%2C%20Daniel%20Crews-Chubb%20(2023).jpg)
Creating and Curating Conversations in Oxford's Communities
We explore our favourite contemporary art exhibitions currently showing in Oxford...
August 3, 2023
Fusion Arts Centre has long explored Oxford’s global connections by partnering with artists from the city’s local diasporas. Its Window Galleries, which line the street of Friar’s Entry, currently reframe three perspectives of African cultural heritage and the powerful narratives of the Windrush generation.
The Caribbean Living Room, a partnership between African Caribbean Kultural Heritage Initiative (ACKHI) and the BK.LUWO group, reconstructs a 1960s West Indian front room for display in a disused shop in Templars Square, Cowley. One of its collaborators, artist and lecturer Rachel Barbaresi, also presents ‘wearable archives’ in Finding Our Way, a trailed tunic which assembles post-war tourist ephemera, and the conflicting messages relayed to the Windrush generation as clothes tags: ‘Not this way, Not that way either, Maybe this way, But probably not’.
Oxford Ankara features ‘African’ textiles, cotton fabrics boldly handprinted by the batik wax resist method, with more local motifs. Students from Oxford Brookes collaborated with London-based textile designers and the Molaloche Concepts in Lagos, Nigeria. In design and distribution, they embody the two (or three)-way flows between these cities.
Back inside, Oxford’s Global Networks considers the city’s long history of global travel and exchange, by rereading texts taken from the Bodleian Library’s large archive. It’s lined with books, one jokingly remarks how Queen Elizabeth I, despite having never left England, understands letters from the emperor of Cathay (China) for she ‘speaks and understands all the languages in the world which are worthy to be spoken or understood’.
Curated in conversation with contemporary ceramics by Loraine Rutt, inscribed with facsimile drawings from Molyneux’s 1592 globe. These three-dimensional maps depict detail of Francis Drake’s 16th century circumnavigation, themselves accompanied by diary entries of the voyage. Mouth-blown, they billow in form, resembling the sails of the boats which have long travelled between our island and others.
Another caption draws attention to the Tradescants, whose ‘rare’ Asian ferns and carved fruit stones were collected through travel, and their own networks of botanists, traders, and colonists. Displayed in Lambeth, the collection was soon sold off to the Elias Ashmole, forming the core of the original Ashmolean Museum.
There, another similar installation adds contemporary narratives to the Museum’s permanent collection. Counterpoint is a conversation between the Chantrey Wall - a collection of heads of the rich and famous, many of whom derived their wealth from the sale and exploitation of enslaved Africans – and people in 21st century Oxford. Artist Mary Chamberlain draws on vellum, a material typically used to archive UK law, and pigments like coffee, saffron, and nutmeg - all colonial imports. The aspects of these faces, all drawn from the local community, are real reactions to the busts they face.
Downstairs, Ashmolean NOW commences with the first of three exhibitions, where contemporary artists explore different areas of the Museum’s broad collections. Joining the likes of Kabuki Legends in the Museum’s World in Colour season, this exhibition is the only one to feature two artists in conversation Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubb, alike only in scale, vibrant colour, and their London-based practice.
Crews-Chubbs’ Immortals series lends more obviously from the Museum, reimagining international pre-historic sculptures of non-human figures. In ‘3 Immortals (ultramarine blue)’ (2023), he blows up a tiny alabaster sculpture of ‘The Three Graces’ into grand, monstrous forms. Masks on tilted heads are recurrent motifs, a reference to 20th century primitivism somewhat skipped over.
Next to Crew-Chubbs’ Frankensteins, Yukhnovich’s works take on horror tropes too. Her first painting inspired by the collection draws from the 1976 horror film Carrie; ‘Hell is a Teenage Girl’ (2023) references the first words spoken by Needy, a protagonist in the American coming-of-age horror, Jennifer’s Body (2009). ‘Teeth’ (2023) takes its name from a 2007 film of the same name, on the trope of the toothed vagina (vagina dentata), reimagined as an abstracted Venus flytrap plant in monstrous pinks and greens.
.jpg)
Clichés of femininity and womanhood permeate Yukhnovich’s practice, particularly as perpetuated in popular culture. The artist often transforms these bodily, figurative inspirations into abstract paintings; here, she was particularly drawn to the Dutch and Flemish still lifes of Gallery 48.
Colour - hot, wet, bloody, sticky - characterises her practice. ‘Carcass’ (2023), her first painting in response to the collection, culminates with an 18th century flower painting by Jan van Huysum and, two hundred years later, the flayed beef bones depicted by Chaïm Soutine (recently represented in yet another conversation, at the Hastings Contemporary).
But her bloodiest works are surprisingly vegetarian; the paint coated thickly in response to photographs of baked beans, creating a thoroughly sticky sensation for the eyes. This combination of ‘masters’ and everyday inspirations - and equal importance granted to each - suggests an artist grounded in her practice, something confirmed by her tongue-in-cheek titles.
It’s impossible not to love looking at these works; yet Lena Fritsch’s refreshing curation – and surprising approach, displaying them in reverse chronological order – also makes their abstract forms more accessible. Here, they are afforded the context and captions so often deprived of them in their typical white cube and commercial gallery hangs.
It only highlights how, as much as contemporary artists might draw from permanent collections, a meticulous, careful museum can also serve them too – a conversation in curation which continues.
The Windrush Exhibition is on view at Fusion Arts Window Galleries through summer 2023.
Oxford's Global Networks is on view at the Weston Library, part of the Bodleian Libraries, until 27 August 2023.
Counterpoint is on view at the Ashmolean Museum until 12 November 2023.
Ashmolean NOW: Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubbs is on view at the Ashmolean Museum until 14 January 2024.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app with each exhibition you visit!
Fusion Arts Centre has long explored Oxford’s global connections by partnering with artists from the city’s local diasporas. Its Window Galleries, which line the street of Friar’s Entry, currently reframe three perspectives of African cultural heritage and the powerful narratives of the Windrush generation.
