Think you know Oxford? Think again as this year’s annual Oxfordshire Artweeks festival continues into its third week (Saturday May 16 to Monday May 25), with lots of secret places to explore. From lesser-known chapels and contemporary university buildings to hidden-away studios which offer an in-depth insight into an artist’s practice, there’s lots to visit.
East Oxford:
An exhibition of photography by Martin Stott in the atmospheric and rarely open Bartlemas Chapel which explores this ancient Oxford hamlet and leper hospital on the 900 anniversary of its foundation and its influence on the wider culture landscape and history of Oxford. (Artweeks venue 488 www.artweeks.org/v/martin-stott)
50 Hurst Street is tucked away amongst East Oxford’s terraced streets. Packed with prints, books, maps, cards and more, this two-storey space is a working print studio with archaic machinery – it’s a rare opportunity to see 200 years worth of printing machine technology which is all still in use, including monotype casting, an automatic typecasting process that was once a mainstay process in the publishing world. There will also be a range of ceramics on show created in the Oxford ‘Dragon’ Kilns, a wood-fired ceramics project in Wytham Woods.
(Artweeks venue 506; www.artweeks.org/v/richard-lawrence-robin-wilson-ocg-rosie-fairfax-cholmeley)
Just off the Cowley Road, at 100a, a series of ‘attic garret’ workshops tucked away up iron steps close to The Plain, is home to several artist studios. Here you’ll find silversmith Stella Campion who is sharing her space with a potter, a stained glass artist, and mixed-media artist Sarah Hanner Hopwood whose moody windswept works evoke Wuthering Heights landscapes (Artweeks venue 511; www.artweeks.org/v/stella-campion)
Over on nearby Magdalen Road, three artists are exhibiting in the event room at Caper Bookshop which is accessed – like Narnia – through a door hidden in a wardrobe! On the other side of the coats, instead of a lamppost, you’ll find jewellery, bowls and containers made from paper and textiles in bold colours and patterns, sculpture inspired by the natural world and by figures or animals in paintings, clay and bronze, as well as reflective mixed media paintings recording the landscape with striking mark-making, texture and colour.
(Artweeks venue 485; www.artweeks.org/v/elizabeth-ritchie)
Next-door, at the maze-like Magdalen Road Studios you’ll get the chance to see the art and ideas of dozens of artists and makers including a classically trained Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year Finalist, Toby Michael, whose quietly emotional paintings tell the unspoken stories of people. (Artweeks venue 483; https://www.artweeks.org/v/toby-michael-oas)
You’ll also find the unexpected Irving Gallery, an alternative to the ‘white box’ approach, where owner and curator Vanessa Lacey presents a rolling exhibition programme within the domestic setting of a Victorian mid-terraced house. For Artweeks she is showing the work of Robbie Bushe, a painter known for intricately detailed, narrative-driven artworks that draw on cutaway illustration techniques as he explores fictional cityscapes, speculative histories, and social infrastructure, often with imagined characters and urban vignettes.
(Artweeks venue 521; www.artweeks.org/v/irving-gallery)
Elsewhere in the city
The prestigious Rhodes House, University of Oxford, a grade II listed Arts & Crafts gem, invites you to explore an exhibition ‘On Black Poppies (& Other Seeds)’ by their artist in residence Rebecca Pokua Korang which explores a photographic archive and responds to the theme of ‘Radical Joy.’ Korang centres the stories of Black soldiers in the WW2, in particular the colonial troops recruited by the French from their West African colonies, alongside soldiers recruited by the British from East and West Africa to fight against the Japanese in the Burma Campaign. (Artweeks venue 364; www.artweeks.org/v/rhodes-trust)
If photography floats your boat, you’ll find it on the mezzanine level of the Viñoly-designed Andrew Wiles Building (Mathematical Institute) in the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, where images by Oxford Photographers include a wide range of photographic genres including abstract, architectural, documentary, landscape, nature, and street photography. (Artweeks venue 373; www.artweeks.org/v/oxford-photographers)
Artweeks also provides an opportunity to visit the new Stephen A Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities where you will find Refik: Anadol’s Archive Dreaming, an immersive fusion of art and machine intelligence. This installation transforms a vast digital archive into a dynamic, dream-like experience using AI algorithms to reimagine millions of documents in real time, and evokes the sensation of walking through a living, thinking mind. (Artweeks venue 372; http://www.artweeks.org/v/the-schwarzman-centre)
The Jericho studio is a gloriously airy space down an alley behind a tall redbrick terrace on Walton Street where three artists Ruth Swain, Lizzy Price and Vivien Shelton – painter, ceramicist and illustrator – showing their work including some quirky – and occasionally saucy – book-related portraiture to make-you smile. (Artweeks venue 374: http://www.artweeks.org/v/ruth-swain-oas-lizzy-price-vivien-shelton-oas-ocg)
A bit of a wildcard, a curious canal boat in Wolvercote, just to the north of the bridge over the canal. Here you’ll find Karis Harrington’s art, illustration and visual storytelling encompasses magic and folklore, with a theme, this year, of Into the Nettle Patch, and it promises to be intriguing with plant lore and theatre. (Artweeks venue 425; www.artweeks.org/v/karis-harrington-karisgonegonzo)
And if you haven’t discovered it yet, Cowley is home to the Amy Surman School of Jewellery, where there’s a student exhibition on the workbenches. You’ll find everything from bead and wire kits to resin and gemstones, as well as classes in casting precious metals.
(Artweeks venue 463; http://www.artweeks.org/v/amy-surman-school-of-jewellery)
Oxfordshire Artweeks runs from May 2-25 when more than 1000 artists, makers and designers will exhibit and demonstrate in artists’ studios, pop-up galleries, glorious gardens, ancient churches, Oxford colleges and hundreds of other interesting venues. Just drop-in and explore for free. Find out more here https://www.artweeks.org
