A city divided in many ways, Oxford struggles with the historical legacy of town and gown, with exorbitant property pricing, educational inequality, traffic and road safety issues, and, at times, misguided regeneration.
This exhibition includes work by six local artists looking at themes of division and connection in Oxford and hopes to bring greater understanding of the issues residents face as well as suggesting some solutions on how tensions can be eased, connections established, and the city improved for all.
Paper Artist Kate Hipkiss explores the lines that both divide and connect us in her work altering maps and books. She also captures residents’ personal reflections on living in Oxford, bringing them together in an installation of paper houses into which she has cut their handwritten words. Stories of individual connections with the city are seen amongst multiple voices, capturing a sense of the collective.
In Postcards from the Edge, Deborah Pill uses postcards to investigate times of rapid social and technological change in Oxford. Her postcards look both backwards and forwards to reflect the changing dynamic across the city, exploring ideas of belonging and access, deconstruction and reconstruction, and physical boundaries such as the Cutteslowe Wall.
Using the postcard, a personal, handwritten connection that transcends both postcode borders and social boundaries, she looks at what connects and divides us and how those barriers can be crossed.
Artist Katie Taylor explores the breakdown of social systems and the often invisible crisis of hidden homelessness in Oxford. Her work delves into the breakdown of close-knit communities, where the “fabric of society” is held together by fragile connections. Through her wider art practice, Taylor seeks to restore a sense of care and dignity to those who have been pushed to the margins, aiming to rehumanizing them within the collective consciousness.
Emmett Casley’s work often draws on the impact of industry – and its loss – on a community. In Oxford, a city with high property prices and a housing shortage, there is little opportunity for the physical history of its industrial past to remain. Emmett’s work considers what remains – memories of previous lives and past communities that did not revolve around cloisters and quads, but around factories and industry.
Photographer Etain O’Carroll explores the contentious issue of Oxford’s LTNs and how their implementation has sown division in local communities. Examining the rhetoric that surrounds the debate, she reflects on the impact of media reporting, online forums, social media, and conversations with residents, as she attempts to understand the real issues at stake and how listening better might help us all to build bridges rather than divides.
Artist Lilli Tranborg asks us to consider if wildlife can live and thrive in a growing city? Designed with humans in mind, city infrastructure supports human activity and enforces ownership divisions while at the same time disrupting wildlife corridors and territories. By questioning the status quo, Lilli Tranborg’s works are intended to reimagine Oxford as a city where wildlife and humans are equally considered in harmoniously shared spaces.
Meet the Artists and Panel Discussion
Wednesday 2 April 6.30 – 8pm