The Caribbean Living Room, a partnership between African Caribbean Kultural Heritage Initiative (ACKHI) and the BK.LUWO group, reconstructs a 1960s West Indian front room for display in a disused shop in Templars Square, Cowley. One of its collaborators, artist and lecturer Rachel Barbaresi, also presents ‘wearable archives’ in Finding Our Way, a trailed tunic which assembles post-war tourist ephemera, and the conflicting messages relayed to the Windrush generation as clothes tags: ‘Not this way, Not that way either, Maybe this way, But probably not’.
Oxford Ankara features ‘African’ textiles, cotton fabrics boldly handprinted by the batik wax resist method, with more local motifs. Students from Oxford Brookes collaborated with London-based textile designers and the Molaloche Concepts in Lagos, Nigeria. In design and distribution, they embody the two (or three)-way flows between these cities.
Back inside, Oxford’s Global Networks considers the city’s long history of global travel and exchange, by rereading texts taken from the Bodleian Library’s large archive. It’s lined with books, one jokingly remarks how Queen Elizabeth I, despite having never left England, understands letters from the emperor of Cathay (China) for she ‘speaks and understands all the languages in the world which are worthy to be spoken or understood’.
Curated in conversation with contemporary ceramics by Loraine Rutt, inscribed with facsimile drawings from Molyneux’s 1592 globe. These three-dimensional maps depict detail of Francis Drake’s 16th century circumnavigation, themselves accompanied by diary entries of the voyage. Mouth-blown, they billow in form, resembling the sails of the boats which have long travelled between our island and others.
Another caption draws attention to the Tradescants, whose ‘rare’ Asian ferns and carved fruit stones were collected through travel, and their own networks of botanists, traders, and colonists. Displayed in Lambeth, the collection was soon sold off to the Elias Ashmole, forming the core of the original Ashmolean Museum.
There, another similar installation adds contemporary narratives to the Museum’s permanent collection. Counterpoint is a conversation between the Chantrey Wall - a collection of heads of the rich and famous, many of whom derived their wealth from the sale and exploitation of enslaved Africans – and people in 21st century Oxford. Artist Mary Chamberlain draws on vellum, a material typically used to archive UK law, and pigments like coffee, saffron, and nutmeg - all colonial imports. The aspects of these faces, all drawn from the local community, are real reactions to the busts they face.
Downstairs, Ashmolean NOW commences with the first of three exhibitions, where contemporary artists explore different areas of the Museum’s broad collections. Joining the likes of Kabuki Legends in the Museum’s World in Colour season, this exhibition is the only one to feature two artists in conversation Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubb, alike only in scale, vibrant colour, and their London-based practice.
Crews-Chubbs’ Immortals series lends more obviously from the Museum, reimagining international pre-historic sculptures of non-human figures. In ‘3 Immortals (ultramarine blue)’ (2023), he blows up a tiny alabaster sculpture of ‘The Three Graces’ into grand, monstrous forms. Masks on tilted heads are recurrent motifs, a reference to 20th century primitivism somewhat skipped over.
Next to Crew-Chubbs’ Frankensteins, Yukhnovich’s works take on horror tropes too. Her first painting inspired by the collection draws from the 1976 horror film Carrie; ‘Hell is a Teenage Girl’ (2023) references the first words spoken by Needy, a protagonist in the American coming-of-age horror, Jennifer’s Body (2009). ‘Teeth’ (2023) takes its name from a 2007 film of the same name, on the trope of the toothed vagina (vagina dentata), reimagined as an abstracted Venus flytrap plant in monstrous pinks and greens.
Clichés of femininity and womanhood permeate Yukhnovich’s practice, particularly as perpetuated in popular culture. The artist often transforms these bodily, figurative inspirations into abstract paintings; here, she was particularly drawn to the Dutch and Flemish still lifes of Gallery 48.
Colour - hot, wet, bloody, sticky - characterises her practice. ‘Carcass’ (2023), her first painting in response to the collection, culminates with an 18th century flower painting by Jan van Huysum and, two hundred years later, the flayed beef bones depicted by Chaïm Soutine (recently represented in yet another conversation, at the Hastings Contemporary).
But her bloodiest works are surprisingly vegetarian; the paint coated thickly in response to photographs of baked beans, creating a thoroughly sticky sensation for the eyes. This combination of ‘masters’ and everyday inspirations - and equal importance granted to each - suggests an artist grounded in her practice, something confirmed by her tongue-in-cheek titles.
It’s impossible not to love looking at these works; yet Lena Fritsch’s refreshing curation – and surprising approach, displaying them in reverse chronological order – also makes their abstract forms more accessible. Here, they are afforded the context and captions so often deprived of them in their typical white cube and commercial gallery hangs.
It only highlights how, as much as contemporary artists might draw from permanent collections, a meticulous, careful museum can also serve them too – a conversation in curation which continues.
The Windrush Exhibition is on view at Fusion Arts Window Galleries through summer 2023.
Oxford's Global Networks is on view at the Weston Library, part of the Bodleian Libraries, until 27 August 2023.
Counterpoint is on view at the Ashmolean Museum until 12 November 2023.
Ashmolean NOW: Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubbs is on view at the Ashmolean Museum until 14 January 2024.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app with each exhibition you visit!
Fusion Arts Centre has long explored Oxford’s global connections by partnering with artists from the city’s local diasporas. Its Window Galleries, which line the street of Friar’s Entry, currently reframe three perspectives of African cultural heritage and the powerful narratives of the Windrush generation.
The Caribbean Living Room, a partnership between African Caribbean Kultural Heritage Initiative (ACKHI) and the BK.LUWO group, reconstructs a 1960s West Indian front room for display in a disused shop in Templars Square, Cowley. One of its collaborators, artist and lecturer Rachel Barbaresi, also presents ‘wearable archives’ in Finding Our Way, a trailed tunic which assembles post-war tourist ephemera, and the conflicting messages relayed to the Windrush generation as clothes tags: ‘Not this way, Not that way either, Maybe this way, But probably not’.
