Three arty things in August 2026

                                                  

Three arty things in August 2026

Now that the flurry of Open Studios is over, what else can we see and do? Here is a little selection.

Eyes On Summer Exhibition. Fitzroy Street.

The organisers say: "Opening night is Friday 7th August - 7pm - 10pm, and is free and open to all that can make it.

The exhibition, featuring 24 artists and over 100 individual artworks, will be open Saturday 8th until Sunday 16th of August - 10am - 6pm - 12-14 Fitzroy Street CB1 1EW (the former Argos space near the Grafton Centre)."

Will be intriguing to see how the old Grafton Centre space is shaping up as an art venue.

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Ten Good Years. Heong Gallery.

The organisers say: "Ten Good Years celebrates the gallery’s anniversary by paying homage to its inaugural exhibition Generatiob Painting 1955-65: British Art from the Collectino of Sir Alan Bowness. It also features works by new artists working in Britain today, incl. Lubaina Himid. Until 11 Oct. 2026. Free.

Image © Jo Underhill. Linked from https://structuraleye.co.uk/ten-good-years

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Frank Bowling: Seeking the Sublime. Fitzwilliam Museum.

The organisers say: "Experience the dynamic paint, vivid colour, and bold vision of contemporary British painter Frank Bowling. Celebrating a career lasting nearly seven decades, our exciting display brings together a lifetime of the artist’s work." Until 17 Jan. 2027. Free.

Image linked from https://fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/plan-your-visit/exhibitions/frank-bowling-seeking-the-sublime

© 2026

Three arty things in May 2024: Politics, giraffes and Cambridge's tiniest gallery

  

Three arty things in May 2024

Local Syrian artist Issam Kourbaj at Kettle's Yard and the Heong Gallery. Ends 26 May 2024. Mind-challenging, conceptual, political. 

Linked from Kettle's Yard.

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Giraffes. They call themselves a 'sculpture trail'. But are they really, though?  They are a charity event, and on the 19 June you can bid for them, and before that, donate money.  Every now and again, these  animals appear; a few years ago, it was cows, and I've seen dinosaurs in Norwich. The animals are manufactured by 'Wild in Art', 'leading producers of spectacular, mass-appeal public art events' (source). The sculptures are made of 'lightweight, fire resistant fibreglass', finished with a white primer and ready to paint by local artists (source). So each CB giraffe is an identical mass-produced 3-D object that is then individually painted by a raft of artists. So the art really consists in a painting trail, not a sculpture trail as such.  Although why can figures mass-produced by a company not be called 'sculpture'?  Food for thought.

In the meantime, there are some more or less jolly giraffes hanging around in expected and unexpected places but, I have to say, giraffes don't really have much local resonance as creatures. At least the cows of a few years back had local live counterparts.

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There's always something exciting or sweet or intriguing at the unusual and tiny Bird Box Gallery in St Thomas' Square.  In March it was Alistair Burgass's carved and painted sculpture. What will it be in May?

Source: Bird Box Instagram

© 2024

Issam Kourbaj at the Heong Gallery

 Issam Kourbaj's sad little ships

Today I saw many little ships in the Heong Gallery. Their hulls are made of bent and crushed bicycle wheelrims (Felgen, in German). Each holds a bunch of bunt matches: people. Refugees. Voyaging along the raised floor of the gallery towards the light of the window and the unbelievable green sward behind it with Barbara Hepworth's serene sculpture among the vegetation.

Issa Kourbaj is a long-time resident of Cambridge who makes art about Syria, war and displaced humans. The ships reminded me of the floating boats of Hew Locke's installation at the magnificent Entangled Pasts exhibition in London (Royal Academy). Boats that carry people who don't want to be carried. Boats that hold at the same time as they condemn.

 

Five Arty Things in April: What's on in Cambridge

After a hiatus: the return of the 'What's On' post!

Here's my personal pick of five arty things to do in Cambridge in April:

1.  Hide and Seek: Looking for Children in the Past
MAA (Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology)

I love the MAA.  In 2013, it was shortlisted in the final top ten for the Art Fund Prize of Museum of the Year.  In December, one of their curators won an award to build a collection of contemporary art works from indigenous communities in India (we wait for this exhibition with excitement; it will open in 2017).  And it is all round a fabulous place.

I look forward to seeing this exhibition.  It is free.  Opening times on the poster below.

2.  Generation Painting: British art 1955-1965
Heong Gallery, Downing College (just past the Porter's Lodge, to the left as you enter from Regent St)

The newest addition to Cambridge's art scene, and the only truly modernist and contemporary art gallery in town right now (while Kettle's Yard remains closed for refurbishing).  The present exhibition is brilliant and includes a wonderful painting by David Hockney.  The architecture and the setting are also really worth experiencing.  

