Emanuel von Baeyer Gallery is pleased to announce a new exhibition:

Cas Campbell: Under the Coral Sea

Drinks reception:
 18 Cecil Court, London WC2N 4HE
6–8 pm, Thursday 21st May 2026

Cas Campbell (b. 1995 in New Zealand) is an artist exploring evolutionary and ancient history, mythology, queer culture through sculpture. In Under the Coral Sea she metaphorises marine and terrestrial natural systems to reveal the flimsiness of social, societal, political binary systems.

Campbell draws from familiar influences like ecology and deep time - here, the megafauna of the late Carboniferous period - as well as new fonts of inspiration: Patti Smith's poetic biography of Robert Mapplethorpe, The Coral Sea, and Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Smith's Mapplethorpe and Verne's enigmatic Captain Nemo are characters who reject or are exiled from the mores (or should we say morays?) of society - exiles, explorers. As Nemo declares, 'I am not what you call a civilised man! I have done away with society entirely'. In their search for utopias, or for freedom from restriction, they must withstand unimaginable pressures (social or barometric), and create armoured shells - the hull of the Nautilus or the protective shield of performative identity. The sculptures which Campbell discovers under the Coral Sea are likewise the dredged up denizens of lost utopias who, by evolution, adaptation or performance, strikingly construct their own means of survival.

Holding an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art (2022) and a BA from the University of Brighton (2018). She is the recipient of bursaries from Arts Council England (2018) and A-N (2025), and was shortlisted for the John Ruskin Prize (2026) and the RBA Rising Stars Award (2025).

We are delighted to be displaying various new works by Campbell, alongside our display of the works of Carel de Nerée tot Babberich.