Oxford Ankara features ‘African’ textiles, cotton fabrics boldly handprinted by the batik wax resist method, with more local motifs. Students from Oxford Brookes collaborated with London-based textile designers and the Molaloche Concepts in Lagos, Nigeria. In design and distribution, they embody the two (or three)-way flows between these cities.
Back inside, Oxford’s Global Networks considers the city’s long history of global travel and exchange, by rereading texts taken from the Bodleian Library’s large archive. It’s lined with books, one jokingly remarks how Queen Elizabeth I, despite having never left England, understands letters from the emperor of Cathay (China) for she ‘speaks and understands all the languages in the world which are worthy to be spoken or understood’.
Curated in conversation with contemporary ceramics by Loraine Rutt, inscribed with facsimile drawings from Molyneux’s 1592 globe. These three-dimensional maps depict detail of Francis Drake’s 16th century circumnavigation, themselves accompanied by diary entries of the voyage. Mouth-blown, they billow in form, resembling the sails of the boats which have long travelled between our island and others.
Another caption draws attention to the Tradescants, whose ‘rare’ Asian ferns and carved fruit stones were collected through travel, and their own networks of botanists, traders, and colonists. Displayed in Lambeth, the collection was soon sold off to the Elias Ashmole, forming the core of the original Ashmolean Museum.
There, another similar installation adds contemporary narratives to the Museum’s permanent collection. Counterpoint is a conversation between the Chantrey Wall - a collection of heads of the rich and famous, many of whom derived their wealth from the sale and exploitation of enslaved Africans – and people in 21st century Oxford. Artist Mary Chamberlain draws on vellum, a material typically used to archive UK law, and pigments like coffee, saffron, and nutmeg - all colonial imports. The aspects of these faces, all drawn from the local community, are real reactions to the busts they face.
Downstairs, Ashmolean NOW commences with the first of three exhibitions, where contemporary artists explore different areas of the Museum’s broad collections. Joining the likes of Kabuki Legends in the Museum’s World in Colour season, this exhibition is the only one to feature two artists in conversation Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubb, alike only in scale, vibrant colour, and their London-based practice.
Crews-Chubbs’ Immortals series lends more obviously from the Museum, reimagining international pre-historic sculptures of non-human figures. In ‘3 Immortals (ultramarine blue)’ (2023), he blows up a tiny alabaster sculpture of ‘The Three Graces’ into grand, monstrous forms. Masks on tilted heads are recurrent motifs, a reference to 20th century primitivism somewhat skipped over.
Next to Crew-Chubbs’ Frankensteins, Yukhnovich’s works take on horror tropes too. Her first painting inspired by the collection draws from the 1976 horror film Carrie; ‘Hell is a Teenage Girl’ (2023) references the first words spoken by Needy, a protagonist in the American coming-of-age horror, Jennifer’s Body (2009). ‘Teeth’ (2023) takes its name from a 2007 film of the same name, on the trope of the toothed vagina (vagina dentata), reimagined as an abstracted Venus flytrap plant in monstrous pinks and greens.
Clichés of femininity and womanhood permeate Yukhnovich’s practice, particularly as perpetuated in popular culture. The artist often transforms these bodily, figurative inspirations into abstract paintings; here, she was particularly drawn to the Dutch and Flemish still lifes of Gallery 48.
Colour - hot, wet, bloody, sticky - characterises her practice. ‘Carcass’ (2023), her first painting in response to the collection, culminates with an 18th century flower painting by Jan van Huysum and, two hundred years later, the flayed beef bones depicted by Chaïm Soutine (recently represented in yet another conversation, at the Hastings Contemporary).
But her bloodiest works are surprisingly vegetarian; the paint coated thickly in response to photographs of baked beans, creating a thoroughly sticky sensation for the eyes. This combination of ‘masters’ and everyday inspirations - and equal importance granted to each - suggests an artist grounded in her practice, something confirmed by her tongue-in-cheek titles.
It’s impossible not to love looking at these works; yet Lena Fritsch’s refreshing curation – and surprising approach, displaying them in reverse chronological order – also makes their abstract forms more accessible. Here, they are afforded the context and captions so often deprived of them in their typical white cube and commercial gallery hangs.
It only highlights how, as much as contemporary artists might draw from permanent collections, a meticulous, careful museum can also serve them too – a conversation in curation which continues.
The Windrush Exhibition is on view at Fusion Arts Window Galleries through summer 2023.
Oxford's Global Networks is on view at the Weston Library, part of the Bodleian Libraries, until 27 August 2023.
Counterpoint is on view at the Ashmolean Museum until 12 November 2023.
Ashmolean NOW: Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubbs is on view at the Ashmolean Museum until 14 January 2024.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app with each exhibition you visit!
Fusion Arts Centre has long explored Oxford’s global connections by partnering with artists from the city’s local diasporas. Its Window Galleries, which line the street of Friar’s Entry, currently reframe three perspectives of African cultural heritage and the powerful narratives of the Windrush generation.
The Caribbean Living Room, a partnership between African Caribbean Kultural Heritage Initiative (ACKHI) and the BK.LUWO group, reconstructs a 1960s West Indian front room for display in a disused shop in Templars Square, Cowley. One of its collaborators, artist and lecturer Rachel Barbaresi, also presents ‘wearable archives’ in Finding Our Way, a trailed tunic which assembles post-war tourist ephemera, and the conflicting messages relayed to the Windrush generation as clothes tags: ‘Not this way, Not that way either, Maybe this way, But probably not’.
Oxford Ankara features ‘African’ textiles, cotton fabrics boldly handprinted by the batik wax resist method, with more local motifs. Students from Oxford Brookes collaborated with London-based textile designers and the Molaloche Concepts in Lagos, Nigeria. In design and distribution, they embody the two (or three)-way flows between these cities.
