ArtSpace 5-7

Midnight in Minor keys #venicebiennale #veniceartbiennale #venicebiennale2026 @studio.drift #shysociety #midnightinvenice #palazzobarbaro #transformation #dynamicart #artandarchitecture @labiennale @jr #ilgesto

It’s like déjà vu all over again… The recent cooler weather has us reminiscing about the sunshine earlier this spring! We couldn’t resist recreating our November reel — also featuring the St Clement’s cherry tree, in all its autumnal splendour! — for ‘Epic Journeys’, our current exhibition with @hassan_aliyu_artist . Clear skies and brighter days ahead… so make the most of it with a visit to ArtSpace5-7 to catch our incredible spring show! We can’t wait to see you at the gallery :) 🌸☀️🎨 #cambridgeart #cambridgegallery #independentgallery #cambridgeartgallery #springexhibition #cambridgeexhibition #visitcambridge #cambridgespring #nigerianartist #britishnigerian #independentartgallery #supportlocalgalleries #supportlocal

On Friday, ArtSpace5-7 had the privilege of hosting the @camopenstudios New Members’ Evening! Thank you so much to all the attendees: we had a lovely evening, and we hope you did as well. It was fantastic to see so many new and returning members. To everyone who came: welcome, and welcome back, respectively! We greatly enjoyed catching up with all the COS veterans, and getting to know this year’s rookies (I am indeed co-opting the language of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, but just to be clear, there is no comparison to be drawn between the two management styles. COS is an altogether calmer endeavour, with absolutely no high kicks required). The COS community is now over five hundred strong, and extends throughout the whole of Cambridgeshire. It encompasses just about every artistic medium you can imagine, from digital art to glasswork to textiles to origami to ceramics to jewellery to (visit camopenstudios.org/directory if you dare to attempt an exhaustive list)! It’s one of the oldest artist-run open studio initiatives in the UK; current Venue, Art & Community Partners include the Cambridge School of Art, St Barnabas Press and the Fitzwilliam Museum. For all its distinguished pedigree, COS provides a thoroughly welcoming, friendly and supportive environment for artists at all different career stages, whether practising full time, or squeezing the hours in between work and family commitments. ArtSpace5-7 is delighted to be working with COS, and supporting our wonderful local artists! We are very excited for the 2026 Open Studios: speaking of which, Watch this Space for something not entirely unrelated – and very, VERY exciting – coming up at the gallery in July… In the meantime, you can start planning your trip at camopenstudios.org/july-open-studios. There will be a particular focus on artists living and practising further outside Cambridge this year, so walking boots at the ready: it’s going to be another Epic Journey! Finally, special thanks to @richardbraysculpture and @s.all_brook for all their help in making Friday’s event such a success!

Intuitive art... with a dash of ESP? Thank you to @sadisoularts and @j.nella for stopping by and sharing these wonderful, evocative pieces with us: they may or may not have been channelling 'Epic Journeys' during their creative session earlier that day! Pictured: Hassan Aliyu, 'Untitled', 2024, collage on canvas, 67.5 x 54.5 cm. 'Epic Journeys' continues... Catch the show at ArtSpace5-7 on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays; and @wolfsoncollegecam on weekends! We love hearing (and seeing!) our visitors' responses to Hassan Aliyu's work. This exhibition is the first ever retrospective of an extraordinarily rich and dynamic forty-year career: it's the story of a life in art. Come along for an epic journey (and be assured: we may boast about the size of our exhibition space, but you won't have to walk very far)!

Last week, the ArtSpace5-7 team spent a delightful – and essential! – three days at #AAH2026, an annual conference convened by @forarthistory . While it’s a highly international event, this year’s conference was held just up the road, at @churchillcol and @murrayedwardscollege . The focus (shocker!) is art history, but we attended papers on just about everything the term can encompass: from algorithmic bias in AI art, to tomb sculptures in early modern Portugal, to Elizabeth Freeman’s concept of ‘erotohistoriography’ (2010). As well as (second shocker!) art historians, we heard from a number of talented curators and professional artists working on the front lines of the arts, culture and heritage industries. So: lots of theory, lots of practice and inspiration in abundance! With over 100 sessions and 470 papers (plus some lively evening drinks…) crammed into three days, this was a true embarrassment of riches, so it feels misguided even to attempt a highlight reel. This was a rich and varied and mind-expanding and thoroughly immersive experience – as in, requiring much caffeine – that went to the heart of what artistic and curatorial practice, and the discipline of art history, mean in and for the world today. That being said, here is our attempt at a highlight reel: 1. Luna Lobão on the curatorial history of the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP). The Museum was designed by Lina Bo Bardi, an Italian expatriate, in 1947: she developed a new method of displaying works on crystal easels, creating a floating ‘forest’ of art – liberated from traditional categories of time, place and genre – that visitors could traverse at will. And still can, 99 years later! (Continued in comments...)

