Viewing articles tagged with 'Oxford'

Modern Art Oxford, 30 Pembroke Street, Oxford OX1 1BP

Johanna Unzueta: Tools for Life

Anthropologists have long believed that the use and development of tools has played a key role in the evolution of humankind. Tools and their mechanisation have contributed to the advancement of agriculture, industrialisation and modernisation. Over the last two decades, New York-based, Chilean-born artist Johanna Unzueta has explored the impact of these technological advancements on labour and the human condition, particularly in relation to nature. Her new exhibition ‘Tools for Life’, at Modern Art Oxford (temporarily closed), brings together a body of work composed of large-scale felt sculptures, wearable garments, a Super-8 film shot in a Chilean textile factory, a wall mural and a selection of free-standing geometric drawings. Review by Alex White

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Ashmolean Museum, Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PH

Jeff Koons

There’s a frustrating quote from Jeff Koons in the catalogue accompaniment to a new exhibition of his artwork at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. “I’ve tried to make work,” it says, “that any viewer, no matter where they came from […] would have to say that on some level “Yes, I like it.” If they couldn’t do that, it would only be because they had been told they were not supposed to.” Review by Rowland Bagnall

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Ashmolean Museum, Beaumont St, Oxford OX1 2PH

Spellbound

Spellbound is an exploration of meaning; instead of being disturbing for the reasons one might expect - it is in fact rather sad - it conjures a world where individuals struggle to guard against misfortune - to use the only defence they have against loss - that of magical thinking; and it becomes evident that we still possess that thought process today: in the form of the lovers’ padlocks cut from Leeds Centenary Bridge - a contemporary act of ritualistic magic, still existing in a western secular society. Review by Paul Black

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New College, Oxford, Holywell St, Oxford OX1 3BN

Emily Young

Born into a family of writers, artists and politicians, British Sculptor Emily Young found an affinity to sculpting from an early age; influenced by her grandmother, the sculptor Kathleen Scott, a colleague of Auguste Rodin and widow of the explorer Captain Scott of the Antarctic. Review by Paul Black

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Ashmolean Museum, Beaumont Street, Oxford, England

America’s Cool Modernism

Above all, in America’s Cool Modernism at the Ashmolean Museum, the absence of human presence in the artworks betrays an anxiety towards the place of people in an increasingly mechanised world. I found myself thinking about the photographs of Detroit that surfaced several years ago, showing the derelict buildings and factories that remain in the wake of the city’s bankruptcy. Review by Rowland Bagnall

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Modern Art Oxford, 30 Pembroke St, Oxford OX1 1BP

Cinthia Marcelle: The Family in Disorder: Truth or Dare

Upon entering the upper gallery of Modern Art Oxford, there is something slightly reminiscent of an art foundation course exhibition in 'The Family in Disorder: Truth or Dare' (2018), an installation of 'exploded' materials, as if students had been asked to explore those materials, languages, and meanings, resulting in a rather haphazard assemblage. Review by Paul Black

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Modern Art Oxford, 30 Pembroke St, Oxford OX1 1BP

Hannah Ryggen: Woven Histories

Six years before her death in 1970, Ryggen became the first female artist to represent Norway at the Venice Biennale, and, in more recent years, has been the subject of several important retrospectives. As the relationship between politics and the public continues to find its twenty-first century feet, the uncompromising boldness of Ryggen’s tapestries, seen in her current exhibition, Woven Histories, at Modern Art Oxford, and their gentle interrogation of questions concerning nationality, identity, inequality and storytelling seem all too strangely close to home. Review by Rowland Bagnall

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Modern Art Oxford, 30 Pembroke Street, Oxford, OX1 1BP

Lubaina Himid: Invisible Strategies

Opening the day following the inauguration of President Trump, Lubaina Himid’s exhibition at Modern Art Oxford comes at a significant moment. Yet it must be remembered that as an artist, curator and self-described ‘political strategist,’ Himid has worked tirelessly throughout her practice over the last 30 years to highlight the implicit and systemic racial exclusion within British art institutions and society.

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