Back inside, Oxford’s Global Networks considers the city’s long history of global travel and exchange, by rereading texts taken from the Bodleian Library’s large archive. It’s lined with books, one jokingly remarks how Queen Elizabeth I, despite having never left England, understands letters from the emperor of Cathay (China) for she ‘speaks and understands all the languages in the world which are worthy to be spoken or understood’.
Curated in conversation with contemporary ceramics by Loraine Rutt, inscribed with facsimile drawings from Molyneux’s 1592 globe. These three-dimensional maps depict detail of Francis Drake’s 16th century circumnavigation, themselves accompanied by diary entries of the voyage. Mouth-blown, they billow in form, resembling the sails of the boats which have long travelled between our island and others.
Another caption draws attention to the Tradescants, whose ‘rare’ Asian ferns and carved fruit stones were collected through travel, and their own networks of botanists, traders, and colonists. Displayed in Lambeth, the collection was soon sold off to the Elias Ashmole, forming the core of the original Ashmolean Museum.
There, another similar installation adds contemporary narratives to the Museum’s permanent collection. Counterpoint is a conversation between the Chantrey Wall - a collection of heads of the rich and famous, many of whom derived their wealth from the sale and exploitation of enslaved Africans – and people in 21st century Oxford. Artist Mary Chamberlain draws on vellum, a material typically used to archive UK law, and pigments like coffee, saffron, and nutmeg - all colonial imports. The aspects of these faces, all drawn from the local community, are real reactions to the busts they face.
Downstairs, Ashmolean NOW commences with the first of three exhibitions, where contemporary artists explore different areas of the Museum’s broad collections. Joining the likes of Kabuki Legends in the Museum’s World in Colour season, this exhibition is the only one to feature two artists in conversation Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubb, alike only in scale, vibrant colour, and their London-based practice.
Crews-Chubbs’ Immortals series lends more obviously from the Museum, reimagining international pre-historic sculptures of non-human figures. In ‘3 Immortals (ultramarine blue)’ (2023), he blows up a tiny alabaster sculpture of ‘The Three Graces’ into grand, monstrous forms. Masks on tilted heads are recurrent motifs, a reference to 20th century primitivism somewhat skipped over.
Next to Crew-Chubbs’ Frankensteins, Yukhnovich’s works take on horror tropes too. Her first painting inspired by the collection draws from the 1976 horror film Carrie; ‘Hell is a Teenage Girl’ (2023) references the first words spoken by Needy, a protagonist in the American coming-of-age horror, Jennifer’s Body (2009). ‘Teeth’ (2023) takes its name from a 2007 film of the same name, on the trope of the toothed vagina (vagina dentata), reimagined as an abstracted Venus flytrap plant in monstrous pinks and greens.
Clichés of femininity and womanhood permeate Yukhnovich’s practice, particularly as perpetuated in popular culture. The artist often transforms these bodily, figurative inspirations into abstract paintings; here, she was particularly drawn to the Dutch and Flemish still lifes of Gallery 48.
Colour - hot, wet, bloody, sticky - characterises her practice. ‘Carcass’ (2023), her first painting in response to the collection, culminates with an 18th century flower painting by Jan van Huysum and, two hundred years later, the flayed beef bones depicted by Chaïm Soutine (recently represented in yet another conversation, at the Hastings Contemporary).
But her bloodiest works are surprisingly vegetarian; the paint coated thickly in response to photographs of baked beans, creating a thoroughly sticky sensation for the eyes. This combination of ‘masters’ and everyday inspirations - and equal importance granted to each - suggests an artist grounded in her practice, something confirmed by her tongue-in-cheek titles.
It’s impossible not to love looking at these works; yet Lena Fritsch’s refreshing curation – and surprising approach, displaying them in reverse chronological order – also makes their abstract forms more accessible. Here, they are afforded the context and captions so often deprived of them in their typical white cube and commercial gallery hangs.
It only highlights how, as much as contemporary artists might draw from permanent collections, a meticulous, careful museum can also serve them too – a conversation in curation which continues.
The Windrush Exhibition is on view at Fusion Arts Window Galleries through summer 2023.
Oxford's Global Networks is on view at the Weston Library, part of the Bodleian Libraries, until 27 August 2023.
Counterpoint is on view at the Ashmolean Museum until 12 November 2023.
Ashmolean NOW: Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubbs is on view at the Ashmolean Museum until 14 January 2024.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app with each exhibition you visit!
Fusion Arts Centre has long explored Oxford’s global connections by partnering with artists from the city’s local diasporas. Its Window Galleries, which line the street of Friar’s Entry, currently reframe three perspectives of African cultural heritage and the powerful narratives of the Windrush generation.
The Caribbean Living Room, a partnership between African Caribbean Kultural Heritage Initiative (ACKHI) and the BK.LUWO group, reconstructs a 1960s West Indian front room for display in a disused shop in Templars Square, Cowley. One of its collaborators, artist and lecturer Rachel Barbaresi, also presents ‘wearable archives’ in Finding Our Way, a trailed tunic which assembles post-war tourist ephemera, and the conflicting messages relayed to the Windrush generation as clothes tags: ‘Not this way, Not that way either, Maybe this way, But probably not’.
Oxford Ankara features ‘African’ textiles, cotton fabrics boldly handprinted by the batik wax resist method, with more local motifs. Students from Oxford Brookes collaborated with London-based textile designers and the Molaloche Concepts in Lagos, Nigeria. In design and distribution, they embody the two (or three)-way flows between these cities.
Back inside, Oxford’s Global Networks considers the city’s long history of global travel and exchange, by rereading texts taken from the Bodleian Library’s large archive. It’s lined with books, one jokingly remarks how Queen Elizabeth I, despite having never left England, understands letters from the emperor of Cathay (China) for she ‘speaks and understands all the languages in the world which are worthy to be spoken or understood’.
Curated in conversation with contemporary ceramics by Loraine Rutt, inscribed with facsimile drawings from Molyneux’s 1592 globe. These three-dimensional maps depict detail of Francis Drake’s 16th century circumnavigation, themselves accompanied by diary entries of the voyage. Mouth-blown, they billow in form, resembling the sails of the boats which have long travelled between our island and others.
