Pete McKee: New Sheffield exhibition celebrating the British pub and ‘Snog’ couple Frank and Joy opens in city

Celebrated Yorkshire artist Pete McKee’s latest exhibition opens in his beloved Sheffield today, with thousands of people expected to visit it over the course of a two-week run as it takes place at Trafalgar Warehouse in the city centre.

McKee’s latest exhibition Frank & Joy – A Love Story has plenty of personal resonance for him.

It is a decade since he created a giant mural of an elderly couple locked in a passionate embrace on the outside of Fagan’s pub in Sheffield city centre.

Within days of its creation in 2013, people started having their wedding photos taken by it.

The street art was initially done to promote McKee’s exhibition of the time, The Joy of Sheff, and he named the two characters Frank and Joy; the latter in reference to the show and the former after his father.

McKee has returned to the pair – who he describes as a “shorthand for love and comfort and reassurance” – for inspiration in the years since and he is now basing an entire exhibition on them.

Frank & Joy – A Love Story also acts as a deeper exploration of what pubs mean to communities thanks to the life-changing moments they play host to.

He has returned to the story of Frank and Joy and how central events in their lives played out in a fictional pub called the Buffer’s Rest.

Fagan’s is part of the inspiration but it is also an amalgamation of several other pubs in Sheffield – while McKee revealed to The Yorkshire Post earlier this year that the story of Frank and Joy has parallels with his and his wife Jane’s own real-life romance.

The pair first met at a Sheffield city centre pub called The Washington and ended up having their wedding reception at the same venue.

It was in the mid-2000s that Jane encouraged McKee to give up his job at Tesco and make the leap into becoming a professional artist. He has gone onto work with musicians including Noel Gallagher, Arctic Monkeys and Richard Hawley. Gallagher recently named his latest album Council Skies after the title of a McKee book.

In his latest show, the story of Frank and Joy and their favourite pub plays out over a few decades, with the exhibition charting the heyday and gradual decline of the Buffer’s Rest.

But throughout it all, the love of the couple endures – another parallel with McKee’s own life with Jane.

“Frank and Joy are very much in love with each other and there for the long haul,” McKee said earlier this year.

"I used some of our experiences within that story. I talk to Jane all the time about my work and always listen to her advice. I lean heavily on Jane to make sure I’m getting Joy’s story right.”

As part of the exhibition, couples who have been photographed doing kisses of their own by The Snog mural have submitted their own pictures for display.

McKee says: “The work in this exhibition is about relationships, not only between people, but also between a pub and the communities they can create.

“I really want to mark Frank and Joy as characters themselves, but I also know how important the mural is generally to the people of Sheffield and beyond and find the concept of how pubs have influenced and shaped society really interesting.

“Over the years I have been sent many photos of people creating their own version of The Snog, often taken on their own wedding day right in front of the mural itself, or in other pubs or places that are special to them, so I thought it would be lovely to include as many of these images in the exhibition as possible as well.”

Tickets are priced at £7 (£5 plus booking fees) for adults, and £5 (£3 plus booking fees) for children (aged 12-18).

For more information and to buy tickets, visit: www.frankandjoy.co.uk