Cambridge Envisaged — Exhibition and the COAX Open Art Exhibition

Cambridge Envisaged — Exhibition and the COAX Open Art Exhibition

The Cambridge Envisaged series was developed over an extended period of engagement with the city — its architecture, its history, its particular quality of light, and the tension between its ancient institutional structures and its contemporary life. The series was shown as part of the COAX Open Art Exhibition, which brought together work by artists from across the Cambridge area.

The Cambridge Envisaged Series

The paintings in the Cambridge Envisaged series are not views of Cambridge in any conventional sense. They do not depict specific buildings or streets; they do not attempt to document the city's appearance. Instead, they respond to the experience of the city — to its scale, its atmosphere, its layering of the old and the new — and attempt to find a visual language adequate to that experience.

The series was made in acrylic and mixed media on canvas, with surfaces built up through layers of paint and other materials. The palette draws on the stone colours of the city's older buildings — warm greys, ochres, and the particular cream of Ketton stone — combined with cooler tones that suggest the sky and the river.

The COAX Open Art Exhibition

The COAX Open Art Exhibition is an annual event that brings together artists from across the Cambridge area, offering an opportunity to show work to a broad and engaged local audience. Exhibiting the Cambridge Envisaged series in this context was a natural fit: the work is rooted in a specific place, and showing it to an audience with their own relationship to that place added a dimension of recognition and dialogue that enriched the experience of the exhibition.