Artist Roy Ridsdale has regenerated the redundant machines and tools at the Kelham Island Industrial Museum and The Hawley Collection, by recognising their compelling presence as intrinsic works of art, and capturing that presence through visual representation.

Over the last two and a half years, Roy has been making drawings of machines, mechanisms and hand tools at Kelham. This exhibition includes the objects he has worked from, so the viewer can perceive how he has seen and interrogated them in his drawings. Roy has used accurate, illustrative drawing techniques, to entice the viewer to “examine the drawings” and in doing so, see the object in a new light and perhaps share the discovery of its aesthetic quality.

Roy says “the way I have depicted these objects as abstract forms and structures dignifies them as works of art. I hope people will become more open to an awareness of the curious beauty of these forms and structures and that in doing so be reminded of Sheffield’s heritage. A heritage as a city whose media was steel and silver, and these objects the means by which that media flourished. Now is the time for their resurrection as works of art in their own right. I challenge any contemporary sculptor to create forms and structures as exciting as those I have found in these objects.

Read more about Roy's artwork here.