Bloc Billboard: Eddy Dreadnought
19 July – 06 October
Free & open to all
We are delighted to present the work of Sheffield artist Eddy Dreadnought as part of our Bloc Billboard programme. Eddy is the second artist to present work as part of the 2019 programme and his work Steel has been installed on our new billboard located alongside the gallery on Eyre Lane.
Eddy works with video, writing, performance, drawing and sculpture and uses these methods to explore his wider research interests. His new work Steel, was commissioned specifically for the Bloc Billboard programme.
Steel pays homage to abstract painting and the work of artists such as Elsworth Kelly, whilst also referencing Sheffield’s unique history. The vertical bars are derived from charts representing the colours that steel goes through when taken to white heat. The horizontal orientation of the work was a conscious decision for Eddy, to explore issues around traditional hierarchical structures, and orientating the billboard as text, to be read in a sweep of time. Employing the formal simplicity of abstract painting, asking questions of accepted hierarchies and exploring a more conceptual relationship to material, Eddy is interested in how artworks operate on multiple levels for an audience.
Eddy Dreadnought (b.1951, Nottingham) lives in Sheffield. After a first career in the NHS, during which he completed a part-time First Class Honours BA in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University, he returned there to complete an MA in Contemporary Fine Art Practice in 2010. Since then he has worked full-time as an artist. Recent projects include: Hospitalfield Residency, Arbroath UK (2018); Peckham Pelican, London UK (2018) ‘The Silence of Cooling’; Algomech Festival Sheffield (2017); ‘Spectacular Evidence’, London UK (2017); ‘The Lichfield Thunderbolt’, Lichfield UK (2016): ‘Telling the Bees’ video, Manchester, UK (2015); and Artist in Residence, Tunstead Limestone Quarry, Buxton UK (2014).