Sheffield’s Cupola Gallery to showcase artwork celebrating brutalist architecture and urban street scenes in upcoming exhibition

Artists Dan Broughton and Martin Hearne will be exhibiting around 30 pieces of work ranging in scale from 20x20cm up to 1m x 1m as part of a month-long exhibit beginning this week on February 12.

Dan Broughton’s painting practice has long been inspired by the aesthetics of Brutalist architecture, excellent examples of which can be found in Sheffield, but this collection of works is primarily concerned with the distillation of the movement’s visual language.

The works are deceptively simple in construction; feelings of space and light come and go throughout the collection, with colour and paint application sometimes taking a more prominent role.

Dan Broughton said: “Over the past few years of painting, I couldn’t help but notice the frequency at which certain shapes would reoccur in my compositions. I began to think less about the buildings’ fabric and more about the architect’s design process, how they might use the play of light as a tool to create interest and drama in the finished building.

“I began to distil this language and tried to make the paintings with an architectural design approach in mind. I describe my paintings as an architectural abstraction, but during the making of this collection, I’ve come to see that this phrase could also be applied to brutalism. I hope that the resulting body of work sheds new light on this particular area of the age-old conversation between art and architecture.”

Bradford based Martin Hearne is focusing on the street scenes of Northern cities such as Bradford for this exhibition.

Cupola Gallery director Karen Sherwood said: “Both artists are interested in structure and the play of light but in distinctly different ways. One artist has abstracted and distilled their focus, whereas the other has kept a certain element of ‘slice of life’ in their paintings but has manipulated the scenes in order to draw the viewers attention to painterly elements, colour, marks, structures and of course, light. Two different artists but with a thread that joins both their practices.”

The exhibit will run from February 12 to March 12, Monday to Saturday, 10 am to 6 pm.