The River Project: Categories of Life and Death

200 years ago, when Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was first published, uncertainty surrounded categories of life and death, with a widely held belief that death could be cured.

With a focus on the outer edges of Sheffield, where a derelict Victorian Cemetery meets the River Don, The River Project explores notions of creation, destruction, rebirth and the soul. Students of Sheffield College in collaboration with artist Eelyn Lee re-present their expansive research of the area, conducted over 7-weeks in Autumn 2018.

Drawings, prints, photographs, video, sound, text and found objects are assembled together with images of monsters and stories of fear to form an exploded map of the River Don.

To mark the Bicententary of the publication of Frankenstein, there will be a special outdoor screening of the film, Categories of Life and Death in Wardsend Cemetery on Monday 26 November, 6pm – 7.30pm.

Commissioned by Don Catchment River Trust and Site Gallery. Delivered in partnership with Sheffield College and Wardsend Cemetery.

Eelyn Lee

Eelyn Lee is an award-winning artist and filmmaker based in Sheffield who has shown work at Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Barbican, Palais de Tokyo and international film festivals. With a socially engaged practice, Eelyn works in ensemble with collaborators from a wide range of backgrounds and disciplines. Through processes of collective research and improvisation, she creates frameworks for exploring, devising, creating and sharing. Eelyn is interested in fictionalising memory and lived experience to create new mythologies and future thinking. Her recent body of work explores notions of fear, monsters, ‘othering’ and ideas of ‘gothic futurism’.

In November 2018, Eelyn Co-convened the inaugural Social Art Summit, a review of socially engaged arts practice in the UK and beyond.