Dani Abulhawa, Pierre Descamps & Jennifer West: Play Grounds

GLOAM presents: Play Grounds
with Dani Abulhawa, Pierre Descamps & Jennifer West.
Opening Friday June 27 6–9pm
Exhibition continues: June 28–July 20
Open Saturday & Sunday 12–4, or by appointment
'Play Grounds' explores the intersections of skateboarding and space, architecture and play, within contemporary art.
Descamps' photographs, whilst devoid of human presence, capture the interaction between skateboarders and city architecture by documenting the marks, and scars on the civic skin of our urban landscapes, whilst his posters memorialise his own sculptural interventions within the city. Designed to be skated, Descamps' sculptures are often fleeting interjections on the urban topography, ephemeral interventions existing afterwards only through retrospective posters.
West also explores the gestural traces of skateboarding in her video work, 'Skate the Sky Film, in which skateboarders became painters in the Turbine Hall, using their wheels to paint with ink, melon juice and Ho-Ho's directly onto the film which had recorded the LA sk. Just as Yves Klein defied gravity by "leaping into the void", West's video inverts natural physics by having skateboarders skating on the sky - catching air.
Finally, Abulhawa guides us, with her audio work, to re-navigate spaces; skateparks, skate spots. She invites us to consider how we use these spaces physically and socially, and how we can make them more inclusive. The work can be taken out into the city and listened to directly in the urban landscape, where the listener then becomes a performer of the city, following the narration and instructions for movement, to explore and reimagine the site.
Curated by Stu Burke
Supported by Sheffield City Council

160 Arundel Street, Sheffield, S14RE
Current
Dani Abulhawa, Pierre Descamps & Jennifer West:
Play Grounds
2025
Members Show:
free house X GLOAM
Abi Charlesworth:
to rest amongst the blades
Julia McKinlay:
Constructing the Surface
Lucie Kordačová & Miroslava Večeřová:
From Ancient Waters to Arid Landscapes
Stu Burke:
Momentary Sculptures
2024
Groundmouth:
Stomach of Silt
Sam Blackwood, Grace Clifford, Sam Hutchinson, Conor Rogers:
Embers
Speculative Proxy, Alexandra Searle & Joel Wycherley:
Locusts of the Sickly Sun
Group Show:
Yellow June (Juin Jaune)
Serf at GLOAM:
Ground Test
Semi Precious & Yasmin Vardi:
Sun is Out
Madeline Adams:
Entropy
Lucie Kordacova & Miroslava Vecerova:
Arid Landscapes and Ancient Waters
2023
GLOAM at Serf:
Testing Ground
Kelan Andrews, Brianna Beckford, Alana Lake & Renee Nie:
Tread Softly
Florence Peake, Hester Reeve, Mark Titmarsh & John Latham:
Material Action
Lucy Crouch & Matthew Vaughan: Tracing Matter
Jack Ginno:
Mirror
Jonny Davey & Sam Francis Read: Bogland
Dale Homles:
Welcome to Map Making Guild of Drystone Walling One-Eyed Giants
GLOAM at Eastside Projects:
If It Thunders on All Fool’s Day
GLOAM at Two Queens:
Studio-Holder Show
Nisa Khan:
Undress me with your eyes...
2022
Harold Offeh:
Creating Patterns
Group Show:
Beneath the Pewter Sky
Victoria Sharples:
Offering from the River
Celeste McEvoy:
Forehead On The Glass
Group Show:
An Expanding Field
Two Queens:
Members Show 2022
Alistair Woods:
Doves & Crossbones
2021
School of The Damned:
Blood From a Stone
Flo Main:
FOCM Spring Summer
General Practice:
Method Lab Part Two
Stella Baraklianou:
The Magician
Joe Singleton:
Million Tons Per Annum
2017-2020
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GLOAM is a collectively-run exhibition and studio space located in Sheffield City Centre. Since 2020, GLOAM has been run by co-directors (Stu Burke, Victoria Sharples & Thomas Lee Griffiths) at 160 Arundel Street; the former location of the DIY music venue, The Lughole. Previous co-directors include: Mark Riddington, Sam Francis Read & Rose Hedy Squires.
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