Another caption draws attention to the Tradescants, whose ‘rare’ Asian ferns and carved fruit stones were collected through travel, and their own networks of botanists, traders, and colonists. Displayed in Lambeth, the collection was soon sold off to the Elias Ashmole, forming the core of the original Ashmolean Museum.
There, another similar installation adds contemporary narratives to the Museum’s permanent collection. Counterpoint is a conversation between the Chantrey Wall - a collection of heads of the rich and famous, many of whom derived their wealth from the sale and exploitation of enslaved Africans – and people in 21st century Oxford. Artist Mary Chamberlain draws on vellum, a material typically used to archive UK law, and pigments like coffee, saffron, and nutmeg - all colonial imports. The aspects of these faces, all drawn from the local community, are real reactions to the busts they face.
Downstairs, Ashmolean NOW commences with the first of three exhibitions, where contemporary artists explore different areas of the Museum’s broad collections. Joining the likes of Kabuki Legends in the Museum’s World in Colour season, this exhibition is the only one to feature two artists in conversation Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubb, alike only in scale, vibrant colour, and their London-based practice.
Crews-Chubbs’ Immortals series lends more obviously from the Museum, reimagining international pre-historic sculptures of non-human figures. In ‘3 Immortals (ultramarine blue)’ (2023), he blows up a tiny alabaster sculpture of ‘The Three Graces’ into grand, monstrous forms. Masks on tilted heads are recurrent motifs, a reference to 20th century primitivism somewhat skipped over.
Next to Crew-Chubbs’ Frankensteins, Yukhnovich’s works take on horror tropes too. Her first painting inspired by the collection draws from the 1976 horror film Carrie; ‘Hell is a Teenage Girl’ (2023) references the first words spoken by Needy, a protagonist in the American coming-of-age horror, Jennifer’s Body (2009). ‘Teeth’ (2023) takes its name from a 2007 film of the same name, on the trope of the toothed vagina (vagina dentata), reimagined as an abstracted Venus flytrap plant in monstrous pinks and greens.
Clichés of femininity and womanhood permeate Yukhnovich’s practice, particularly as perpetuated in popular culture. The artist often transforms these bodily, figurative inspirations into abstract paintings; here, she was particularly drawn to the Dutch and Flemish still lifes of Gallery 48.
Colour - hot, wet, bloody, sticky - characterises her practice. ‘Carcass’ (2023), her first painting in response to the collection, culminates with an 18th century flower painting by Jan van Huysum and, two hundred years later, the flayed beef bones depicted by Chaïm Soutine (recently represented in yet another conversation, at the Hastings Contemporary).
But her bloodiest works are surprisingly vegetarian; the paint coated thickly in response to photographs of baked beans, creating a thoroughly sticky sensation for the eyes. This combination of ‘masters’ and everyday inspirations - and equal importance granted to each - suggests an artist grounded in her practice, something confirmed by her tongue-in-cheek titles.
It’s impossible not to love looking at these works; yet Lena Fritsch’s refreshing curation – and surprising approach, displaying them in reverse chronological order – also makes their abstract forms more accessible. Here, they are afforded the context and captions so often deprived of them in their typical white cube and commercial gallery hangs.
It only highlights how, as much as contemporary artists might draw from permanent collections, a meticulous, careful museum can also serve them too – a conversation in curation which continues.
The Windrush Exhibition is on view at Fusion Arts Window Galleries through summer 2023.
Oxford's Global Networks is on view at the Weston Library, part of the Bodleian Libraries, until 27 August 2023.
Counterpoint is on view at the Ashmolean Museum until 12 November 2023.
Ashmolean NOW: Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubbs is on view at the Ashmolean Museum until 14 January 2024.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app with each exhibition you visit!
Fusion Arts Centre has long explored Oxford’s global connections by partnering with artists from the city’s local diasporas. Its Window Galleries, which line the street of Friar’s Entry, currently reframe three perspectives of African cultural heritage and the powerful narratives of the Windrush generation.
The Caribbean Living Room, a partnership between African Caribbean Kultural Heritage Initiative (ACKHI) and the BK.LUWO group, reconstructs a 1960s West Indian front room for display in a disused shop in Templars Square, Cowley. One of its collaborators, artist and lecturer Rachel Barbaresi, also presents ‘wearable archives’ in Finding Our Way, a trailed tunic which assembles post-war tourist ephemera, and the conflicting messages relayed to the Windrush generation as clothes tags: ‘Not this way, Not that way either, Maybe this way, But probably not’.
Oxford Ankara features ‘African’ textiles, cotton fabrics boldly handprinted by the batik wax resist method, with more local motifs. Students from Oxford Brookes collaborated with London-based textile designers and the Molaloche Concepts in Lagos, Nigeria. In design and distribution, they embody the two (or three)-way flows between these cities.
Back inside, Oxford’s Global Networks considers the city’s long history of global travel and exchange, by rereading texts taken from the Bodleian Library’s large archive. It’s lined with books, one jokingly remarks how Queen Elizabeth I, despite having never left England, understands letters from the emperor of Cathay (China) for she ‘speaks and understands all the languages in the world which are worthy to be spoken or understood’.
Curated in conversation with contemporary ceramics by Loraine Rutt, inscribed with facsimile drawings from Molyneux’s 1592 globe. These three-dimensional maps depict detail of Francis Drake’s 16th century circumnavigation, themselves accompanied by diary entries of the voyage. Mouth-blown, they billow in form, resembling the sails of the boats which have long travelled between our island and others.
Another caption draws attention to the Tradescants, whose ‘rare’ Asian ferns and carved fruit stones were collected through travel, and their own networks of botanists, traders, and colonists. Displayed in Lambeth, the collection was soon sold off to the Elias Ashmole, forming the core of the original Ashmolean Museum.
