Exhibition of photographic works of post-industrial sites at the Graves Gallery, Sheffield

“It takes a long time to pull these works together and I don’t exhibit much,” he says. “The last big show I did was in about 2011. I tend to bury myself away and then reappear about ten years later. I have always loved the galleries at the Graves and it is great to have the opportunity to show my work there.”

Born in Nottingham, Conduit moved to Sheffield in the late 1970s to study Fine Art at what was then Sheffield Polytechnic. By the time he graduated he had found the subject matter that continues to inspire him right up to the present day. “It was originally an interest in mark making on the land,” he says. “If you head to industrial and post-industrial sites you can see where man has shaped the land. That process fascinated me and I photographed that right into the 1990s.”

He then took a break from making his own work. He became the director of the Untitled Gallery, now the Site Gallery, and worked for over 20 years developing the Cultural Industries Quarter and Workstation/Showroom in Sheffield and as a freelance creative industries consultant working across the UK. “Then around 2004, I decided to get back to making pictures and was drawn to those places again,” he says. “Initially I went out into the Peak District in search of nature. I was taking photographs in Lathkill Dale and I went there one day and everything I had been photographing had been hacked back and I realized that the Peak District is one of the most managed landscapes so that drew me back to the edges of the city to sites that were once industrial but have been left and that is where I found rampant nature. I was looking aesthetically at the forms that nature creates. These places are not necessarily loved, they have been abandoned and left to go wild but each site has such a rich history.”

Among the works on display is a new series of smaller scale pictures, entitled Alum, that have not been shown before, of sites Conduit has been exploring along the Yorkshire coast. “That has been quite a departure for me and the first time I have left the environs of Sheffield in my work,” he says. “Over many years I have spent a lot of time walking up and down the East Coast near Whitby, Scarborough and Filey and along that stretch there was a lot of alum mining and the landscape in some places is still heavily scarred by that.”

The process of creating the photographs, which are so striking in the amount of detail they contain, is a lengthy and painstaking one. “Each image is made up of multiple photographs,” explains Conduit. “I set up the camera and tripod and I take a whole series of pictures, then stitch them together on a computer in the studio. It is quite laborious and can take a long time to get right. Some of the largest works in the exhibition might have up to 80 pictures stitched together.”

It is an effort that is worthwhile as the images he creates draw the viewer in and invite them to stay for a while. “What I like is a picture that doesn’t necessarily hit you between the eyes but lingers, one that gives you more to look at,” says Conduit. “Years later I can notice things in my pictures that I haven’t noticed before. I would like people to spend some time with them; they warrant a long view not a quick glance.”

He hopes that the exhibition will also encourage people to notice their own everyday surroundings a bit more. “Much of what I photograph is right on my doorstep and most people overlook it,” he says. “This stuff is all around us, it is good to sometimes just stop and take it all in.”

Land: Photographs by Matthew Conduit is at the Graves Gallery, Sheffield until June 15. Free entry. sheffieldmuseums.org.uk