Above the big high street names and bustling throngs of shoppers down The Moor, Mixed Metaphors offers a slice of deep time. This exhibition showcases new work by multidisciplinary artist Rachel Pimm. It's the latest artistic intervention to grace Soft Ground, a free-to-access community hub run by creative charity Arts Catalyst. Exploring the intersections between local rocks and minerals, industry, everyday objects, and ancient history, Pimm deftly weaves a visual and aural narrative that takes us back to the earth itself. Each work is in dialogue with those surrounding it – and with us, too. They ask us to connect with (and quite literally listen to) the raw materials that comprise everyday objects.
Mixed Metaphors
Rachel Pimm, Stresses and Strains (2023). Photo by James Clarkson.
In the centre of the space is a three-channel video installation, Stresses and Strains. It charts the trajectory of raw minerals from their sedimentary seams deep in the earth, through their extraction and production processes, to quotidian products like scissors and paper. Pimm creates a clever interplay between material, process, and the longer view of history. The work layers field recordings in the natural landscape with footage of industrial production and refinement. On the screen to the left are the etymological roots of words and phrases used to describe some of these processes. Like the breaking open of a rock in search of its mineral ore, one sees how linguistic fissures and gaps have opened up in the attempt to define geological and industrial processes.
Rachel Pimm, dis/locations, 2023. Photo by Lucy Brownson.
Language – its authority and its deficiencies – carries right across the exhibition. It is rendered both textually and sculpturally. In the ground-floor window of Soft Ground, before you even cross the threshold of the exhibition, fragments of text, plants and particulate matter are stuck to the floor. A large steel sheet suspended from the ceiling offers a list of words describing steelwork processes (we are in the Steel City, after all). A steel spike, inspired by similar ones on display at Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet, gores a heap of photocopied archival records that document Sheffield’s participation in the Great Exhibition of 1851. This was an event that, in many ways, represented the zeitgeist of the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Neon sticky notes protruding from this mass of papers also make visible the deep, messy process of historical research that underpins Pimm’s works.
Rachel Pimm, Mixed Metaphors (2023). Photo by James Clarkson.
And then there are things that move beyond language. Perhaps the best thing about Mixed Metaphors is that there is ample room for play and engagement with the materiality of metal, rock and vegetation. The space is dotted with foley islands where visitors can touch and play with objects. They might record the slink of a chainmail glove or draw the rippling surface of a nearby rock pool. In this sense, Pimm invites visitors to add their own layers to the composite that is the exhibition. Each visitor is free to chart their own path through the landscape that the artist has so thoughtfully curated here.
— Written by Lucy Brownson
Exhibition open Wednesdays–Saturdays 12–6pm. Free Entry.
Soft Ground is on the first floor of 37–41 The Moor with lift access and disabled toilet.
Exhibition events
Sounds from the Ground
6 May / 20 May / 10 June, 1–4pm – free, drop in
Playful Saturday afternoon sound-based sessions for ages 5+. Run by artists Rian Treanor (6 May), bones tan jones (20 May) and Freya Dooley (10 June). Find out more.
Mixed Metaphors is part of Emergent Ecologies, a series of artist projects across South Yorkshire exploring what shapes our experiences of place.
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Soft Ground, 37–41 The Moor, S1 4PF
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