Exhibition invites visitors to Re:Focus attention
Work by ARU Fine Art students to go on show at Cambridge Artworks & Artspace
The latest work by MA Fine Art students from Anglia Ruskin University’s Cambridge School of Art is about to go on display in a new exhibition at Cambridge Artworks & Artspace.
Titled Re:Focus, the exhibition opens on 17 April and includes a diverse body of work shaped by the artists’ personal discoveries and challenges, including pieces inspired by surviving serious illness and a natural disaster.
Alongside deeply personal stories, the works featured in Re:Focus are rooted in research-led practice developed during the MA Fine Art programme at ARU.
Artefacts that have informed the artists’ research will be displayed alongside the artworks, encouraging visitors to “refocus” and engage with themes that are often raw, uncomfortable and emotionally charged.
In her series Fragility, Lesley Westcott shares her journey of illness and resilience through ceramics and photography, while fellow student Ruth Hudson experiments with printmaking to document the physical demands of early motherhood.
Meanwhile, Sarah Gardener’s work, which is a specifically grown botanical installation combining the mergence of purposefully grown grass with manmade materials, draws on a traumatic childhood experience in which she and her family were caught up in a tornado in Texas in 1979, which claimed the lives of dozens of people.
“Having survived a natural disaster as a child, I’ve had a mixed relationship with nature ever since.
“My work induces entropy in a deliberately grown botanical system so that I may explore the nuances of transformation and natural cycles. The audience are asked to consider both the resilience and fragility of nature, mirrored through human experience.”
Sarah GardenerRe:Focus runs from 17-21 April at Cambridge Artworks & Artspace on Green’s Road in Cambridge. The gallery is open from 12-4pm and entry is free.