Soft Bodies, Cold Machines: Exhibition Tour

Curator Pita Arreola leads an in-depth tour of Soft Bodies, Cold Machines, a new solo exhibition by artist Ambie Drew.

Join curator and arebyte's Head of Programmes, Pita Arreola, for a guided tour of Soft Bodies, Cold Machines by Ambie Drew. Through a series of newly commissioned works, Drew interrogates the collision of female identity, online commerce, and algorithms, unpacking how digital systems shape memory and the coming of age experience. The evening offers a closer look at how the works were developed, unpacking the exhibition’s themes, influences, and the use of emerging technologies.

Using interactive installations and film, the exhibition invites visitors to step into an in-between world that feels both familiar and unsettling. The spatial design draws on the warmth atmosphere of a teenage girl’s bedroom while hinting at the hollowness of commercial images created by algorithms. As a result, the galleries evoke the experience of being online as a teenage girl while invoking nostalgic references of 1990s pop culture such as vintage communication technologies and cult favourites including Sailor Moon (1992), Perfect Blue (1997), and But I’m a Cheerleader (1999).

The exhibition is open to public from 17 Apr to 2 Aug 2026, Wed-Sun 12 - 6pm.

ARTIST BIO

Ambie Drew (b. 1996) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Worcester. Her practice interrogates how digital consumerism and artificial intelligence shape the construction of gender and female identity online. Working across moving image, sculptural installation, and text, she adopts a hyper-feminised alter ego to explore the consequences of living in a heavily mediated world where the physical and digital exist in constant flux. Incorporating obsolete technologies, her work reflects on how intimacy, memory, and reality are entangled with internet culture and machine-driven desire.