The Family Matters exhibition is now at its second GBAD venue, Museums Sheffield, under the title The Family in British Art. It will be travelling to Laing Gallery and Tate Britain later in the year.

In keeping with the GBAD spirit, the exhibition aims to start discussion and question how families in art have varied over time and locality. This spirit of debate has encouraged the exhibition to tackle the challenge of representing 21^st century ideas of family alongside historic and contemporary pieces from gallery collections.

In response to this challenge, Museums Sheffield has commissioned and incorporated a series of Sheffield family portraits by photographer Jonathan Turner into The Family in British Art exhibition.

These works shed light on some of the many interpretations of the family in contemporary Britain today. They introduce families that have been formed from same sex partnerships, capture families at ease in their domestic environments and showcase how shared experience of migration and settlement can serve as an instigator for the creation of new families.

Louisa Briggs, Curator of Visual Art at Museums Sheffield, argues that ‘Today, the concept of family means many different things to different people.’ This exhibition encourages us to examine this concept, and in turn, how and why we form strong bonds with others.

For an opportunity to help Tate Britain represent the 21^st century family when the Family Matters Exhibition travels to London in October, take a look at our Family Matters competition. Who knows, you could find your families portrait hanging alongside the rest of the exhibit!