Image: New Hall Art Collection, Wakefield
The Women's Art Collection will mark 40 years since it acquired its first artwork with 'What Remains', an exhibition of contemporary artists opening at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, on 23 September 2026. Running until 28 February 2027, the project takes Mary Kelly’s 'Extase' (1986) as its starting point and gathers new and archival material around questions of identity, memory and how histories are carried forward.
According to the collection, 'What Remains' celebrates the anniversary of that first acquisition through works that “activate histories as a living resource.” The exhibition aims to prompt reflection on how identities are formed, whose stories are remembered, and how art can suggest new ways of imagining the future. Rather than presenting history as fixed, the curatorial framing treats it as a continuing process shaped by artists, archives and interpretation.
Mary Kelly’s 'Extase' is central to that narrative. The work was created during Kelly’s artist residency at Murray Edwards College, then New Hall, and Kettle’s Yard in 1985–86, and the collection says it became the foundation of The Women’s Art Collection. The artwork forms part of Kelly’s larger installation 'Interim' (1984–89), a multipart project that explores women’s relationship to body, money, history and power. In the collection’s account, 'Interim' proposes the “interim” as a space of transition, uncertainty and possibility, where meanings remain open and identities continue to be shaped.
The exhibition brings together contemporary artists working across archives, personal and collective histories, and material traces of the past. Three accompanying display cases extend the show through archival material drawn from The Women’s Art Collection, Kettle’s Yard, Glasgow Women’s Library, Cambridge University Library, Cambridge Women’s Resource Centre and private collections. These materials include documents relating to Kelly’s 1985–86 residency alongside books, publications and activist ephemera used in the artists’ research.
The archival component also foregrounds feminist publishing and grassroots knowledge. The collection says the display cases will feature feminist health manuals, magazines and zines, showing the role of independent publishing, archives and collective knowledge in shaping feminist artistic practice across generations. The project therefore pairs contemporary art with documentary material rather than separating them into distinct rooms or narratives.
'What Remains' is curated by Laura Moseley, curator of The Women’s Art Collection, with editorial assistance from Elisabetta Garletti and Harriet Loffler. Exhibition design is by Sally Coleman. The exhibition is supported by Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, Griselda Pollock and Maria Sukkar. An illustrated booklet will accompany the show with contributions from Laura Moseley, Amy Tobin, Mary Kelly, Lucy Howie, Alina Khakoo and Evelyn Whorrall-Campbell, and design by Kaiya Waerea.
The exhibition is listed as taking place at Murray Edwards College, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge, CB3 0DF. The Women’s Art Collection’s current exhibition, 'Relative Ties: Mabel Nicholson, Nancy Nicholson, EQ Nicholson and Louisa Creed', runs at the same site until 6 September 2026, before 'What Remains' opens later that month.
