Steve Welsh's beautiful prints remember football grounds past

If you’re not into football, then I can see why the whole charade of trudging off week in week out to watch a group of overpaid, overhyped prima donnas can seem downright daft. But if you are one of the many who buy into the game on a spiritual level, then you’ll love Steve Welsh’s new project Homesick. One of the by-products of the rampant modernisation of the game in recent years is that many clubs have given up their historic, much loved grounds for brash, shiny and sadly often identikit upgrades.

Steve’s prints are topographic studies of three grounds discarded in exactly this way – Manchester City’s Maine Road, Sunderland’s Roker Park and Arsenal’s Highbury – and in their simplicity lies their brilliance as centuries of stories, of shared experiences, of agony and ecstasy and humour and boredom are all reduced to the grounds’ constituent features paradoxically heightening their emotional impact.

Steve has some other interesting work as well – an illustrated feature on former Celtic player Gil Heron (father of the musician of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised fame), interesting posters and prints and some awesome Sensible Soccer-style animations of famous footy moments.

Steve’s work brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “the beautiful game.”