What is the story behind the exhibition and zine?
When we took over the presidency of the Hesperides Society at the beginning of the 2024/25 academic year, we knew that we wanted to do something to highlight the incredible creative community across the University, and especially at Trinity Hall. A few weeks into our new roles, we were looking through the College archive to come up with some interesting ways we might honour the Society’s storied history, when we came across an edition of a zine once run out of Trinity Hall called ‘The Crescent’. We immediately knew this was something we wanted to revive.
The exhibition came as an accompanying piece to the zine, as we realised that there were a number of creative mediums which lent themselves to a different kind of presentation beyond print. As a result, we decided to work with Trinity Hall to hold an exhibition at the College’s Central Site, through which we have been able to exhibit a far greater variety of art that would otherwise have been challenging to include, from live videos and animations to unique, interactive artworks. We feel that the zine will serve as a lasting tribute to the incredible work of artists across Cambridge, extending their impact beyond the exhibition’s run while also breathing new life into a piece of Trinity Hall’s history.”
What inspired you to choose the theme ‘(dis)articulations’?
We wanted to choose a theme that prompted a really broad variety of interpretations, whilst also prompting both visual and textual responses. We were keen to turn away from longer turns of phrase and idiomatic statements, and found ourselves interested in the root idea of ‘articulation’–how we express ourselves in both speech and the written word–and its inverse, ‘disarticulation’–what happens when something is separated, divided or taken apart.
‘(dis)articulations’ in its full form came later, with the bracketed ‘(dis)’ added to allow both words to exist in the same prompt. This co-joining of words gave artists the freedom to place greater emphasis on the ‘articulations’ themselves–and how they might choose to articulate, or alternatively not to articulate. It provoked thought about the artist’s deception or truth-making, along with the various methods by which they express themselves through art.
Our theme certainly delivered: each submission takes a bold approach to ‘(dis)articulations’, interpreting the prompt in creative and exciting ways. Artists found the theme intriguing but not inaccessible, and this was ultimately our goal for the entire project.
What have you learnt from this experience?
The creation of the zine and exhibition has shown us the real value of interactions with the wider Cambridge community in ways beyond academia. We are surrounded by some incredibly creative people, and we have had the great honour of providing a space in which they are able to showcase their work in a public setting.
We were aware when beginning this process that our pitch was somewhat novel–a zine/exhibition combination is rare in Cambridge–but were nonetheless surprised by the uptake in our initial application window; interest was high enough that we extended our submission deadline and ended up doubling the pool of work we were able to choose from. We found artists to be really receptive to the idea of having their work both displayed and printed, and this prospect absolutely contributed to the originality of the work we received.
The revival of the zine was a major undertaking–with most of the design work taking place during Lent term and a lot of learning on the job. One of the hardest aspects of the process was figuring out how to present the physical exhibits in print–with synergy across the zine and exhibition, everything we accepted had to go in both. This ended up being quite liberating from a creative point of view: in the zine, our presentation of an animation takes inspiration from strips of film, which sits alongside the digitalisation of various physical poetic methods, photos and paintings. Our primary aim was to retain the physicality of the exhibition in the zine’s pages, and we’re really pleased with how it came out.
