DVA Design and Visual Arts Exhibition: Sheffield 2014
Where Design Meets Fine Art
The DVA exhibition at Sheffield Design Week 2014 occupied the productive space between design and visual arts. Rather than treating these as separate disciplines, the show brought together work that refused easy categorisation — pieces that functioned as both designed objects and artistic statements.
The exhibition featured work from Sheffield-based practitioners and invited contributors, covering printmaking, sculpture, installation and graphic design. The curatorial approach was deliberately open, allowing visitors to draw their own connections between a screenprint’s graphic precision and a sculptor’s attention to material weight.
A Space for Experimentation
What I valued about DVA was its willingness to include unfinished thinking. Not every piece was resolved, and that was part of the point. Several exhibitors showed work-in-progress alongside completed pieces, inviting viewers into the uncertainty that precedes a finished object. This honesty gave the show a vitality that more polished exhibitions can lack.
A standout section featured collaborative work between a graphic designer and a fine artist who had each responded to the same brief — a Sheffield street scene — from their respective disciplines. The results were fascinatingly different, and the comparison illuminated how disciplinary training shapes visual thinking.
Sheffield’s Cross-Disciplinary Culture
DVA reflected something genuine about Sheffield’s creative culture: the boundaries between design and art are more porous here than in cities with more established institutional hierarchies. Studios like Persistence Works house painters alongside graphic designers, and the conversations that emerge from that proximity are visible in the work.
The exhibition sat within a 2014 programme that also included the Aesthetics of Manufacture show and architecture talks. Together, these events established the tone for Sheffield Design Week’s early years — intellectually curious, locally grounded and open to unexpected connections.
