City of Ideas: Urban Realm Commission #1 – The Busan Exchange

Launch Event: Wednesday 14 March, 3 – 6pm at Showroom Workstation Creative Lounge

This March we welcomed three international artists to Sheffield to launch the second stage of our Busan/Sheffield cultural exchange project. The first stage saw us take two artists from Sheffield (Paul Morrison and Ben Tew) to make new work in Busan.

The Busan Exchange

This first City of Ideas urban realm commission is a series of artworks enacted in the heart of Sheffield’s Cultural Industries Quarter. The Busan Exchange brings together three of South Korea’s leading artists to produce new works which investigate forgotten or overlooked spaces in the city.

Hyeong Seob Cho, Subin Heo and Hun-Joo Koo (Kay 2) visited Sheffield for two weeks in the summer of 2017 to explore and research the city. Fascinated by the dark corners, unused city sites and interesting nooks, the artists have produced works that invite a second look of the everyday surroundings of daily life in Sheffield. These works will include thoughtful interventions into public space in and around the area of Site Gallery, from playful lighting displays to fantastical structures.

This is the second part of an international collaboration with urban development co-operative creative plan b and their public art program in Kangkangee Arts Village, a busy ship-repair dockyard characterized by small workshops. KangKangee Arts Village has been compared to parts of Sheffield, with its industrial past and present, and dynamic arts scene existing alongside it.

Partners and Funders

This project is funded by Arts Council Korea (ARKO) and Arts Council of England, and is part of the British Council’s Busan-Sheffield Inner City Arts Project, KangKangee Arts Village Project in partnership with City of Ideas.
Partners: Site Gallery, creative plan-b, Baltic Gateshead

In April 2018, the project was nominated for, and won, a Department for International Trade Innovation Award. Find out more here.

Find out more about the artists here.

Volunteers

We are looking for volunteers to help us while the artists are in Sheffield. If you’d like to get involved, please contact Robyn Haddon on robyn.haddon@sitegallery.org to find out more.
Image: Subin Heo, Cloud Street Lamp, Busan.