlife.
Now the rivers that have shaped Sheffield over the centuries are being celebrated in an exhibition at Weston Park Museum.
City of Rivers runs until November, exploring the city’s connections to the waterways that surround it through art, stories, poetry and more.
It brings together a wide range of historic and contemporary artwork, stories, objects, film and photographs to chronicle Sheffield’s long relationship with its waterways – the rivers Don, the Sheaf and the Porter (among others).
Drawing on contributions from people across the city, the exhibition reflects on our connections to them in our work, leisure time and our impact on the natural habitats they represent.
Visitors will discover art, poetry and film by Alison Churchill, Holly Clifford, Catherine Higham, Ruth Levene, Joe Scarborough, Harriet Tarlo, Benjamin Tassie and more.
The exhibition has been developed with a wide range of city and community contributors, including Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust, Friends of the Porter Valley, Sheaf & Porter Rivers Trust, Shirebrook Valley Heritage Group, South Yorkshire Industrial History So
‘It is nice to know that even nearly 100 years ago they were looking at how to protect the environment.’
ciety and many more. The displays also feature contributions through a public photography call-out and a city-wide schools art competition, alongside Young Makers and schools work experience programmes.
“Sheffield’s rivers are the heartbeat of the city, impacting everything from nature and wildlife to our work and hobbies,” says Lucy Cooper, exhibitions curator at Sheffield Museums.
“For the last few years we’ve been researching and working with different artists and with the local community to create this exhibition.
“We’ve had a great response from individuals and groups with contemporary content for the exhibition – including art, photos and objects – and it’s been fantastic to bring these together with works from historic collections to celebrate all aspects of the city’s waterways.”
Cooper says the waterways in Sheffield were responsible not only for the very topography of the city but also for its cultural and societal development.
“The waterways were vital transport links and as a result cemented Sheffield as a hub of industry,” she adds.
The exhibition includes more than 300 artworks and objects dating back back in time from the last few 100 years up to specially commissioned contemporary works.
Older works include Robert Hudson’s Brook Scene, Endcliffe Woods, Sheffield (1870-1884). Hudson was a Sheffield artist who predominately painted landscapes. In the painting being exhibited, he depicts an autumnal day in Endcliffe Woods (now known as Endcliffe Park).
More contemporary work includes a piece by Holly Clifford – Sheffield Rivers Contour Map – which was commissioned for the exhibition. It is a beautifully crafted 3D topographic map of Sheffield and includes all of the city’s main rivers.
Clifford says of her inspiration for the work: “Storytelling through art is something I’m extremely passionate about. Aside from the enormous practicality of maps, I just think they’re endlessly interesting and beautiful; you can get lost in the entrancing structure of the flowing contour lines.”
The Sheaf and Porter Rivers Trust, which works to restore and improve access to two of Sheffield’s most famous but little seen waterways, has contributed a series of paintings by Alison Churchill, as well as objects that the trust has found in the Sheaf and Porter.
Informed by practices of both Zen and Zen calligraphy, Churchill describes her Water Marks (2022) as exploring “the mystery, energy and transformative power of
water”, adding: “Long contemplation of the constantly changing and mesmerising patterns which play on the surfaces of the streams, mill-ponds and mill-races in Sheffield’s Porter Valley has given me direct experience of the life-force energy of the natural world.”
A variety of different media are used throughout the exhibition – and there is even a kayak, borrowed from the local canoeing club, suspended from the ceiling of the museum.
Ali Bird uses collage in her 2022 piece We Enjoy. It was created as part of We Make It Happen Together, a partnership project between Efficiency North and Ignite Imaginations in 2022, working with community groups to create large-scale works of art in the city.
Bird says: “This piece is based on what people enjoy about the riverside environment. The participants experimented with gel printing, stencil printing and carbon transfer drawings to create layered images. These were then collaged together with leaves stencil printed over to ‘knit’ the images together.”
Also on display is a poster which was used to advertise Melie & Co’s High Class Teas, depicting the local legend of “Rollo”. It shows a dog rescuing a child in a wicker cradle from the waters of the Sheffield flood in 1864 when nearly 300 people died after Dale Dyke Dam collapsed and water thundered down the Loxley.
Storyteller and songwriter Sean Cooney has composed a new song for the exhibition, telling the story of Rollo – although no one knows if it is true or not.
The exhibition also aims to raise the profile of the so-called Rivelin Valley artists – a now largely forgotten group of early 20th century landscape painters who created romanticised snapshots of the then-industrial River Rivelin.
A similar exhibition was staged by the Rivelin Valley artists themselves 100 years ago in 1924.
Meanwhile, composer Benjamin Tassie has created a set of instruments that are played by the River Rivelin itself.
“We use the five main rivers as a starting point,” says Cooper. “But we also include a sixth – the Rother – and then look at the waterways and networks that come from them and the importance to the communities and industries around them.”
During her research for the exhibition she found out that as long ago as the 1930s there was a plan to develop and protect Sheffield lakeland. “It is nice to know that even nearly 100 years ago they were looking at how to protect the environment.”
However, the exhibition isn’t just a retrospective. It also spotlights ongoing efforts by activists to restore the city’s rivers, including projects to improve biodiversity and plans to de-culvert long-hidden sections of waterway and create new riverside trails. It also asks questions about what is it we really want for our rivers.
Displays of taxidermy animals showcase the variety of wildlife and the reintegration of newer species, like the red-finned terrapin and otter.
Otters were almost completely wiped out from the Sheffield region as a result of hunting, persecution and water pollution. But as people have become more tolerant of wildlife and the rivers have become cleaner, they are slowly repopulating Sheffield’s rivers.