Autopsy Publication

Autopsy The Head Post Office Sheffield

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H PO D EL I F F SH E 2 016

Autopsy The Head Post Office Sheffield

Autopsy is seemingly a curious title for a project whose focus is the rebirth

In Yorkshire: The West Riding, part of The Buildings of England

of a building. We associate the term with an examination intended to

series , Nikolaus Pevsner’s description of the Head Post Office

determine the cause of death, but Sheffield’s Head Post Office site has been

is an exercise in attentive looking and the translation of what

saved for the time being, its slow decline and increasing dereliction arrested

he saw into architecturally precise language. He writes of

and then reversed thanks to its repurposing into the new home for the city’s

ashlar masonry with granite dressings, of hipped slate and

Institute of Arts. Etymologically the word autopsy comes from the Greek

mansard roofs, of engaged Ionic columns with pulvinated

autopsia; it defines the act of seeing with one’s own eyes, and thus in fact

frieze and dentilled cornice and half-round pediment, of a heavily

describes India Hobson’s photographic scrutiny of the site’s spaces and

rusticated entrance bay with giant pilasters, a transomed

surfaces, its builders and tradespeople, and the staff and students who have

Diocletian window, a marble panelled main hall with enriched

become its new occupants. I first came across that phrase as the title to

cross beam ceiling and cornice, and a cantilever stone spiral

a short 1971 documentary by American filmmaker Stan Brakhage, which

stair with wrought-iron balustrade. This litany of forms,

was screened during my education in Combined and Media Arts at an earlier

materials and cultural references can, for the architecturally

location of the then School of Art and Design. The Act of Seeing With One’s

knowledgeable at least, generate a very clear image of the

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Own Eyes is part of a trilogy of films made about Pittsburgh institutions —

building; for those less educated in such matters, it might send

about the police, a hospital and, in this case, the city morgue. The camera

them to a dictionary to learn the meanings of these particular

witnesses a number of autopsies: silent and without special effects, it is

terms; it could make them go look, draw, photograph or model

nevertheless an almost unbearably intense experience, and one that

from the actual structure; or it may prompt a reader to roll the

seems the very opposite of those flashy scenes now familiar to us from

shapes of these words around their mouth and see what is

contemporary TV’s many forensic dramas. Those 32 scant minutes offered

conjured through vocal, musical or poetic imagination.

a strong lesson in beauty, horror and humanity, and ultimately in the power

Creative, critical education should involve addressing a canon

of looking. Its effects have endured with me since then: it showed how

of existing knowledge, as well as requiring processes of

aesthetic works might prompt and sustain attention to matters that one

embodiment and experience, but ought always to encourage

might prefer not to consider but which ought to be addressed all the same.

those lateral swerves of the mind and body in investigating

It also taught me that education through art and design must cultivate such

the world, its concepts and problems.

deliberate and difficult looking.

1 Post office and attached railing. 1893, with addition in sympathetic style, 1910. By J Williams. Ashlar with ashlar and granite dressings. Hipped slate roof to main block, and slate mansard roof to addition. Single coped stone ridge stack. Free Classical style. EXTERIOR: 3 storeys plus attics; 7 bays. Recessed centre has five 12 pane sashes, the ground floor ones with balustrades below them, pediments and keystones. Giant order of engaged Ionic columns with pulvinated frieze and dentilled cornice topped with pierced balustrade. Attic storey has 5 similar sashes divided by plain pilasters. Above the eaves cornice, 5 box dormers with 4-pane casements. On either side, a heavily rusticated entrance bay with giant pilasters, and dentilled cornice and half-round pediment. First floor has a 12 pane sash flanked by single 8 pane sashes, divided by paired Doric columns.

In the pediment, a segment-headed tripartite window.

Coved round-arched entrance with scrolled keystone and entrance portico with blocked granite columns and dentilled cornice. Above it, a Diocletian window. Round corner tower, to right, topped with a dome supported by consoles, has banded lower stages with two stepped 8 pane stair windows with cornices. Attic storey has three 12 pane sashes divided by paired Doric columns, and moulded stepped cornice. Ground floor has a Diocletian window with posting boxes below it. Right return has a bay similar to the entrance bays, with a ground floor transomed Diocletian window with post boxes below it. To right, 1910 addition. 3 storeys plus attics; 10 bays. Nine 12 pane sashes with moulded surrounds, those to the ground floor with cornices and ornamented keystones. Pulvinated frieze and dentilled cornice. Attic storey has similar smaller windows, with string course and moulded cornice. Mansard has 8 box dormers with 9 pane sashes. Outside, a wrought-iron railing with corniced ashlar piers. To right, an entrance bay similar to those of the main block, but without the pediment.

