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5 Brewer Street
Oxford
OX1 1QN
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Oxford Festival of the Arts
@ Pembroke JCR Art Gallery, Trinity 2025
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WHAT IS YOUR OXFORD?
OXFORD FESTIVAL OF THE ARTS – PHOTO OXFORD – OXFORDSHIRE ARTWEEKS
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Saturday 3rd May - Sunday 11th May
Weekdays 4pm-7pm
Weekends 11am-4pm
This exhibition is curated from chosen photographs received in answer to an open call. These stills offer a fascinating insight into what Oxford means to those who live in or around the city, or have a special connection to Oxford. Abstract, figurative, representational or unexpected they illustrate many possible ways of seeing our city, its people, the emotions it elicits, and the thoughts it triggers. One should expect a touch of humour, too.
JAMES GEMMILL: IN FLUX
OXFORD FESTIVAL OF THE ARTS
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Friday 16th May - Saturday 24th May
Weekdays 4pm-7pm
Weekends 11am-4pm
One of the characteristics of my paintings is that they are thickly layered. This is because I tend to paint over many of my images, sometimes discarding the first one altogether when I doubt that it has produced the result that I intended. Painting over previous pieces is, in a sense, analogous to how we live. We think that we make a new start with each new day, but we carry our experiences and circumstances with us. We each have histories. For me, working on my previous art is working on creative history. The images, shapes, colours and textures from previous pieces are crucial in the outcome of the final piece. This process of deconstruction and rebuilding is how I work. Of course, the hope is always that the final piece will be better, will say more, say enough… but even if they are not perceptible as images vestiges of the earlier versions or underpaintings are indelibly there – an emotion, a fragment of my time, a moment from a forgotten day. - James Gemmill
ERICA LONGFELLOW: OXFORD INVERTED
OXFORD FESTIVAL OF THE ARTS
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Tuesday 27th May - Sunday 1st June
Weekdays 4pm-7pm
Weekends 11am-4pm
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being so slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all
Gerald Manley Hopkins, ‘Binsey Poplars’
The images in this exhibition aim to prick our vision of Oxford’s magnificent places and spaces. Each is reflected, rotated, viewed through fog or stained glass. They reframe the sights of our city that are captured over and over but seldom, looked at with seeing eyes. They encourage attention to detail, shape, pattern, colour, contemplation, reflection.
– Revd Dr Erica Longfellow
