2008’s S1 Members’ Show featured selected new paintings by John Burke, sculpture by Haroon Mirza and Jerome Harrington, photography by Charlotte Morgan and video and sound works by Katie Davies. The work was selected through an open call to the membership by Josephine Flynn, an artist and associate member; Emma Cocker, a writer, Lecturer in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University and S1 Trustee; and David Martin, Assistant Curator at S1 Artspace.

Katie Davies’ video and sound works wittily played with the notion of the double or the re-worked copy which has become exhausted and familiarised throughout film and entertainment history. Jerome Harrington’s approach was also a playful one, dealing with the innovation and ingenuity of creating. John Burke presented an evocative new painting of an empty and neglected interior, which was further echoed in Charlotte Morgan’s single photograph of a void public space in Sheffield city centre. This sense of the familiar with an uneasy undertone was most poignantly apparent in Haroon Mirza’s new sculpture Muezzin, a playful assemblage composed of found materials that generated an hypnotic pulse and humming glow.

To coincide with the opening of the Members’ Show, S1 also hosted Open Studios for one evening only. This was an opportunity to view work by all the current studio holders in 2008 and to see the new studios following S1’s recent renovations. Current studio holders included John Burke, Katie Davies, Jerome Harrington, Matthew Harrison, Warren Hayes, Haroon Mirza, Charlotte Morgan, Prevett & McArthur, James Price, Elizabeth Savage, Jane Walker and Katy Woods.