St Ives comes to Steel City

Under a bold, bright abstract by Terry Frost, for instance: “You don’t get to design the tail fins of BA planes, incur Thatcher’s wrath, get knighted and the rest without having a freshness, vigour and width of appeal that goes with all that.”

Or, under half a dozen politically-charged pictures – one called Terrorist Dollar – by Ian Dunlop (also a rock musician, in The Flying Burrito Brothers): “If you think Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis are a fair bit more important than either Bush, Ian Dunlop might be worth a closer look.”

One artist is described as “an 85-year-old punk in pearls”; another gets the ultimate seller’s accolade: “If you like the pictures, help yourself; if you don’t, I’ll be delighted to have them back.”

Around 130 pictures are on show in The St Ives Collection, which includes works by such big-name artists as Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Roger Hilton, Peter Lanyon and Victor Pasmore. Their owner – and the man behind the captions – is Paul Vibert, a feisty Cornwall-based collector with a small (about 12ft square) gallery of his own in St Ives, whose artists’ colony famously lured Yorkshire’s Barbara Hepworth to spend half her life there.

Vibert has plenty to say, so we’ll be phoning him in a few paragraphs.

He has loaned 200 or so canvases to the Snig Hill Gallery, in a part of Sheffield city centre about as remote from the bright-light picturesqueness of St Ives as anywhere could be. It’s round the corner from the retail market, between South Yorkshire Police HQ and the Law Courts. Look for Paul Waplington’s brick mural of a steelworker – a whole four-storey house-side of him. Carry on down Snig Hill and the new gallery is next door to a tattoo studio.

The gallery is an agreeable place: five light, airy rooms with sofas and a row of Victorian choir stalls leading to the cafe at the back. Louis Armstrong wafts over the coffee, there’s a nice laid-back atmosphere and, says owner Oliver Dempsey: “There’s some delicious banana bread coming out of the oven in a few minutes.”

Dempsey comes to the art world by an unusual route. His father Maurice, an industrial engineer turned builder and developer, is a long-term collector, so there was a family interest in art.

Dempsey, however, started out as an ice hockey professional in Sheffield and Northern Ireland before joining the family business. Last autumn, he and his father were mulling over what to do with a couple of empty shops which they couldn’t let. They came up with the idea of a gallery.

“Yes, it’s a risky venture in the current climate,” he admits. “But I think the arts scene in Sheffield is thriving at the moment, with small independent art spaces. Sheffield to me is the kind of forgotten city. It’s seen as the poor younger sibling of Leeds and Manchester. But there’s enough potential now to bring people in. Excuse me one minute, I just need to turn the oven off.”

While he sorts out the banana bread, I take in the exhibition, most of whose pictures are priced in the hundreds (and as low as £100) rather than the thousands. Charles Howard’s graceful yachts and birds contrast with Cynthia Davies’ bold, bright portraits, but the main interest is likely to be in three Ben Nicholsons and a sizeable oil by Winifred Nicholson – a Christ-like statue with outstretched arms.

Dempsey returns with the banana bread and explains about Paul Vibert, a family friend, and his “vast” collection. How vast? “Unfathomable. Quite mind-blowing. He could furnish many a gallery. I’ve seen Picasso and Lowry in his collection. When he came up for the opening, he pointed at things and said: ‘Is that mine?’

“I’d told him about our gallery and said: ‘Are you interested?’ He said: ‘Absolutely!’ I went down to St Ives for three days and he said: ‘Pick what you think might do well up there.’”

And have the pictures done well? “We had five sales on the opening night. And it’s starting to creep.”

The banana bread is delicious, I go home and I ring Paul Vibert in St Ives. He was born there, his father working at Bernard Leach’s celebrated pottery. “We lived in a council house and had no money, but we had friends like Bernard Leach and (the Leeds-born artist) Patrick Heron. As soon as I had any money at all, I started to collect.”

He worked as an English lecturer, and now runs his gallery – called, with West Country logic, The Gallery. “It’s not intended to be remotely elitist. It looks like a jumble sale. It’s meant for people who love the idea of having a good old root. I get a hell of a lot of fun from my stuff. It’s stuff that maybe slips under the radar.”

Then he takes off on a riff about the Flying Burrito Brothers (and the International Submarine Band), before touching base again with a recollection of the Snig Hill Gallery’s opening. “I walked in and was simply knocked out, and I thought Sheffield was buzzing.”

And the captions? “Off-the-cuff. Meant to counter Tate artspeak bull....t that has p....d me off for the past 20 years.”

A collector’s item in himself, I’d say.

Snig Hill Gallery, 24 – 26 Snig Hill, Sheffield (0114 270 9559). Monday to Saturday, 10 to 5. Opening exhibition runs until May 19.