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Cally Trench is an artist whose work focuses on mapping, different viewpoints and ideas about privacy. Her work includes board games, very short films, artist's books, and photographs, as well as drawings. She also curates projects and exhibitions. Cally Trench completed an MA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London in 2007, having gained a Fine Art degree at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College (now Bucks New University) in 2004. Her first degree was in Chemistry from Oxford University (where she was part of the first intake of women at Wadham College, one of the first five 'men's' colleges to go mixed). In her fourth year at Oxford, she completed a Part II thesis on the philosophy of the language of science, supervised by Rom Harré. After Oxford, she went to Hong Kong as an administrative officer for two and a half years.
One of Cally Trench's interests is privacy. With her artist's books, she aims to create a sense of private pleasure. The desire to generate a private response to a work of art extends to the rest of her practice. Her peephole boxes, which only one person can peer into at a time, create a private moment. Her board games are made to be played by four people, who create an intimate circle for the length of the game. Her map-like drawings made at ground level are maps of privacy - the areas that cannot be seen by passers-by. |
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Cally Trench is concerned with how people respond physically to her Face and Metamorphosis drawings. Viewers tend to move backwards and forwards, towards the drawings to view the detail of individual ink marks and backwards to see the overall image, in a physical engagement that is hard to replicate in a book or on a computer. The ideal viewer for these lifesize drawings of faces and bodies is one who behaves as if they are meeting another person, as if they are the only viewer. Her interest in art that invites complicity or some kind of direct physical engagement by viewers in a gallery led to a series of four annual exhibitions on the subject of play (At Play, 2009-2012; at South Hill Park, Bracknell 2009-2011, and touring in 2012), which she originated and co-curated with Dr Outi Remes. Another interest is in uncertainty, in particular whether a work of art can also be something else, or whether it must always be one thing or another; this was the topic of her MA (Fine Art) research paper Uncertainty in Contemporary Landscape at Central Saint Martins in 2007. Cally Trench lives and works in Buckinghamshire, England, where she observes and maps the hilly urban landscape of High Wycombe. She is married with two children. She is currently working on new drawings and films. Contact me: hello at callytrench dot co dot uk |
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Solo and two-person exhibitions
2020 Tineke Bruijnzeels / Cally Trench: Making Connections, South Hill Park, Bracknell |
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Group exhibitions
2022 Breathing Space, Spencer House Gallery, Tetbury |
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1999 Printmakers Council - Open Biennale, Whiteley's Gallery, London |
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Board games played
2022 International Women's Day, Bucks Board Games, Wycombe Arts Centre, 8th March 2022
Films festivals and screenings
2022 Big Teeth Small Shorts Film Festival (USA). Official Selection, and live screening at Burning Bush Brewery, Chicago, USA, 9th June 2022 [Feet] |
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Artist's books exhibited
2022 AMBruno: Volume and One and many pages at Miss Read, Berlin |
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Performances
2019 Faithful and Obedient with Philip Lee, performance during the Small Publishers' Fair, 16th November 2019 at Conway Hall, London Other projects
2021 Miscarriage and Wellbeing: performative rituals for visualizing loss, work included in blog and focus group, University of Leeds Curation
2018 Only The Sunny Hours: Contemporary Photography with a Brownie 127, Openhand Openspace, Brock Keep, Reading |
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Work in collectionsCally Trench's artist's books are in the collections of the Tate, London; the V&A, London; the British Library; Ravensbourne, London; Chelsea College of Arts (UAL); Kunstbibliothek, Berlin; Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore; Bibliotheca Librorum Apud Artificem, Library for the Artist's Book, Sydney; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; and private collections. Paintings, prints and drawings are in the collection of Oxford City Council; Consumers' Association, Milton Keynes; Robin Waterfield's Bookshop, Oxford; Lucky Onion Hotel, Cheltenham; and private collections. |
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PublicationsBook
2021 Cally Trench. 105 Artists' Hands: Touch Tell Create. Design Jane Glennie. Publ. Peculiarity Press. July 2021. Talks and interviews
2022 Cally Trench. 'Recent Work'. Talk to Warehouse Art School, Oxford, 19th January 2022. Articles and conference papers
2020 Cally Trench and Elisabetta Balasso. 'Board games as an art medium'. Conference paper. Presented by Cally Trench. 'Medium' conference, London School of Mosaic, 19th February 2020. Catalogues, reviews, catalogue essays and other publications
2020 Alison Hagley and Cally Trench 'Hagley and Trench's Beautiful Mathematical Puzzles for Pleasure' in Write Read Puzzle, Artlink / Oxford Hospitals Charity, 2020. |
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