In 2026, the Painter Ellie Breeze and I co-curated a joint exhibition titled ‘The Wedding of Ellie & Sid’ which was held at Cambridge Artworks, from May 29th to May 30th with a private view on May 28th.
Both working with the photographic object as source material, the exhibition bought our respective works together for the first time, with my archival approach meeting Ellie’s personal and populated paintings.
Ellie and I had previously worked together at Motion Sickness Project Space, which Ellie ran in Cambridge between 2019 and 2021 with fellow artists Denise Kehoe and Arabella Marsh-Hilfiker, which showcased emerging artists from around the UK.
© Sid White-Jones - Wedding cake, opening event.
© Sid White-Jones - Courtyard view, opening event.
Exhibition text:
“A veil is lifted over A church bell tolls. A curtain is pulled aside. A home alarm sounds.
Dive into any family photo album and you’ll likely come across a series of snaps taken at the wedding of a family friend or relative. Both Ellie and Sid are drawn to the theme as an entry point to the past, blending images pulled from their own family albums alongside anonymous photos that have been discarded over time and listed on eBay.
For Ellie, weddings and other occasions allow her to reflect on the middle England of her childhood, often through the lens of her mother’s camera lens. Using a photo she feels connected to as a starting point, she disrupts a simple or sentimental reading of the image by layering other elements over the top. These are usually pulled from an alphabet of regular visual references - cakes, topiary hedges and dogs regularly feature. These objects fulfil a dual purpose: they mimic the transparent
photographic slides that Ellie works with, exploring the relationship between painting, photography and sculpture; at the same time, they often allude to second meanings, referencing slang terms for women. Ellie weaves in other cultural references - the Manson girls on their way to trial, the prim white gloves of girl guides, Henry VIII’s sixth wife, Katherine Parr, as portrayed by Alicia Vikander in the 2023 film Firebrand - to explore societal structures and the way humans organise ourselves.
Meanwhile, Sid reconstructs archival objects into weathered memorials of both lived and anticipated loss, examining how communal rituals, inherited expectations and systems of social observation are both preserved and eroded across generations. Drawing from wedding photography, found signage and domestic artefacts, he questions the kindness with which the communal hand is extended, shifting ideas of schemes such as Neighbourhood Watch away from collective protection and towards social scrutiny, gossip and the presence and pressure of watching eyes. A language of concealment carries across his works. In Veil, ivory tulle is embedded in the same plane as the image itself, while Bridesmaids preserves fragments of confetti beneath its surface. Elsewhere, sixpences are concealed entirely from view, slipped into the gaps between the stretcher bars and canvas, nodding to the archaic tradition of hiding a gifted sixpence inside the bride’s shoe for the duration of her wedding day.
For both artists, photographic images are never fixed and painting provides the space and the time to consider how they might be re-encountered.”
About Ellie Breeze:
Eleanor Breeze is an artist living and working in Cambridge. In 2016 she was shortlisted for the Marmite Prize for Painting V, and the following year she exhibited in the Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition, which toured to Newcastle and London. Other exhibitions have included Emergency at Aspex Gallery, Bloc Projects Members’ Show 2018 at Bloc Projects, Sheffield, and The Cambridge Show, Kettle’s Yard (2019). Her solo show, Home Today, Home Tomorrow, took place in 2021 at Broadway Gallery, Letchworth. She is also one of the founders of Motion Sickness, an artist collective formed in 2018 who launched Motion Sickness Project Space as a contemporary art space for emerging artists in Cambridge in 2019.
About Cambridge Artworks:
Founded in 1994, Cambridge Artworks is an artist-run co-operative of 18 artists' studios within a former cabinet-maker's workshop in central Cambridge. In addition to the studios, the building houses a gallery for exhibitions, workshops and taught courses. Also on the grounds is a bright blue bespoke caravan studio, which is used by visiting artists during our annual summer residencies.
An article on the exhibition ‘Art Imitates Love’ was also featured in The Cambridge Independent, which can be read here.
For more info on Ellie Breeze and Cambridge Artworks visit -
W: www.eleanorbreeze.com / www.cambridgeartworks.com
IG: @eleanor.breeze / @cambridge.artworks
Special Thanks -
To Ellie, for both your friendship and your excitement at working together, to Rachel at Cambridge Artworks, for your help in facilitating the exhibition and to all who joined us for our opening.