There, another similar installation adds contemporary narratives to the Museum’s permanent collection. Counterpoint is a conversation between the Chantrey Wall - a collection of heads of the rich and famous, many of whom derived their wealth from the sale and exploitation of enslaved Africans – and people in 21st century Oxford. Artist Mary Chamberlain draws on vellum, a material typically used to archive UK law, and pigments like coffee, saffron, and nutmeg - all colonial imports. The aspects of these faces, all drawn from the local community, are real reactions to the busts they face.
Downstairs, Ashmolean NOW commences with the first of three exhibitions, where contemporary artists explore different areas of the Museum’s broad collections. Joining the likes of Kabuki Legends in the Museum’s World in Colour season, this exhibition is the only one to feature two artists in conversation Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubb, alike only in scale, vibrant colour, and their London-based practice.
Crews-Chubbs’ Immortals series lends more obviously from the Museum, reimagining international pre-historic sculptures of non-human figures. In ‘3 Immortals (ultramarine blue)’ (2023), he blows up a tiny alabaster sculpture of ‘The Three Graces’ into grand, monstrous forms. Masks on tilted heads are recurrent motifs, a reference to 20th century primitivism somewhat skipped over.
Next to Crew-Chubbs’ Frankensteins, Yukhnovich’s works take on horror tropes too. Her first painting inspired by the collection draws from the 1976 horror film Carrie; ‘Hell is a Teenage Girl’ (2023) references the first words spoken by Needy, a protagonist in the American coming-of-age horror, Jennifer’s Body (2009). ‘Teeth’ (2023) takes its name from a 2007 film of the same name, on the trope of the toothed vagina (vagina dentata), reimagined as an abstracted Venus flytrap plant in monstrous pinks and greens.
Clichés of femininity and womanhood permeate Yukhnovich’s practice, particularly as perpetuated in popular culture. The artist often transforms these bodily, figurative inspirations into abstract paintings; here, she was particularly drawn to the Dutch and Flemish still lifes of Gallery 48.
Colour - hot, wet, bloody, sticky - characterises her practice. ‘Carcass’ (2023), her first painting in response to the collection, culminates with an 18th century flower painting by Jan van Huysum and, two hundred years later, the flayed beef bones depicted by Chaïm Soutine (recently represented in yet another conversation, at the Hastings Contemporary).
But her bloodiest works are surprisingly vegetarian; the paint coated thickly in response to photographs of baked beans, creating a thoroughly sticky sensation for the eyes. This combination of ‘masters’ and everyday inspirations - and equal importance granted to each - suggests an artist grounded in her practice, something confirmed by her tongue-in-cheek titles.
It’s impossible not to love looking at these works; yet Lena Fritsch’s refreshing curation – and surprising approach, displaying them in reverse chronological order – also makes their abstract forms more accessible. Here, they are afforded the context and captions so often deprived of them in their typical white cube and commercial gallery hangs.
It only highlights how, as much as contemporary artists might draw from permanent collections, a meticulous, careful museum can also serve them too – a conversation in curation which continues.
The Windrush Exhibition is on view at Fusion Arts Window Galleries through summer 2023.
Oxford's Global Networks is on view at the Weston Library, part of the Bodleian Libraries, until 27 August 2023.
Counterpoint is on view at the Ashmolean Museum until 12 November 2023.
Ashmolean NOW: Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubbs is on view at the Ashmolean Museum until 14 January 2024.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app with each exhibition you visit!
Fusion Arts Centre has long explored Oxford’s global connections by partnering with artists from the city’s local diasporas. Its Window Galleries, which line the street of Friar’s Entry, currently reframe three perspectives of African cultural heritage and the powerful narratives of the Windrush generation.
The Caribbean Living Room, a partnership between African Caribbean Kultural Heritage Initiative (ACKHI) and the BK.LUWO group, reconstructs a 1960s West Indian front room for display in a disused shop in Templars Square, Cowley. One of its collaborators, artist and lecturer Rachel Barbaresi, also presents ‘wearable archives’ in Finding Our Way, a trailed tunic which assembles post-war tourist ephemera, and the conflicting messages relayed to the Windrush generation as clothes tags: ‘Not this way, Not that way either, Maybe this way, But probably not’.
Oxford Ankara features ‘African’ textiles, cotton fabrics boldly handprinted by the batik wax resist method, with more local motifs. Students from Oxford Brookes collaborated with London-based textile designers and the Molaloche Concepts in Lagos, Nigeria. In design and distribution, they embody the two (or three)-way flows between these cities.
Back inside, Oxford’s Global Networks considers the city’s long history of global travel and exchange, by rereading texts taken from the Bodleian Library’s large archive. It’s lined with books, one jokingly remarks how Queen Elizabeth I, despite having never left England, understands letters from the emperor of Cathay (China) for she ‘speaks and understands all the languages in the world which are worthy to be spoken or understood’.
Curated in conversation with contemporary ceramics by Loraine Rutt, inscribed with facsimile drawings from Molyneux’s 1592 globe. These three-dimensional maps depict detail of Francis Drake’s 16th century circumnavigation, themselves accompanied by diary entries of the voyage. Mouth-blown, they billow in form, resembling the sails of the boats which have long travelled between our island and others.
Another caption draws attention to the Tradescants, whose ‘rare’ Asian ferns and carved fruit stones were collected through travel, and their own networks of botanists, traders, and colonists. Displayed in Lambeth, the collection was soon sold off to the Elias Ashmole, forming the core of the original Ashmolean Museum.
There, another similar installation adds contemporary narratives to the Museum’s permanent collection. Counterpoint is a conversation between the Chantrey Wall - a collection of heads of the rich and famous, many of whom derived their wealth from the sale and exploitation of enslaved Africans – and people in 21st century Oxford. Artist Mary Chamberlain draws on vellum, a material typically used to archive UK law, and pigments like coffee, saffron, and nutmeg - all colonial imports. The aspects of these faces, all drawn from the local community, are real reactions to the busts they face.
