Celebrated Sheffield artist Pete McKee to launch new exhibition

Celebrated Sheffield artist Pete McKee is set to launch a brand new exhibition exploring the themes of ‘how we live and communicate today’.
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The show, entitled Don’t Adjust Your Mind Set, is coming to London’s Hoxton Arches between April 22 and May 1 before taking over Sheffield’s Millennium Gallery between May 13 and May 22.

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The exhibition will comprise of paintings, sculptures, photographs, and installations and explores the themes of ‘digital dependence, climate change, police brutality, internet fame and socioeconomic disparity’.

Wish You Were Here.Wish You Were Here.
Wish You Were Here.
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Don’t Adjust Your Mindset is Pete’s first major exhibition since his 2018 sell-out show This Class Works and is the first time in nearly a decade he has exhibited in London.

Sheffield-born Pete, aged 56, said: “During the pandemic everyone’s life was completely turned upside-down with most of us increasing the time they spent online, especially on social media. I turned to my phone for companionship and used it as a window to the outside world.

"When scrolling its screen over the following months, I saw a mixture of anger, injustice, LOLs, contrary opinions, misinformation and a plethora of community-spirited endeavours to lift the mood of the nation. It was like someone had found society’s volume button and turned it up to 11.

“I decided to start organising and making sense of what I saw by creating art which examined the world that surrounds us, much of which we view through a device.”

Happy Jack.Happy Jack.
Happy Jack.
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Known for his funny, nostalgic and touching work, this brand-new exhibition delivers the humour his fans and art critics have come to expect, tinged with dry, satirical and dark observations of the world that surrounds us and how we interact with it.

Promotional materials have highlighted the following works as key pieces that fans should keep an eye out for:-

Happy Jack

An undeniable sign of our times is the increasing financial pressure placed on the majority of the older generation by the steady increase in the state pension age. Symbolising this increasingly disenfranchised and underrepresented sector of society, Happy Jack depicts an individual forced back into work because his state pension isn’t enough to support his household.

Wish You Were Here

Designed like an old postcard and depicting a collapsing sandbank strewn with detritus, including a holiday caravan, this piece makes an important and poignant point about the earth’s increasing fragility. However, the light-hearted way in which this message is delivered alludes to the fact that while many of us are very concerned about global warming and rising sea levels, some of us are unwilling to change how we behave in order to mitigate it.

The Absent Drinker

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Another topic of contemporary significance, not least as we emerge from nearly two years of restrictions, is the hospitality crisis which sees the industry wrestle with problems including shifting consumer habits, tax rises and job security.

A play on Manet’s The Absinthe Drinker The Absent Drinker depicts an empty pub table, a solitary coaster on its corner and a view out to high rise flats through the window behind. Where The Absinthe Drinker shows an inebriated man out on a dark street, The Absent Drinker references the steady decline of certain UK pubs in the last 20 years.

Alongside painted works, Don’t Adjust Your Mindset features a series of photographs that explore how much we communicate online and how we rely heavily on emojis to express our emotions.

Exhibition opening hours are as follows:-

Hoxton Arches in London between 11am and 6pm Monday to Saturday and 11am to 5pm on Sunday.

Millennium Gallery in Sheffield between 10am and 5pm Tuesday to Saturday and 11am to 5pm on Sunday.