I made it to Babylon Arts’ Gallery in Ely, Cambridgeshire, on a cold crisp January weekend in time to see the Winter Open Exhibition, dubbed by the Gallery as ‘Small… but perfectly formed’ because all work submitted could not exceed 40 cm x 40 cm. I wasn’t the only one visiting, it seemed like everyone and their dog (a lovely border collie) had come to visit the exhibition – which made it very busy.
Located on the picturesque riverside in Ely, Babylon Arts is an independent arts development charity run by ADEC (Arts Development in East Cambridgeshire). We have an enviable reputation for delivering a high quality, wide ranging programme of visual art, film, live events and significant education and community based projects in Ely and beyond.
Babylon Arts (2023)
The idea for this exhibition was to display a greater range of pieces at affordable prices and I was blown away by the colours and sheer variety of the 300 pieces of artwork on show from over 80 artists. If you wanted to buy a piece you could take it away with you at the point of sale, handy for tourists but this did leave a blank space on the wall, which was a shame for the next visitors coming to see the exhibition.
It was a very welcoming gallery and I had company looking around too, Emma, Maria and Rina. I want to say a special thank you to Maria (who is a local), for physically taking my artwork to Babylon Arts as I could not travel down for the submission days.
I had four pieces of artwork on display and for sale: ‘Abstract X’, an abstract geometric painting completed in 2022 and some of my new harmonograph pieces: ‘Layers’, ‘Circular Movement in Black’ and ‘Blue Shards’.
I understand the exhibition has been a great success and attracted alot of visitors to the gallery, more than expected. The exhibition runs until 29 January 2023, so if you are in the area go have a look.
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Gillian Hebblewhite 
Lovely work, Gillian. Incidentally, what is a harmonograph?
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Thanks margarethallfineart. That is a very good question – it’s a contraption / machine that has pendulums which swing to help to create different geometric shapes, often called Lissajous curves. ONe pendulum holds the paper and the others hold the pen. I have a two pendulum harmonograph and I manipulate the pendulums while they are in motion, then stopping and drawing the next shape over that one. The set up takes a while and the drawing process is pretty hard to control… which means every piece is a one off but the failure rate is high, lol. I’m going to write a blog on harmonographs and show some of my recent harmonograph work in one place… Hopefully you will like it 🙂
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