I don't know what has got into Maria Marshall, but I wouldn't want to witness it getting out. In her video work When Are We There? Marshall stands petrified in a gloomy gothic interior, her flesh rippling as if some gruesome, parasitic worm is wriggling beneath the skin.
It is strange to find Marshall enduring such trauma herself, because she usually inflicts it on her children. Marshall, a Londoner, is better known in New York, where she became notorious for her 1998 film When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Cooker, which featured her two-year-old son seductively dragging on a cigarette. This strange piece of parental guidance reappears in Marshall's first solo UK show, along with various other incidences of her family suffering for her art.
Before anyone rushes to put Marshall's sons in custody, it should be pointed out that all of her films are digitally manipulated illusions: her toddler is not really holding or smoking a cigarette. Even so, Marshall's principle theme is juvenile sexuality, a minefield that can run you into a lot of trouble over here, as the American photographer Tierney Gearon has already discovered. Gearon's photos of her kids peeing on a beach attracted the attention of the Obscene Publications Squad when they were displayed at the Saatchi Gallery last year. Although Marshall's children do not actually appear naked in her work, she does truss them up in straitjackets, place them in padded cells and photograph them in caskets crawling with snakes.
Cyclops, a new work commissioned for this exhibition, reminds me of the harrowing films that would be shown to classes of infants, to warn about the dangers of speaking to strangers. Marshall and her son appear in separate, cell-like rooms, stripped to their vests and pants, as an interrogative camera prowls around them. The screens meet in the middle, like a grim parody of a diptych of the Madonna and Child.
All of these works are technically produced to an impeccable degree, but you may not want to take your children to this exhibition. In fact you may wish that Marshall had left hers out of it as well.
· Until July 27. Details: 0114-281 2077.