Harcourt Road: C & G Artpartment
6 April - 5 May
Launch Event: Wed 5 Apr, 6-8pm
featuring an artist talk with C & G Artpartment 6:30-7pm
Outdoor Painting Event, Sat 29 April
Harcourt Road is an expansive project by C & G Artpartment (Clara Cheung and Gum Cheng) that compares the hyperlocal heritages of a street with the same name in Sheffield and Hong Kong (HK).
Like many who actively participated in the city’s democratic struggles, Clara and Gum emigrated from HK when the national security laws were forcibly implemented in 2021. Their relocation to Sheffield has come with some unexpected familiarities, most notable of which are the names of streets: Pitt Street, Duke Street, Stanley Street and many more can also be found in HK. But for this long-term research and community engagement work, we have chosen to focus on Harcourt Road. A leafy residential street in Sheffield with underexplored histories of migration and community organising, Harcourt Road is, in contrast, an arterial route prone to traffic in HK’s city centre. With government buildings and the Golden Bauhinia Square nearby, the road was crucially also the heart of the Umbrella Movement when, in 2014, it was occupied by protesters for over three months.
In collaboration with residents, researchers, activists and wider publics in both places, C & G Artpartment will spend the next 18 months retrieving the vernacular and intangible heritages of the streets in Sheffield and HK, bringing together stories of migration, colony and socio-political belonging. This programme in April 2023 is an introductory look to the Harcourt Road world so far, which includes: a rich mapping of street names in both Sheffield in Hong Kong, via cartography and postcard making; public interventions; and a painting exhibition. Join us also for a day of outdoor sketching on Sat 29 April at Crookes Valley Park, where the artists will introduce the road to participants and passers-by.
Documentation images credit: Charles Lo.
C & G Artpartment (Clara Cheung & Gum Cheng) are community organisers, activists and artists based in Sheffield. With a strong concern for ecologies of art, C & G Artpartment’s socially oriented practices respond to social and cultural issues. Between 2007 - 2021, C & G Artpartment curated more than 100 art exhibitions that included more than 100 Hong Kong artists. Their work has been included as part of Peer to Peer, the Shanghai Biennale and the Singapore Biennale.
Supported by the School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield and Bloc Projects.