Art at Trinity Hall
Arts Festival
Throughout the 2022/23 academic year, Trinity Hall’s first Arts Festival celebrated creativity and the arts through a series of events, exhibitions, performances, screenings, and artistic practice and production. The Festival offered further opportunities for the arts to thrive in College and to showcase our diverse artistic talent.
Engineering PhD student Jamie Clarkson displayed a selection of his photography in the Terrace Room.
Cambridge nature photography
Jamie said: “A lot of the photos were taken at Grantchester Meadows, one of my favourite spots. Most days I get up before sunrise and head out there to try and spot the resident barn owl pair, before heading on to watch the peregrines in the city centre. While it often takes many hours of waiting, it’s worth it for the brief moments of success, and I find it fascinating to observe the birds’ behaviour. It’s also a good time for working over research problems in my head free from other distractions. In addition to wildlife photography, I also enjoy taking photos of the night sky, although the skies back home in Scotland are a bit better for it than here.”
Photo: Grantchester pre-dawn
You can see more of Jamie’s work on his website: jclarksonphotography.com
New Dining Hall artwork
A new artwork containing plants and soil from the River Cam took pride of place in the Dining Hall, replacing one of the more traditional portraits that usually grace the walls.
The Willow will Submerge in Time (above) is a “wall-based” artwork, a multi-layered panel in a mounted lightbox that creates a work described as being “somewhere between a sculpture and a painting”. It was created by Sophie Mei Birkin, a History of Art alumna.
'Encounters in Stone'
This year-long exhibition saw Trinity Hall host monumental sculptures and small-scale pieces throughout the courts and gardens. Artist Stephen Cox RA blends a deep knowledge of the stones from Italy, Egypt and India, as well as the beliefs, myths, and customs they historically manifest, with his own aesthetic as a contemporary sculptor.
The exhibition was open from August 2022 to June 2023.
Cristea Roberts Gallery kindly lent College five works by Honorary Fellow Cornelia Parker CBE RA, for display in the JCR.
The works were selected by former JCR President Kate Valentine with Picture Steward Professor Alexander Marr.
More information about Cornelia and the displayed works.
We are very grateful to Cristea Roberts Gallery and Cornelia Parker for generously facilitating the loan.
The artist’s work has long been on display in the College with her tapestry Thirty Pieces of Silver (Minus One) hanging in the Dining Hall. Earlier this year she had a career retrospective at Tate Britain.
An informal guide to portraits in Trinity Hall
Portraits in Trinity Hall
Whether the architecture explains it or not, each Cambridge college has a curious kind of personality. ‘Hall men and women’ know – though they rarely make that knowledge explicit – that ‘their college’ is the best and ‘the nicest’. It is ‘cosy’, friendly, unpretentious and, in some mysterious way, welcoming.
I welcome the reader to this guided tour of those who lived and worked here before our time and hope that both Trinity Hall members and visitors will find it entertaining to get to know the portraits and the persons whose faces stare at them from the walls.