Diocletian window to ground floor. INTERIOR has a marble panelled main hall with enriched cross beam ceiling and cornice. Doorcases with dentilled cornices. Cantilever stone spiral stair with wrought-iron balustrade.

The Buildings of England: Pevsner N: Yorkshire: The West Riding: London: 1967-: 453.

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The word photography means writing with light, and India Hobson’s

Photographic surfaces have much to say about the building’s history,

exploration of the Post Office building produces visual poetry: her camera

but they speak differently than the people who previously worked here.

records the diverse surfaces of its interior throughout the stages of its

On the second floor, where students of Graphic Design and Illustration now

reclamation. Her first examination reveals blotchy black mould and crusty

learn their trade, was once to be found the Vulcan telephony switchboard.

scabs of peeling paint whose colours — pale blues, greens, yellows — reveal

One woman, reminiscing on her experience there, told how the operators

the institutional aesthetic preferences of earlier times. As walls and floors

sat in rows with the supervisors ‘on high seats like lifeguards’ so they could

are stripped back, cleaned or replaced she lingers on the building materials

keep an eye on everyone. She remembered these supervisors had poles to

of our own era: grey dry-lining, chalky pink plaster and buff plywood, which

poke the girls if they seemed not to be working. Strict rules dominated the

is punctuated in her pictures with the bright exclamations of health and

work environment: other employees spoke of the requirement to gain a slip

safety kit: shiny hard hats, primary yellow ladders, temporary lighting rigs

giving permission to leave their station and go to the lavatory — only two

and fluorescent high-visibility jackets. As redevelopment progresses all the

women at a time were allowed to be absent. Another memoir of the Head

paraphernalia of contemporary life is seen to infiltrate the old structure:

Post Office during wartime described the somewhat ridiculous preparations

galvanised ducting to carry power, blue plastic and bright copper pipes for

designed to counter a potential invasion: engineers on the first floor were

water, skeins of wiring for connectivity, colourful panels designed to ensure

provided with bags of pepper to throw at the enemy as they climbed the

privacy in the lavatories… In her contemplation of the materials of walls,

stairs, and when the invaders’ eyes were streaming, it was thought that they

floors and conduits, its tiles, concrete and brick of various sorts, she manifests

could then be hit on the back of the head with a poker! Outside visitors,

David Campany’s suggestion that photography has a ‘heightened interest in

urban explorers who sought out the building’s interior in the long interval

the surfaces of the world’. Such apparently superficial approaches are more

between the Post Office closure and the recent Institute of Arts development,

powerful than some would think: in order to understand our past and present

describe their own illicit incursions, venturing through the site trying to

it is necessary, as the historian Joseph Amato has said, ‘to concentrate on

avoid the attention of security personnel; one pair sign their urbex forum

surfaces’. The building’s Post Hall is a case in point: its original mosaic and

names in the thick dust, and another advises those who may follow them

parquet floors tell of an era just preceding the First World War when the

‘if you go, watch out for the dead cat in the gents: it stinks!’

cultural status of the Royal Mail demanded a high-quality architectural finish, and there was sufficient skilled labour and funding for its realisation. That the recent renovation process required an odd kind of archaeology to reveal these original surfaces beneath the multiple layers of carpet and lino they had subsequently accrued evidences a century of subtle and seismic shifts in utility, fashion and aspiration.

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The telling of these stories is part of the human need for communication that

One of India Hobson’s photographs depicts contemporary students at

fuelled this place whilst it operated as a Post Office. I think of all the mail

Sheffield Institute of Arts listening carefully to a presentation from visiting

passing through its sorting rooms, all the stamps bought in its post hall, all

designer Craig Oldham. He is showing a slide of his project In Loving

the telephonists plugging in wires to make connections. I wonder about the

Memory of Work, a book that offers a visual record of the UK miners’ strike

particular messages sent and their effects in the city or far out in the world

1984-85. Here in South Yorkshire, mining and the heavy industry of steel

beyond. Shortly after graduating from my degree, but still very much part of

production were of course once dominant in the local economy and culture,

the art school community, I participated in a reading group at the old campus.

and indeed the earliest manifestation of the School of Design, which was

Together we read Jacques Derrida’s The Post Card, a curious literary-

founded in 1843 on Glossop Road and then quickly relocated to Arundel

philosophical work, part of which takes the form of a fictional epistolary

Street, was intended to provide skilled designers to support industry. These

narrative, which has the premise that it is necessary that a letter always

days we cannot claim so confidently to know for what world of work we

might not arrive at its destination. As with a lot of ideas encountered during

are preparing students. We can offer introductions to the networks of

such formative years it continues to resonate as I considered why it could be

contemporary studios, projects and companies with whom we are involved,

important that a communication might not get through. I think about the

but what ought to matter most is that we give graduates the confidence to

students with whom I now work and ponder what matters they will want to

address what cannot yet be known, and to help them develop the strategies

communicate. How will the things they make connect or not with people

they can use to think otherwise about problems that have not yet been

in the future and what will be their effects in so doing?

envisaged. For the contemporary occupants of the Head Post Office it is a place of passage, a conduit between the now and an as yet unseen future.

