Content warning: the exhibit reviewed in this article contains brief mentions of sexual violence.
Wish You Were Here! recalls jolly seaside text across the SU Plaza. Larger than life postcards send warm greetings from places around Sheffield which most of us don’t see but that are necessary for homeless people: the back door of the Odeon, abandoned cars. It’s an almost tongue-in-cheek approach to homelessness which The Archer Project, the charity which curated the exhibit, juxtaposes with the flipside of the postcards. People tell stories of sleeping rough in Sheffield, hand-writing a snippet of their life with frankness, which brings home even harder the reality of life with no fixed abode.
Much like the postcards force us to reconsider their inauspicious locations as godsends for people living in homelessness, the exhibit’s other medium, disposable coffee cups, are ameliorated by their display in museum cases, surrounded by loose change and carefully used as canvases by local artists. Each one is inspired by an individual person’s experience of homelessness in and around Sheffield. The pieces range from photorealistic biro drawing to a colourful ode to one of The Archer Project’s biggest supporters.
Attention is slightly stolen from the pieces by the placards about the life stories and artists placed on the front of the display cases and you can fall into the trap of focusing more on the information than the art. Letting yourself respond emotionally before feeling the need to intellectualise the pieces will serve you well while viewing Wish You Were Here!, as centring and humanising people in situations of homelessness is the goal. Try to look past the reading and take a moment to sit with each story, even the especially uncomfortable ones which touch on survival of sexual violence and the consequences of lacking healthcare.
It is important that Wish You Were Here! gets its stint in the university as it’s easy to forget that student life is not the only experience in Sheffield, and that we should share and support the city as a community. Furthermore, it serves as a reminder that anyone can have experiences of homelessness, and it is not mutually exclusive with being a university student. We all stand to learn something from Wish You Were Here!. One of the most important things is that we should all be talking about homelessness because it is not separate from our lives in Sheffield.
Exhibition rating: ★★★☆☆
The Wish You Were Here! exhibit features QR codes through which you can support The Archer Project – please consider donating. Donations can also be made via The Archer Project website.