Downstairs, Ashmolean NOW commences with the first of three exhibitions, where contemporary artists explore different areas of the Museum’s broad collections. Joining the likes of Kabuki Legends in the Museum’s World in Colour season, this exhibition is the only one to feature two artists in conversation Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubb, alike only in scale, vibrant colour, and their London-based practice.
Crews-Chubbs’ Immortals series lends more obviously from the Museum, reimagining international pre-historic sculptures of non-human figures. In ‘3 Immortals (ultramarine blue)’ (2023), he blows up a tiny alabaster sculpture of ‘The Three Graces’ into grand, monstrous forms. Masks on tilted heads are recurrent motifs, a reference to 20th century primitivism somewhat skipped over.
Next to Crew-Chubbs’ Frankensteins, Yukhnovich’s works take on horror tropes too. Her first painting inspired by the collection draws from the 1976 horror film Carrie; ‘Hell is a Teenage Girl’ (2023) references the first words spoken by Needy, a protagonist in the American coming-of-age horror, Jennifer’s Body (2009). ‘Teeth’ (2023) takes its name from a 2007 film of the same name, on the trope of the toothed vagina (vagina dentata), reimagined as an abstracted Venus flytrap plant in monstrous pinks and greens.
Clichés of femininity and womanhood permeate Yukhnovich’s practice, particularly as perpetuated in popular culture. The artist often transforms these bodily, figurative inspirations into abstract paintings; here, she was particularly drawn to the Dutch and Flemish still lifes of Gallery 48.
Colour - hot, wet, bloody, sticky - characterises her practice. ‘Carcass’ (2023), her first painting in response to the collection, culminates with an 18th century flower painting by Jan van Huysum and, two hundred years later, the flayed beef bones depicted by Chaïm Soutine (recently represented in yet another conversation, at the Hastings Contemporary).
But her bloodiest works are surprisingly vegetarian; the paint coated thickly in response to photographs of baked beans, creating a thoroughly sticky sensation for the eyes. This combination of ‘masters’ and everyday inspirations - and equal importance granted to each - suggests an artist grounded in her practice, something confirmed by her tongue-in-cheek titles.
It’s impossible not to love looking at these works; yet Lena Fritsch’s refreshing curation – and surprising approach, displaying them in reverse chronological order – also makes their abstract forms more accessible. Here, they are afforded the context and captions so often deprived of them in their typical white cube and commercial gallery hangs.
It only highlights how, as much as contemporary artists might draw from permanent collections, a meticulous, careful museum can also serve them too – a conversation in curation which continues.
The Windrush Exhibition is on view at Fusion Arts Window Galleries through summer 2023.
Oxford's Global Networks is on view at the Weston Library, part of the Bodleian Libraries, until 27 August 2023.
Counterpoint is on view at the Ashmolean Museum until 12 November 2023.
Ashmolean NOW: Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubbs is on view at the Ashmolean Museum until 14 January 2024.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app with each exhibition you visit!
Fusion Arts Centre has long explored Oxford’s global connections by partnering with artists from the city’s local diasporas. Its Window Galleries, which line the street of Friar’s Entry, currently reframe three perspectives of African cultural heritage and the powerful narratives of the Windrush generation.
The Caribbean Living Room, a partnership between African Caribbean Kultural Heritage Initiative (ACKHI) and the BK.LUWO group, reconstructs a 1960s West Indian front room for display in a disused shop in Templars Square, Cowley. One of its collaborators, artist and lecturer Rachel Barbaresi, also presents ‘wearable archives’ in Finding Our Way, a trailed tunic which assembles post-war tourist ephemera, and the conflicting messages relayed to the Windrush generation as clothes tags: ‘Not this way, Not that way either, Maybe this way, But probably not’.
Oxford Ankara features ‘African’ textiles, cotton fabrics boldly handprinted by the batik wax resist method, with more local motifs. Students from Oxford Brookes collaborated with London-based textile designers and the Molaloche Concepts in Lagos, Nigeria. In design and distribution, they embody the two (or three)-way flows between these cities.
Back inside, Oxford’s Global Networks considers the city’s long history of global travel and exchange, by rereading texts taken from the Bodleian Library’s large archive. It’s lined with books, one jokingly remarks how Queen Elizabeth I, despite having never left England, understands letters from the emperor of Cathay (China) for she ‘speaks and understands all the languages in the world which are worthy to be spoken or understood’.
Curated in conversation with contemporary ceramics by Loraine Rutt, inscribed with facsimile drawings from Molyneux’s 1592 globe. These three-dimensional maps depict detail of Francis Drake’s 16th century circumnavigation, themselves accompanied by diary entries of the voyage. Mouth-blown, they billow in form, resembling the sails of the boats which have long travelled between our island and others.
Another caption draws attention to the Tradescants, whose ‘rare’ Asian ferns and carved fruit stones were collected through travel, and their own networks of botanists, traders, and colonists. Displayed in Lambeth, the collection was soon sold off to the Elias Ashmole, forming the core of the original Ashmolean Museum.
There, another similar installation adds contemporary narratives to the Museum’s permanent collection. Counterpoint is a conversation between the Chantrey Wall - a collection of heads of the rich and famous, many of whom derived their wealth from the sale and exploitation of enslaved Africans – and people in 21st century Oxford. Artist Mary Chamberlain draws on vellum, a material typically used to archive UK law, and pigments like coffee, saffron, and nutmeg - all colonial imports. The aspects of these faces, all drawn from the local community, are real reactions to the busts they face.
Downstairs, Ashmolean NOW commences with the first of three exhibitions, where contemporary artists explore different areas of the Museum’s broad collections. Joining the likes of Kabuki Legends in the Museum’s World in Colour season, this exhibition is the only one to feature two artists in conversation Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubb, alike only in scale, vibrant colour, and their London-based practice.