We might take the view that the building itself has a century-long track record in facilitating such communication, given that word of so many previous lives, so much minor and momentous news, has been transmitted via its postal and telecommunications nexus.

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Entering the building, its staff, students and visitors are faced with the

Of course not everyone is able to make a choice between these forms

choice of taking one of a pair of lifts or of ascending that ‘cantilever stone

of ascent. The staircase will be physically inaccessible to some and others

spiral stair with wrought-iron balustrade’. The lifts would seem to imply

may have a phobia of lifts or enclosed spaces. I can’t help but extrapolate

a direct, speedy rise to the upper floors and whatever activity is to be

the critical and metaphorical potential of such experiences to the educational

pursued there, whilst the narrow stairs surely suggest a slower, more

purpose of this building: who gets to learn? how, and with whom? what

circuitous approach. In practice though, the lifts are incredibly slow to arrive,

supports do we need? when do we need to look inwards to ourselves or out

such that scampering up the few flights of stairs is often much more

to wider contexts? Theories and practices of pedagogy frequently involve

effective than the interminable wait; it seems counter-intuitive that the older,

spatial and architectural figures. We mobilise the concept of journeys and

more meandering route may be quicker than the modern machine.

transition, speaking about climbing new heights as we attain knowledge, or

Inside the lift’s short journey we may share silence or a conversation with someone, or, riding alone, we may use the mirrored interior to contemplate ourselves: how do we look? do we seem tired? do the clothes we are wearing fit the self that we feel today and the tasks that lie ahead?

It’s a space — very literally — for reflection. If we are able to take the stairs, meanwhile, we will circle upwards, perhaps getting somewhat breathless if we’re a little unfit, whereupon we might take a peek at the square outside through the sash windows as a means of pausing to regain our equilibrium.

We feel the unevenness of the stairs, worn down by many others who have passed through this building. If we need to steady ourselves by gripping the inner handrail we must move to the narrowest part of the steps, which are in turn a little trickier to negotiate, and this in turn seems to cancel out the positive effect. As we concentrate on our climbing, we are aware too of navigating the movements of those before and behind us; it’s a kind of choreography as we each respond to accommodate the other’s progress.

Noticing this sort of everyday aesthetic encounter matters to the work of artists and designers.

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going into depth about a subject. We stumble upon important discoveries, get stuck, or lost, or simply go round in circles. We lay the foundations of subject knowledge (many of us pursue a foundation course in art and design before going on to undergraduate study) and we build upon previous learning and understanding to enable our further development.

The educationalist Jerome Bruner conceived of learning taking place through what he termed a ‘spiral curriculum’, wherein complex ideas are returned to recurrently as independence and confidence increase. Whether daily use of that elegant staircase with its haloes of fluorescent lights will assist in embodying this passage through higher education, or whether the slowing and waiting forced by the ponderous lifts will make time to discuss work in progress remains to be seen, but the revived building will inevitably frame the lives of those who study and work here. The Autopsy project prompts attention to its surfaces and stories, to its long history as a place of communication and reminds us that an Institute of Art should always be a site for looking, exploring and experiencing, for making and repurposing, and for thinking productively of difficult things.

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Ground floor — Post Hall Gallery & Café (Public Office)

Ground floor — Post Hall Gallery & Café (Public Office)

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First floor — Postgraduate Design Studio (Writing Clerks Room, Engineers Room & Strong Room)

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Ground floor — Kitchen (Vestibule)

Basement — Print Workshop (Unknown, Flat Street Building)

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First floor — Product Design Studio (Instrument Room)

Ground floor — Fine Art (Sorting Office, Pond Street)

First floor — Department Administrator's Office (Superintendent's Room)

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Second floor — S IA Staff Offices (Unknown, Flat Street Building)

Basement — Print Workshop (Unknown, Flat Street Building)

Second floor — SIA Staff Offices (Toilets — Flat Street Building)

