A staring match with a squirrel? A clown without any make-up? A dirty laundry dance? The land of Oz without any singing?! These are just some of the ideas played with in the digital Immediate 3 exhibition at the Site Gallery and Sylvester Works, which is showcasing new Northern artistic talent until the beginning of October. The exhibition promotes new artists, entries were specially commissioned and others were submitted by members of the public - all showcase new art from the North of the country.
 | | Sarah -'It makes you want to fall over!' |
All digitally and electronically created, the films all require a few minutes of viewing time to appreciate the ideas on offer, and these ideas are just a little inventive and crazy! Sarah, 18, was also at the exhibition. She really didn't like Adam O'Meara's 'Falling' because 'it actually makes you feel like you're going to fall over!' The video was a series of stills of people falling in slow motion, and then freezing just before they hit the ground. It was disorientating and quite nerve-racking... Her favourite exhibit, though, was Esther Johnson's 'Playback' where a camera pans 360 degrees across Sheffield in 24-hours. She said: 'I like this one because it's peaceful, quiet and fast-moving, with all the changing light and movement of Sheffield'. It was quite a different, mysterious way of seeing our city.
 | | Playback shows panoramic Sheffield over 24-hours |
My favourite exhibit was Stephen Gray's 'Hymn to Elsewhere' where Gray took just the landscape images from The Wizard of Oz to create colourful, sumptuous images of red poppy fields and the emerald palace. The bright images are magical, but psychedelic and dreamlike and always seem just out of reach. Other exhibits play with your mind too, manipulating feelings and reactions to their images. Rose Butler and Kypros Kypiranou's 'One Lime Street' is a series of different panels of lifts going up and down. It gives you a weird sense of vertigo, and even made my ears pop! Eleanor Morgan's 'Squirrel Watching' is a giant projection of a squirrel who unblinkingly plays with an acorn. It's intimidating and unusual to see such a large squirrel; it doesn't look cute anymore, it looks scary! Ideas of size and what we find threatening are played with, and for days after I jumped whenever I saw a squirrel. If you don't believe me go and see for yourself! The exhibition continues at the Site Gallery and Slyvester Works until Saturday, 8 October, 2005. | 
