Invitation to exhibit in Australia and the British Chapter

Last year we were invited as a group to make submissions to an international exhibition ‘Close to the heart’ at the Manningham Gallery, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Our Artist Members: Sharon Gill, Janne Jennison, Cassie Limb, Panni Poh Yoke Loh, Frances Ocean, Lois Palframan, Nuala Price, Gemma Slack and Sophie Mei Lan Slack made accepted submissions and their work will join the forthcoming international exhibition in Australia in September 2004 with women artists from around the world including Aboriginal Koori artists.

As the majority of these members are based in Burngreave we wanted to share our work with our resident locality and open up the exhibition to other Burngreave Women in this British Chapter of Close to the heart. We are therefore pleased to celebrate the work of 30 artists in this exhibition with at least one third of them exhibiting for the first time.

We hope that you enjoy the exhibition as these 30 women share through visual expression what is ‘Close to their Heart’ what is most important to them, what motivates them.

We would like to thank: The Lord Mayor of Sheffield, Councillor Dianne Leek for opening the exhibition; Sheffield City Council Libraries for hosting the exhibition and supporting the launch; ‘Creative Burngreave’ (Sheffield Arts Education)/Burngreave New Deal for Communities for providing a funding grant for the publicity for this exhibition; Green City Action for providing free art workshops to enable local Women to participate and last but not least our Management Committee: Artists Panni Poh Yoke Loh, Chair; Sharon Gill, Secretary; Lois Palframan, Treasurer and Nuala Price.