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Second floor — SIA Staff Offices (Unknown, Flat Street Building)

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Ground floor — Yet to be assigned (Telegraph Store)

Basement — Print Workshop (Unknown, Flat Street Building) First floor — Interior Design Studio (Instrument Room)

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First floor — Postgraduate Design Studio (Account Room)

Second floor — Graphic Design Studio (Telephone Room)

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First floor — Staircase to second floor

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Second floor — Graphic Design Studio (Telephone Room)

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Second floor — Graphic Design Studio (Telephone Room)

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Second floor — Graphic Design Studio (Telephone Room)

First floor — Meeting Room (Postmaster’s Room)

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Ground floor — Jewellery & Metalwork Studio (Delivery Room)

First floor — Postgraduate Design Studio (Writing Clerks Room, Engineers Room & Strong Room)

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First floor — Postgraduate Design Studio (Strong Room)

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Lower ground floor — Jewellery & Metalwork Workshop (Line Men Room)

First floor — Product Design Studio (Instrument Room)

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First floor — Interior Design Studio (Instrument Room)

First floor — Interior Design Studio (Instrument Room)

Second floor — Jewellery & Metalwork Staff Office (Telephone Message Room)

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First floor — Interior Design Studio (Instrument Room)

First floor — Interior Design Studio (Instrument Room)

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Ground floor — Jewellery & Metalwork Studio (Boys Retiring Room)

Lower ground floor — Hammer Room (Store)

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Second floor — Graphic Design Studio (Telephone Room)

Second floor — Graphic Design Studio (Telephone Room)

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Second floor — Graphic Design Studio (Telephone Room) Second floor — Graphic Design Studio (Telephone Room)

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Lower ground floor — Technical Workshops (Battery Room)

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Photography: India Hobson Essay: Joanne Lee Artistic Direction: Roger Bateman Research & Design Intern: Gemma Milne Design: Dust Collective — http://du.st Published: October 2016 ISBN: 978-1-84387- 4010

The work India Hobson has produced for Autopsy is arresting for several reasons and on a number of different levels. India is a wonderfully good photographer, her images revelling in colour, observation and detail, in light, contrast and fantasy.

It isn’t surprising that her work is in great demand today. India makes images like a painter: her still-lives of the Head Post Office are hugely revealing and capture in stark reality the naked, dilapidated beauty of what was once a jewel in Sheffield’s crown. Many have wondered just what the inside of building looked like since its abandonment in 1999, so it was important for India to be an empathic photographer respecting her surroundings, her audience and her craft. To autopsy the building she has wandered the corridors, rooms and staircases searching for just the right positions from which to make her pictures, which then place us at the centre of her exploration. The results are deeply voyeuristic: she takes us into parts that were broken or barricaded, parts that only pigeons could visit and parts that we will never see again. She reveals the mending of a structure, the piecing together of components and spaces, the evidence of people long gone and the intrusion of the reconstruction.

The images that you see in the exhibition and the supporting publication are just a few from the thousands that India has taken of the refurbishment. The selection was a painstaking process that demanded strict focus from all involved. Without such discipline we would have been lost in endless conversations about each image and pacing up and down, retracing India’s steps looking for where she stood when the images were taken.

The photographs have been placed into four broad stages that relate to the visits India made to the building before, during and after the refurbishment. Images from all stages are reproduced in the publication, which has been designed by Dust Collective under the direction of Ashleigh Armitage, with the assistance of Sheffield Institute of Arts intern Gemma Milne. The original hand drawn and coloured architectural drawings for the Head Post office were tracked down to the National Archive in Kew, some of which feature here. Artist, writer and Sheffield Institute of Art lecturer Joanne Lee has written the opening essay for which I am most grateful. Jo’s rich narrative style and her interest in the transformation of post industrial sites and how places ‘lie in-between use’ fits perfectly with the objectives of Autopsy.

Putting together Autopsy has been a highly enjoyable experience. I’d like to thank all those involved in bringing this important work together and in particular Sheffield Hallam University for funding the project as part of the 2016 Catalyst Festival of Creativity along with ASAP Digital Ltd for printing and mounting the images and to Evolution Print for printing the Autopsy publication.

Roger Bateman Principal Lecturer — Sheffield Institute of Arts

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Autopsy is seemingly a curious title for a project whose focus is the rebirth of a building. We associate the term with an examination intended to determine the cause of death, but Sheffield’s Head Post Office site has been saved for the time being, its slow decline and increasing dereliction arrested and then reversed thanks to its repurposing into the new home for the Sheffield Institute of Arts.

Sheffield Institute of Arts ISBN: 978-1-84387-4010