DUST

An exhibition of new work from Elspeth Owen, Ben Varney, and Helen Cook

September 20th & 21st 2025 11:00 am - 5:00 pm

PV Sept 20th 5:00 - 7:00 pm

And by appointment through the end of the month

This is the second in a continuing series of exhibitions put on by BV&HC on the equinoxes. We are very excited to exhibit Elspeth Owen’s work this autumn and are particularly moved by how it honours Elspeth’s relationship to another great Cambridge artist, the much missed Julia Ball.

Walkthrough

Artist Statement

You know something is real because it changes, because it grows up, because it has limits.

The spectacle pretends that so much is infinite. Unreal. Immature and treacherous. Indulging the fantasy of unending devalues everything that is not the fantasy. Life cast aside for growth.

There are ends in all things. Each one is a practice of embracing life and turning toward dust. We tend to each speck and gather dust with care.

Elspeth Owen

@elspethopen

It is an inspiration to have been invited to show work at their place with Ben Varney and Helen Cook.

My new pieces have been made in an intense period following the death of my dear friend the painter Julia Ball. The starting point was the postcards that she and I exchanged daily over many many years. How to remember without clinging on, how to destroy in order to make anew? The rectangles of card have been torn,gathered in bundles, bulged and curved into ash-containing pods. Have I made silk purses out of sow’s ears? Dust coalescing into bundles?

Some new small hoards of DUST CLUSTERS, which have the extreme fragility of unfired clay, and some DUST DELIGHTS, from long ago.

Ben Varney

There’s a transformative element interpolated into all the work I do. In the drawings something figurative is moving on to biomorphic designs. I’ve been using a mixture of intense cross hatching with broken line and loose busy line to create form and delineate, and obscure form and distort.

The paintings hold similar values. Forms are denied total completion or total degeneration. Ash and chalk and sand are mixed into the paint grounding them – giving more to the physicality. Corrosion and disintegration are embodied in the work but the processes are processes of change that could be positive or could be dangerous.

Ben’s website @benvarney

Ben Varney has been studying drawing, painting and literature in London and Cambridge since 2008. Ben’s BA is in Media and Culture and he recently graduatied from Central St. Martins with an MA in fine art.

Helen Cook

I work with my materials to find how they express themselves best, and then use their language to tell a story.

For these paintings, I’ve used very strongly granulating watercolour paint and lots of water. This allows patterns of flow and wear to be recorded as the paint particles settle into the paper, much like dust accumulates in the corners of rooms. The wear makes the image. Many of these paintings were made next to the chalk streams around Cambridgeshire.

Browse all 16 dust stream paintings

Using the paper I made from stinging nettles this year, I have typed a small number of copies of our programme on a 1959 typewriter.

Helen is an artist and community activist living in Cambridge and working towards our continued existence on a just and finite planet.

@helencook

More photos