The Red Headed League: bringing together flame-haired artists

Whether you call it ginger, strawberry blonde, auburn or simply red, red hair is often a source of interest and envy, and red heads certainly stand out from the rest of us. A new art project by the Sheffield-based curating duo Furlough, who explore ideas of work, value, duty and merit through artistic production and exhibition, has brought together 13 flame-haired artists to form a ‘Red Headed League’, inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle’s 19th Century short story ‘The Adventure of the Red-Headed League’, which stars Sherlock Holmes. Without giving away too much of the story, Jabez Wilson, a red-headed London businessman, is singled out to undertake a well-paid clerical job simply because he has red hair; his seemingly meaningless task is to copy out pages of an encyclopaedia for the fee of £4 per week. Partially recreating the story, each of Furlough’s ‘Red Headed League’ participants was given one of the first thirteen images of Encyclopaedia Britannica (Micropaedia Edition) as source material, and the resulting artworks form the basis of a new publication launching at Sheffield’s Bloc Projects.

Fri 30 Nov, Bloc Projects, 71 Eyre Lane, Sheffield, S1 4RB, Tel: 0114 272 3155, 7pm, FREE, furlough.org.uk