It’s all going on in Summertown as Oxfordshire Artweeks kicks off on May 3, with more than 60 artists taking part in 25 venues, Oxford City featuring in the first week.
Take Isabella Figueiredo, a young artist who is bringing her Bargello works, a Florentine form of embroidery, to Oxfordshire Artweeks for the first time. https://www.artweeks.org/v/isabella-figueiredo
Exhibiting in the heart of Summertown in a delightful gallery-cum-studio tucked off the main High Street, Isabella is showing her new work alongside that of renowned jeweller Tess Blenkinsopp.
Isabella explains: “I have become obsessed with the colourful and structured nature of Bargello, which my new body of work explores in form, palette and perspective. It’s a very time-consuming medium where the Brazilian-inspired embroideries fill the bold, rigid canvases without me knowing what the final image is until it’s finished.”
Tess, who works in sleek silver and dazzling chunky colour, as featured in Tate Modern and Hepworth Wakefield, says: “Izzy Figuieredo’s bright embroideries complement the colours of my fused glass, sea glass, murano glass and various other materials.” A great combination then! https://www.tessblenkinsop.co.uk/
There’s more great colour at The North Wall with a retrospective exhibition by Marjorie Collins, celebrating 50 years of her art. Having moved to Oxford in 1975, her show depicts selected works from across the decades, bursting with exuberant, bold colours, strong shapes, lines and patterns, inspired by the bright colour, and larger-than-life ethos of her American childhood.
Marjorie uses a tonal approach, each work beginning as a monochrome piece before she adds her trademark strong colour in vibrant primary colours, her still life works almost sculptural: “I’m interested in abstract shapes, although I don’t paint in an abstract way. It is very difficult to paint something complex so simply,” she says.
In contrast to the still life offerings, the centrepiece of the show is of a contemporary building in Chicago painted early on in Marjorie’s career in which the reflections soften the hard-edged lines of the building: “Windows are great to paint because you see the inside, the outside and the relationship between them all on a single flat sheet of paper or canvas, which adds a dynamism and impression of movement,” she concludes. https://www.artweeks.org/v/marjorie-collins-oas
Or visit Artweeks newcomer Ayako Ono who found herself on an unexpected journey into intricate, unexpected, and beautiful tessellated origami. “The precision, patience and transformation of a single sheet of paper into mesmerising patterns fascinates me. I was drawn to the rhythmic process of folding, because origami is about structure, patience, and surprise.
“My work is deeply connected to my love for Japanese aesthetics, precision, and tradition, yet it also carries a sense of playfulness and discovery,” she says. https://www.artweeks.org/v/ayako-ono
And pop in to St Michael & All Angels Church for GROUP SIX – six professional artists taking us through evocative wood engravings, drawings of trees and landscapes and photography by Judie Waldman in this multi-media exhibition of drawing, painting, printing, sculpture, photography and textiles.. https://www.artweeks.org/v/2024/claire-christie-sadler-oas
Further down the road landscape painter Francesca Shakespeare is sharing her space with a very cherished group of people – those who have featured in her creative life, including her extended family of ceramacists, film editors, set designers, graphic artists, product designers and builders, as well as the Shakespeares – writers past and present (from the famous William to celebrated contemporary writer Nicholas), as well as her large legacy of students and collaborators. She will be exhibiting work created on a recent Painting Week at Maison Rose in South West France. https://www.artweeks.org/v/francesca-shakespeare-oas
Oxfordshire Artweeks 2025 runs from May 3-26 with more than 400 venues to visit. Find out more here https://www.artweeks.org/festival
