‘Comes the Flood’: New exhibition reflects on Sheffield’s floods

Academics and students from Sheffield Hallam University have added to the new Ruskin Collection displays at the Millennium Gallery reflecting on the impacts of flooding in Sheffield. Find out more on the SHU News website here.

Comes the Flood is a redisplay of the Ruskin Collection which reimagines objects from Sheffield’s major floods and artworks of Venice as fragments from cities destroyed by rising waters caused by climate change.

Acting and Performance Students from Sheffield Hallam University have worked with Sheffield Museums to produce audio stories and Creative Writing students have added labels which tell the stories of the artefacts through writing and poetry.

The exhibition also features the Ark Sheffield project, a city-wide conversation about the climate crisis started by Dr Tom Payne and Dr Julia Udall at Sheffield Hallam University, and Dr Alex De Little, Goldsmiths University.

The Ark Sheffield display features illustrations by MA Architecture student Jonathan Chan, and photography by Becky Payne.

The Ark Sheffield display features an interactive map of the city with illustrations by MA Architecture student Jonathan Chan, and photography by Becky Payne.

Alongside this are sound clips from workshops with people in Sheffield reflecting on what the flood means to them and talking about what they would take with them or leave behind in a flood.

Dr Chris Jones, from Sheffield Hallam University, said: “This was a great opportunity for our students to write poems and text for a public audience. They can visit and see their work represented on the walls of the gallery, it must be a great feeling to have, seeing your work exhibited in a popular museum.”

The gallery looks at how Victorian artist and writer John Ruskin established his collection in Sheffield to help people find inspiration in art and nature and explores the relevance of his ideas today.

Ruskin commissioned many works of art recording the architecture of Venice. Ruskin had predicted what was to come, that the city would soon be unrecognisable due to the impact of environmental change and poor building conservation.