Cambridge art gallery Quip and Curiosity hosts new ‘Test Sites’ exhibition

Two University of Hertfordshire artists are launching ‘Test Sites’, an exhibition of small-scale works that explore the aftermath of human activity on our planet.

The exhibition, by Herts researchers Sam Jury and David Kefford, will run from tomorrow (Friday, 22 March) until 4 April at the new Quip and Curiosity gallery in Cambridge.

It explores both artists’ ideas of displacement and dis-ease in both the landscape and the self.

Sam Jury’s work in the exhibition was created by using a faulty printer to produce 130 postcard ‘objects’ constructed from painting, drawing, collage and digital print.

She said: “Postcards, to me, suggest intimate communication. They’re something you would send to a friend or a loved one.

“But the content of these works draws from origins that have a melancholy or bitter-sweetness that comes from an aftermath, an area existing in the wake of an unnamed event.

“I also saw this as a collaboration between woman and machine. The postcards are expressions of a mis-purposed machine, through chance interactions which cannot be replicated, particularly important to me in the age of AI.”

Works on paper from David Kefford depict elusive and fragmented images of our consumerist world. Collaged from lifestyle and nature magazines, they are constructed on small pieces of paper, further distorted by cutting, scraping and smearing ink.

He said: “The paper works function like a visual diary using materials to hand and are made with immediacy, intensity and intimacy.”

David has also made small sculptures, created from waste and discarded objects.

For more information, visit quipandcuriosity.co.uk.