Opening times:
Wednesdays: 10 – 8 pm
Weekends and bank holidays: 10 - 6 pm
It is free.
Ends 22 May 2016.

Coming up next: Ai Wei Wei!  Quentin Blake!

Follow the gallery on twitter:  @heonggallery

Watch out for my blog post on the gallery; it will soon appear here:  
http://artincambridge.blogspot.com/2016/03/british-painting-at-new-heong-gallery.html

3. New Hall Art Collection: Feminism and Gender
Murray Edwards College (the college formerly known as New Hall, up on Castle Hill)

My favourite art collection in Cambridge so of course I will include it in my first What's On post in months.  I've blogged about this collection several times before.

It's free, it's amazing, and it's open nearly all the time.

Alexis Hunter, Fear of the Intellectual Wife, 1987; source:  NHAC

4.  Conflicted Seeds + Spirit
The new David Attenborough Building, New Museums Site (accessible via Downing Street and via Corn Exchange Street which is that weird street behind the Grand Arcade with entrances to the car park and to the cycle park)

An installation by the artist duo Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey.  I look forward to seeing this, and (bonus!) to sneaking a peak at the brand new David Attenborough Building which is the old Arup Building, refurbished by architect bureau Nicholas Hare.


Opening times:  Wed–Sun, 10am–5pm
Ends 17 April 2016.

Source:  © Ackroyd & Harvey

5.  Crawling with Life:  Flower Drawings at the Fitz

Watch out for my review of this exquisite exhibition; it'll be posted next week!

Fitzwilliam Museum; ends 8 May 2016.

Enjoy your April!

British painting at the new Heong gallery: Is it abstract?

There is a new gallery in town.  It is the Heong Gallery.  Where is it?  Go to Regent Street in Cambridge; opposite Parker's Piece and across the road from the Pizza Hut, is Downing College.  Walk through the main entrance across the gravel path and past the Porter's Lodge; turn left.  And there it is.

Heong gallery, the entrance façade

It's in the old stables and was wonderfully re-purposed by Caruso St John Architects.  It opened on 6 Feb 2016 with an exhibition of British painting in the 50s and 60s.

I visited as part of the  symposium Generation Painting: Abstraction and British Art 1955-65, held at Downing on Sat, 5 March.

Now, the concept of 'abstraction' is interesting in the context of the current exhibition.

Detail from Patrick Heron's Soft Vermilion with Orange and Red: April 1965, 1965 (oil on canvas)

Above is a detail from a painting whose very title shouts "Hey, I'm abstract! Look at me! No figurative content in me!  No illusion to be seen here! Just plain old real paint.'  Except not quite, perhaps?  Because why is the vermilion 'soft'?  And why is the word 'April' part of the title?

As was pointed out by one speaker during the very interesting symposium, these 1950s/60s painters from Cornwall (Patrick Heron lived in Cornwall when he painted this) remained attached to the light and sea and atmosphere of their landscape.

And David Hockney's absolutely wonderful Hollywood Garden (1965) is definitely not abstract.

Detail from David Hockney's Hollywood Garden, 1965, pencil and watercolour on card

There are some witty references to abstraction, and there is a play with the tension between surface and depth, the horizontal line and the vertical shapes, like starlings on a wire, the drooping umbrella, the bush like a boulder.  At the symposium, Martin Hammer (University of Kent) was brilliant on Hockney:  "our involuntary urge to recognise."

Allen Jones, Parachutist, 1963 (Fitzwilliam Museum)

Detail of the preceding

Allen Jones's Parachutist (1963) is a wonderfully witty and juicily 'painterly' juxtaposition of the overtly figurative and the ambiguously abstract.  Are those vertical shapes stripes of yellow, green and blue, like the stripes in a painting by Morris Louis?

Great sky lights at the Heong Gallery

A picture window onto Downing lawns that looks like a literal picture, next to an actual picture by Roger Hilton, January 1962 (tall white), 1962.  Below is the same picture window viewed from the outside in.

Heong gallery, viewed from the Downing lawn

Visit the show! It's fantastic!  And so is the gallery.  Totally free, too.
The catalogue costs £12.

Open:
Wed 10 am - 8 pm
Sat, Sun, Bank Hols 10 am - 6 pm

Exhibition: Generation Painting 1955-65
British Art from the Collection of Sir Alan Bowness

Ends 22 May 2016.