S1 Artspace reopened to the public with Sheffield DocFest’s group exhibition ‘Here in This Room’ and Alex Tyson’s ‘The Registry’.

The exhibition ‘Here In This Room’ included moving image, installation, mixed media, sound and performance. Artists featured at S1 Artspace included: David Haxton, Deborah Findlater, Duncan Marquiss, Geraldine Snell, Sophie Michael and Wanja Kimani.

Curated by Sheffield DocFest Arts Programme Curator Herb Shellenberger.

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‘Here in This Room’ was a group exhibition by Sheffield DocFest taking part at S1 Artspace, Site Gallery and on Sheffield DocFest’s Online Exhibitions Platform.

The exhibition focused on the dual concepts of “domestic ambience” and “domestic surrealism”, considering the ways that artists have depicted or reimagined living spaces, domestic labour/routines, or many different ideas of home. Intended as a productive feedback loop with the extraordinary circumstances that led many of us to be “stuck at home” for many months on end, ‘Here In This Room’ looked at the ways that artists have seen domestic spaces differently.

Whether viewers encountered these works—produced across different years, geographies and perspectives—within the contemplative space a gallery or through our online programme while in their own domestic space, the aim was for these artists’ work to act as invitations to look at and appreciate space in new, unintended and even fantastical ways.

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‘The Registry’ was a new moving image installation by Los Angeles-based artist and independent filmmaker Alex Tyson, commissioned by Sheffield DocFest.

An evolution from his past works of formal innovative documentary film, The Registry was the artist’s first narrative work, an elliptical, layered psychological horror that brought together multiple storylines which intersected in complex ways. Embedded within these narrative threads were topics salient to the documentary/non-fiction field: the afterlives of images of war and their fictional representation; the potential tokenisation of subjects, stories, and makers by the industry; and the ethical dilemmas arising from the commercialisation of the stock image/footage market.

These topics were related subtly through Tyson’s own cinematography, editing, and sound design—always unconventional and off-kilter—and through the juxtaposition of the film’s looped projection with an additional projection of documentary footage referenced in the film’s narrative.