Close By brings together the work of Phoebe Hughes and Abi Box, two painters whose practices intersect through a shared attentiveness to landscape, flora, and the steady, observational processes that shape their work. While both artists’ active printmaking practices initially drew them together, the influence of print appears here less as a direct technique and more as an undercurrent—surfacing in the subtle repetition of forms, the layering of marks, and the sensitivity to light that threads through their canvases.
Hughes and Box approach the act of painting layer by layer, though often through contrasting working methods: Hughes, echoing the discipline of screenprinting, builds her images through calibrated layers that align with careful intention; Box, recalling the fluidity of monoprinting, embraces a more intuitive process, allowing layers to drift, merge, and find their own edges. Despite these differing approaches, both artists remain attuned to place and to the ways we move through, and often overlook, the environments that surround us.
Throughout the exhibition, there is also a sensibility in the work that gestures toward what has long been described as a ‘Bermuda light,’ with its glare and flare, its capacity to wash forms out or sharpen them into focus. Box and Hughes allow this light to push and pull their focus, to continually negotiate their subject, their gaze; reminding them to consider, and us to appreciate, what is kept, close, and what passes just, by.
Key Dates:
Opening Reception: Thursday, Dec 4 | 5:30 – 7pm
Artist Talk: Thursday, Dec 11 | 5:30 – 7pm
Exhibition Dates: Thursday, Dec 4, 2025 – Saturday, Jan 10, 2026
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