Cally Trench's work is primarily drawing, but also includes very short animation films, artist's books, and original board games. Her work circles round recurring topics and themes, especially the fragility of everyday life, growing older, memory, and death. Cally Trench completed an MA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, London in 2007. She previously gained a Fine Art degree at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College in 2004, where her dissertation was on Could Peter Doig's painting 'A Hundred Years Ago' have been painted a hundred years ago?, supervised by Dr Damon Taylor. Cally's first degree was in Chemistry at Oxford University (where she was part of the first intake of women at Wadham College). In her fourth year at Oxford, she completed a Part II thesis on Studies in the philosophy of the language of science, supervised by Rom Harré. After Oxford, she lived in Hong Kong for two and a half years.
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Cally Trench is concerned with how people respond physically to her ink 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, such as her Faces and Metamorphosis series, is one who behaves as if they are meeting another person, as if they are the only viewer, or as if they are observing their own hands or feet. Her interest in art that invites complicity or some kind of direct physical engagement led to a series of four annual exhibitions: At Play, 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. This is a concern that she tests in practice by making original board games; these are both playable games and also works of art. 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 |
Solo and two-person exhibitions
2022 Tineke Bruijnzeels / Cally Trench: Exploring inside the box, Cornerstone Arts Centre, Didcot |
Group exhibitions
2024 Everything in the Garden, Spencer House Gallery, Tetbury |
2019 FiLiA Arts 2019, Atelier Tammam, London |
2009 Salisbury Open Drawing Exhibition, Salisbury Arts Centre |
1999 Printmakers Council - Open Biennale, Whiteley's Gallery, London |
1989 Christmas Show, Holland Gallery, London |
Board games played
2024 Fun things to do when you're dead too, Cambridge City Crematorium, 11th May 2024 (curated by Dying for Life) |
2019 In Dialogue 2019, Déda, Derby, 19th November 2019
(conference convened by Heather Connelly and Rhiannon Jones) |
2009 Cally Trench's Board Games as part of The Home Delivery, Oxford, 4th November 2009
(curated by ArtWash) |
Films festivals and screenings
2024 Spark Micro-Short Film Festival (USA). Official Selection, and online screening on the Micromania Channel. [Dancing, Twenty Objects from a Sixties Childhood] |
2023 Minute Madness Toronto (Canada). Official Selection and Honourable Mention, with live screening at Naturlandia Juice Bar, Toronto, on Thursday 30th November 2023. [Twenty Objects from a Sixties Childhood in Sixty Seconds] |
2022 MicroActs 13 - Artist Film Screenings (UK). Official Selection, and live screening at Hotel Elephant, London, on Friday 9th December 2022. [Burial] |
2021 Newcastle International Short Film Festival (Australia). Official Selection, and live screening in the 'Indi Animation Arvo' at The Royal Exchange Hybrid Performance Space & Cinema, Newcastle, NSW, Australia, on Sunday 12th December 2021. [Doors] |
2019 Stand Up Cinema: Silent Films (UK). Live screening at Rising Sun Arts Centre, Reading, on Friday 20th September 2019. [Doors, Nick in Conversation, Screaming Goddess, Horizontal Lines, Circles, A follower of holy and godly matrons, Undressing Nationality] |
Artist's books exhibited
2024 Bookface Chapter 15, Rising Sun Arts Centre, Reading |
2019 BBruno: From this to there and other recent books at VOLUMES, Zürich [WE SHALL MEET AGAIN] |
2009 AMBruno at the 13th International Artists' Book Fair, University of Leeds [An Emotional Atlas of Friars Square and others] |
Performances
2019 Faithful and Obedient with Philip Lee, performance during the Small Publishers' Fair, 16th November 2019 at Conway Hall, London Other projects2021 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 |
Work in collectionsCally Trench's artist's books are in the collections of the British Library [Tapping Score, VU Meter, Marginal Notes on Simon, A follower of godly and holy matrons, Book-Wing, International Day]; the Tate, London [Tapping Score, VU Meter, Remarkable Bookshelf]; the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, London [Tapping Score, Blue Home Grown]; Ravensbourne University, London [Cemetery Botany, International Day, An Emotional Atlas of Friars Square, Start and End Paper]; Chelsea College of Arts (UAL) [A follower of godly and holy matrons]; Kunstbibliothek, Berlin [A follower of godly and holy matrons, International Day]; Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore [Book-Wing, International Day]; Bibliotheca Librorum Apud Artificem, Library for the Artist's Book, Sydney [Twenty-five Wrought Iron Front Gates]; the Bodleian Library, Oxford [WE SHALL MEET AGAIN, Marginal Notes on Simon]; Winchester School of Art Library [Marginal Notes on Simon, Book-Wing, VU Meter]; 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. |
PublicationsBook2021 Cally Trench. 105 Artists' Hands: Touch Tell Create. Design Jane Glennie. Publ. Peculiarity Press. July 2021. |
Talks and interviews about own work
2023 Cally Trench: Artists Filmmaker Q&A Corner in The MicroActs Newsletter, September 2023. 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. Art history talks
2024 Cally Trench: Lely or not Lely: 'Moses Tryon' and 'Lord Wharton and family'. Illustrated Art Collection talk at Wycombe Museum, 12th May 2024 and 5th September 2024 Reviews, catalogues and catalogue essays
2023 Annie Rapstoff, Monika Tobel and Cally Trench. In The Likeness of Birds exhibition guide, with original writings by and about the artists 2023 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. |