#bepartoftheart 😊🎨🍬 ‘Epic Journeys’ inspiring the next generation of artists! Come and visit at ArtSpace5-7 to contribute to the next artwork (by eating chocolate 🍫), immerse yourself in a pioneering artistic vision, and perhaps even spark your own creative odyssey… ‘Epic Journeys’, the new exhibition (and first ever career retrospective) by @hassan_aliyu_artist , will be showing at @artspace5.7 and @wolfsoncollegecam until 17 May 2026. We can’t wait to see you at the gallery! #cambridgeart #portugalplace #cambridgeartgallery #cambridgeexhibition #cambridgegallery #britishnigerian #nigerianart #collage #collageart #politicalart

Wei Yuan, ‘Only Connect’, 2025. Mixed media on paper, 36 × 26 cm. Wei Yuan, ‘Fragments No Longer’, 2025. Oil on canvas, 30.5 × 23 cm. Wei Yuan: 'The two works [...] further compress my ongoing reflections on “separated space,” “boundaries,” and “the unreachable” into a relationship that is almost reduced to structure alone. They present a spatial order that appears rigorous and logically coherent, yet continually leaves the subject suspended within it. The order is both architectural and psychological — a restrained articulation of relationships, positions, and the condition of being an “outsider”. Through multiple stylistic approaches, I attempt to re-establish what might be its most precise form of order.' The pieces take their titles from the novel 'Howards End' (1910), by the writer — and famous Cambridge alumnus! — E. M. Forster: 'Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer'. The works are connected by a quotation about connection... Anyway, we were delighted when we came up with this! :) Both ‘Only Connect’ and ‘Fragments No Longer’ are available for sale. Pop into the gallery to have a look, or find them online: link in bio. ArtSpace5-7 #cambridgeart #cambridgeartgallery #contemporaryart #cambridgeartist #supportinglocalartists

Art is for everyone. 🎨🏸 Straight from their game against Cambridge, the Oxford badminton team dropped by ArtSpace 5-7. Art and sport are natural allies. #cambridge #cambridgeart #cambridgeartist #artgallery #artist #art #artspace57

‘The Castle’ and the castle! Wei Yuan in dialogue with the late James Campbell. Wei Yuan’s ‘The Castle’ (2025) is a response to Franz Kafka’s unfinished novella of the same name (first published in 1926). Kafka’s protagonist, K. – ‘a disreputable-looking man in [his] thirties’ – spends the entirety of the story trying and failing to get into the Castle. The building is an imposing presence; the local village ‘belongs to the Castle’, and its authorities are everywhere; yet the Castle remains inaccessible. It’s a hole at the centre of Kafka’s story, as at the centre of Yuan’s painting. This work was inspired by an installation at the Centre Pompidou: a medieval-style painting of a castle presented within a large, semi-open wooden box. The contemporary framing, in Yuan’s words, granted ‘a new state of life’ to the historic piece, but only under ‘new’ interpretative restrictions. Just like K., the viewer is ‘able to see, yet unable to arrive’: held at a distance, even as we seem to be invited in. James Campbell (1942-2019) was a British potter and draughtsman, whose depictions of the natural world drew upon memories of his childhood in North East Scotland and Pembrokeshire, and themes from Celtic mythology. Campbell castles are very much dream castles (if not castles in the air)! The sparse, clean line work, precisely earth-toned palette and gentle surrealism of Campbell’s landscape scenes were informed by the drawings of John Minton and Paul Nash, and the studio pottery of Hans Coper and Gordon Baldwin. See (or don’t see?) Wei Yuan’s ‘The Castle’ – alongside a rich variety of works developed through her meticulous and thoughtful engagement with literature and philosophy – at ArtSpace5-7: we are open Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, or you can email us directly at [email protected] to book a private view. Our exhibition programme for 2026 is packed, so make sure to catch this remarkable show while you still can… We look forward to welcoming you to the gallery! P.S. Watch this Space for updates: there may or may not be some very exciting events on the horizon…