Sheffield's largest street art mural
Rivers and Hills
Sheffield graphic artist, Rob Lee, has collaborated with prolific street artist INSA to create this ambitious new artwork for Sheffield.
Combining the collective force of their signature styles, they have completely transformed the drab brown-brick facade of the NCP building on Wellington Street, with an homage to Sheffield's natural topography, as a city built on hills and rivers.
Commissioned by Marketing Sheffield as part of Sheffield Inspires, the mural supports one of the key themes of the campaign: Sheffield inspires greener cities.
Two styles, working as one.
Using a mixture of hand painted frames and digital animation, INSA and Rob Lee really wanted to explore the possibilities of ‘collaboration’.
From the outset they used a combination of Analog and Digital to realise their vision - mixing the advancements of tech while keeping a celebratory space for hand-crafted skills.
One half of the collaboration employs an analog hand-painted animation, with the other half being animated digitally, but a perfect hand painting of a digital render.
Together they wanted to push the boundaries of contemporary mural art into new ground.
Animated art
Much more than just a static artwork, you can actually view Sheffield's 'Rivers and Hills' mural in ANIMATED form too!
Using INSA'S innovative GIF-ITI VIEWER APP, watch as the 95 painted frames of 'Rivers' creates the movement of water, while the topographic map of 'Hills' rotates within its frame.
The vision
'Rivers' by INSA
Rivers is INSA’s interpretation of water flowing, of time passing - of the five rivers of Sheffield.
Created using the existing panels in the architecture of the building, the piece comprises 95 individual frames, which create a unique stop motion animation, when viewed together.
Look around and the you'll see the work also combines shades and hues which have been drawn from the actual surroundings of the wall itself.
As a mural, it’s an immersive work to stop and stare at, to allow yourself to be engulfed by the abstract patterns water makes. As an animation, it is an attempt to capture a moment in time, a moment of calm when you stare into a river.
'Hills' by Rob Lee
Sheffield is a city built on hills and Rob Lee has interpreted this in the form of a floating abstract 3D topographical relief sculpture.
Depicting the elevations of the city, the artwork literally began from tracing the actual topography of an approximate 10km square of Sheffield.
Using the shape of the building, Rob has adopted a 'trompe de l'oeil' effect to create a void in the car park for the sculpture to live, so as you approach it, the artwork appears to jump out of the wall it has been painted on.
The animated version allows the static form to move, to rotate, to see the landscape from all angles - giving us a greater understanding of the place we live and a whole new way of looking at mural art.
About INSA
About Rob Lee
This huge mural requires huge thanks...
Uniquely funded, the ambitious mural has been made possible thanks to several local businesses and organisations, who have helped collaboratively fund the work sheer pride for Sheffield. They include:
Sheffield BID
Sheffield Chamber of Commerce
Henry Boot
Sheffield Property Association
My Business Coach Limited
Taylor Emmet Solicitors
colloco
HLM Architects
Bond Bryan
Turner & Townsend
Nineteen47
Counter Context
Arup
The Lime Trees
Andy Robinson (AW-AR Studio)
Oliver Franklin
Reach Timelapse Ltd.
The project has also received funding from Sheffield's Festival of The Outdoors.
Why did we commission a mural about Rivers and Hills for Sheffield Inspires?
Sheffield's unique confluence of five rivers - Don, Loxley, Porter, Rivelin and Sheaf - no doubt helped attract the first civilizations here. Though The Don is perhaps the most prominent of the five, it is the River Sheaf from where Sheffield got its name.
The rivers carved out the valleys and hillsides, where settlements have clustered together over time, helping create the communities of the city we know today. They were also intrinsic to the establishment of industry, which eventually saw Sheffield become a prolific industrial world leader.
But, as much as 'Rivers and Hills' represents Sheffield's origins, equally, it can represent our future too.
As one of the greenest cities in the world (due to our 61% greenspace), Sheffield's identity is intertwined with it its outdoors. With the increased value of natural assets in urban surroundings, Sheffield's abundance is something which should be celebrated more than ever.
Moreover, we're also exporting our green thinking across the world too - from innovative planting and drainage systems to sustainability research and urban developments, such as deculverting. Celebrating this through culture, we can connect it to people in visual and creative ways.
Just as Marketing Sheffield commissioned the much-celebrated ‘Reverie’ mural on the side of Pounds Park, ‘Rivers and Hills’ is yet another physical emblem, that tells Sheffield’s identity story in new and interesting ways. It shows how inspiring our rivers and hills can be, when we look at them differently.
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