Ghosted Ground is an exhibition by landscape artist Joanna Whittle opening on 24 July at Sheffield's Western Bank Library. It explores the lives of showmen and their movement through the landscape.
In Ghosted Ground, Joanna explores otherness and un-connectedness. Her work uncovers human themes of mourning, love and movement across the landscape. These landscapes are central to the stories told on the movement of people and the traces they leave behind. They're places where the landscape becomes haunted by their absence, a ghosted ground of echoes.
Joanna is a painter who works with landscape and archival sources. She considers fragility and transience in the landscape through paintings of fairground architecture and circus tents – makeshift, unsettled worlds. Here temporary structures sit secretly in empty landscapes. Entertainment exists only as a temporary segment of these worlds before they sink back into quietness.
The exhibition is the result of a year-long research project by Joanna. It also features documents from the National Fairground and Circus Archive.
Exhibition open Monday–Friday 9am–7pm, Saturday–Sunday 12–6pm. Closed bank holidays.
Private viewing event
Friday 8 September, 5:30–7:30pm, free – book now
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