Waving a looking glass over the finer things in life, O3 Gallery in Oxford Castle Quarter is currently housing an intricate exhibition called One Thousand Cranes highlighting work by contemporary fine artists and craftspeople working with paper. Taking the familiar sight of fancy greeting cards and the traditional and familiar craft of origami to a whole new level, the exhibition looks simply beautiful and continues until 27th April 2014. Go take a look…
Tag Archives: exhibition
Paper Ghosts and Analogue Photography in Oxford
Paper Ghosts is a photography exhibition by Kim Shaw showing at Art Jericho from 27 February to 31 March 2014… and the works in it look stunning! Some sit somewhere between soft pencil drawings, and monochrome watercolours, whilst others evoke a feeling of technical drawings, or studies of urban landscapes.
The exhibition comprises a collection of four series of photographs, you see, and each feels distinctly different, to the extent that it could be an exhibition of work by four different artists, which is interesting given that Shaw shot all of the images on a primitive analogue camera, a Holga made famous (and trendy) by Lomography and the boom in smartphone filters and apps such as Instagram and Hipstamatic.
The Old Vinyl Factory Project is a series of analogue images that gathers together works executed over the past 18 years, and in which the viewer is deserted by an audience that now largely embraces the digital world; Lilliputian Landscapes (2002) play with scale making the macro appear as micro; The Humidity Series sees Shaw explore the wild beauty of fog on Highland beaches and burns, the River Thames and Cherwell, and condensation permeating the hot houses at Kew Gardens, and Pin-hole Flowers is a classically and deconstructed series of images, presented dot by dot. Jenny Blyth, director at Art Jericho commented, “Shaw’s work is quietly beautiful, wistful yet contemporary.”
Shaw is currently a resident artist at Kew Studio, London, but despite coming from a photographically inclined family she started off life studying journalism followed by a career in advertising – perhaps it is this background or the commercial, brief-based photography of her family’s past that enables her to skip from subject to subject, style to style with such ease!?
Here’s a sample of some of the works on display at Art Jericho as part of this exhibition…
… and if this whets your appetite for analogue (which the people of Oxford seem particularly keen on at the moment following on the tail of the pretty popular, even if I do say so myself, Exposed LiveFriday that took place at the Ashmolean in July 2013, and I co-curated with Lomography London) then be sure to check out the forthcoming Oxfordshire Artweeks associated exhibition, Lo-Fi, taking place between 3 and 25 May at O3 Gallery, Gallery at the Old Fire Station and The Jam Factory, which will see aesthetic effect prioritised over digital accuracy in a series of exhibitions and workshops that will explore and celebrate creative analogue photography.
p.s. The Shop at the Old Fire Station sells some Lomo stuff if you fancy getting snappy yourself!
So excited I could pop!
Sensory Mapping
I’ve just submitted my review of Emma Moxey‘s current exhibition, All the Familiar Landmarks, to the Oxford Mail. The review will be in the paper on Thursday, and the exhibition is currently on display in the Gallery at the Old Fire Station until 30 March.
Anyway, I won’t go on about the exhibition now as you can read about it in the paper on Thursday (needless to say that it is damn good and I urge you to go see it); however, in part cap-doffing admiration, and in part confession I’d like to point people in the direction of a really great interview by Samuel Stensland (aka Mr Pint Writing) who interviewed Emma about All the Familiar Landmarks for the OFS blog… you see I’ve nicked some of her descriptions from this interview for my review – really hope that’s ok!?
In other news, discovering Emma Moxey’s work, and finding out about a recently established project called Cities & Memory that has been set up to map the real and imagined sounds of the world, I am getting toe-tinglingly excited about the potential to pull together some really brilliant artists all working in a different areas of sensory mapping.
Those artists include (but aren’t limited to):
Emma Moxey
Kate McLean – Sensory Maps
Sarah Mayhew Craddock **ahem**
Stuart Fowkes – Cities and Memory
Victoria Henshaw – Smell and the City
I’m thinking that this could make for a really interesting pan-Oxford project, potentially working in collaboration with Science Oxford, OCM, and Modern Art Oxford (only these organisations don’t know this yet! ). Watch this space!
“Our most precious moments of travel are taken home not through our luggage, not through our cameras… but through our senses.”
Anita Mendiratta, 2010
The space of literature
An exhibition by Lucas Dupin at Oxford Central Library
Continues until Friday 28 February 2014
Lucas Dupin (b. 1985) is a Brazilian visual artist with an MA in Fine Art from the School of Fine Arts of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, and a BFA from the same University.
Looking at the portfolio pages on Dupin’s website it’s clear to see that he’s an artist with an active interest in creating site-specific interventions in public spaces, both indoor and outdoor, in addition to exhibiting in traditional gallery spaces. Combine this penchant for public engagement with a deep-rooted interest in bookbinding and literature that runs alongside his practice, and it’s not surprising to find that this Brazilian artist has found himself in Oxford with an exhibition at the city’s central library.
The space of literature comprises two new works, a wall-based installation and a series of watercolours. The work derives its title from a book by the French writer Maurice Blanchot. Despite its connection to the literary practice, Dupin’s artworks invites the viewer to enter into an experience, to explore an understanding of a place where time and space are absent. Dupin is interested in creating transportative experiences that enable the viewer to enter a space where one belongs to the imagination.
Deconstructing everyday objects, Dupin’s installation at Oxford Central Library comprises of a group of old calendars where all numeric or time references are cut out. What remains, hanging on the wall, is a geometrical patterns of grids, the left over spaces of the days plus the missing parts strewn across the floor.
The other other work is a set of displaced watercolours. The paintings evoke a space of strangeness where time and space seem to be suspended.
Lucas Dupin has worked with bookbinding since 2005, developing books, and teaching courses. In 2009 he won 2nd place in the ABER (Brazilian Association of Bookbinding and Restoration) contest in the amateur category with an exhibition at São Paulo Cultural Center. He also conducted a short internship at Atelier Reliures Houdart in Paris under the guidance of Ana Utsch in 2008.
Dupin’s work has been exhibited and featured in several solo and group exhibitions in Brazil, Canada and USA. Two years ago, he won the Energias da arte Prize, an important national award focused to young artists. As part of the prize he joined an artistic residency at The Banff Centre in Canada for two months. Other highlights in his curriculum are the prizes Forestry Interactions (2010) with an artistic residency at Terra UNA Eco Village and the competition and exhibition Olheiro da arte in Rio de Janeiro.
Sarah Frances Mayhew Craddock 