Crews-Chubbs’ Immortals series lends more obviously from the Museum, reimagining international pre-historic sculptures of non-human figures. In ‘3 Immortals (ultramarine blue)’ (2023), he blows up a tiny alabaster sculpture of ‘The Three Graces’ into grand, monstrous forms. Masks on tilted heads are recurrent motifs, a reference to 20th century primitivism somewhat skipped over.
Next to Crew-Chubbs’ Frankensteins, Yukhnovich’s works take on horror tropes too. Her first painting inspired by the collection draws from the 1976 horror film Carrie; ‘Hell is a Teenage Girl’ (2023) references the first words spoken by Needy, a protagonist in the American coming-of-age horror, Jennifer’s Body (2009). ‘Teeth’ (2023) takes its name from a 2007 film of the same name, on the trope of the toothed vagina (vagina dentata), reimagined as an abstracted Venus flytrap plant in monstrous pinks and greens.
Clichés of femininity and womanhood permeate Yukhnovich’s practice, particularly as perpetuated in popular culture. The artist often transforms these bodily, figurative inspirations into abstract paintings; here, she was particularly drawn to the Dutch and Flemish still lifes of Gallery 48.
Colour - hot, wet, bloody, sticky - characterises her practice. ‘Carcass’ (2023), her first painting in response to the collection, culminates with an 18th century flower painting by Jan van Huysum and, two hundred years later, the flayed beef bones depicted by Chaïm Soutine (recently represented in yet another conversation, at the Hastings Contemporary).
But her bloodiest works are surprisingly vegetarian; the paint coated thickly in response to photographs of baked beans, creating a thoroughly sticky sensation for the eyes. This combination of ‘masters’ and everyday inspirations - and equal importance granted to each - suggests an artist grounded in her practice, something confirmed by her tongue-in-cheek titles.
It’s impossible not to love looking at these works; yet Lena Fritsch’s refreshing curation – and surprising approach, displaying them in reverse chronological order – also makes their abstract forms more accessible. Here, they are afforded the context and captions so often deprived of them in their typical white cube and commercial gallery hangs.
It only highlights how, as much as contemporary artists might draw from permanent collections, a meticulous, careful museum can also serve them too – a conversation in curation which continues.
The Windrush Exhibition is on view at Fusion Arts Window Galleries through summer 2023.
Oxford's Global Networks is on view at the Weston Library, part of the Bodleian Libraries, until 27 August 2023.
Counterpoint is on view at the Ashmolean Museum until 12 November 2023.
Ashmolean NOW: Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubbs is on view at the Ashmolean Museum until 14 January 2024.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app with each exhibition you visit!
Fusion Arts Centre has long explored Oxford’s global connections by partnering with artists from the city’s local diasporas. Its Window Galleries, which line the street of Friar’s Entry, currently reframe three perspectives of African cultural heritage and the powerful narratives of the Windrush generation.
The Caribbean Living Room, a partnership between African Caribbean Kultural Heritage Initiative (ACKHI) and the BK.LUWO group, reconstructs a 1960s West Indian front room for display in a disused shop in Templars Square, Cowley. One of its collaborators, artist and lecturer Rachel Barbaresi, also presents ‘wearable archives’ in Finding Our Way, a trailed tunic which assembles post-war tourist ephemera, and the conflicting messages relayed to the Windrush generation as clothes tags: ‘Not this way, Not that way either, Maybe this way, But probably not’.
Oxford Ankara features ‘African’ textiles, cotton fabrics boldly handprinted by the batik wax resist method, with more local motifs. Students from Oxford Brookes collaborated with London-based textile designers and the Molaloche Concepts in Lagos, Nigeria. In design and distribution, they embody the two (or three)-way flows between these cities.
Back inside, Oxford’s Global Networks considers the city’s long history of global travel and exchange, by rereading texts taken from the Bodleian Library’s large archive. It’s lined with books, one jokingly remarks how Queen Elizabeth I, despite having never left England, understands letters from the emperor of Cathay (China) for she ‘speaks and understands all the languages in the world which are worthy to be spoken or understood’.
Curated in conversation with contemporary ceramics by Loraine Rutt, inscribed with facsimile drawings from Molyneux’s 1592 globe. These three-dimensional maps depict detail of Francis Drake’s 16th century circumnavigation, themselves accompanied by diary entries of the voyage. Mouth-blown, they billow in form, resembling the sails of the boats which have long travelled between our island and others.
Another caption draws attention to the Tradescants, whose ‘rare’ Asian ferns and carved fruit stones were collected through travel, and their own networks of botanists, traders, and colonists. Displayed in Lambeth, the collection was soon sold off to the Elias Ashmole, forming the core of the original Ashmolean Museum.
There, another similar installation adds contemporary narratives to the Museum’s permanent collection. Counterpoint is a conversation between the Chantrey Wall - a collection of heads of the rich and famous, many of whom derived their wealth from the sale and exploitation of enslaved Africans – and people in 21st century Oxford. Artist Mary Chamberlain draws on vellum, a material typically used to archive UK law, and pigments like coffee, saffron, and nutmeg - all colonial imports. The aspects of these faces, all drawn from the local community, are real reactions to the busts they face.
Downstairs, Ashmolean NOW commences with the first of three exhibitions, where contemporary artists explore different areas of the Museum’s broad collections. Joining the likes of Kabuki Legends in the Museum’s World in Colour season, this exhibition is the only one to feature two artists in conversation Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubb, alike only in scale, vibrant colour, and their London-based practice.
Crews-Chubbs’ Immortals series lends more obviously from the Museum, reimagining international pre-historic sculptures of non-human figures. In ‘3 Immortals (ultramarine blue)’ (2023), he blows up a tiny alabaster sculpture of ‘The Three Graces’ into grand, monstrous forms. Masks on tilted heads are recurrent motifs, a reference to 20th century primitivism somewhat skipped over.
Next to Crew-Chubbs’ Frankensteins, Yukhnovich’s works take on horror tropes too. Her first painting inspired by the collection draws from the 1976 horror film Carrie; ‘Hell is a Teenage Girl’ (2023) references the first words spoken by Needy, a protagonist in the American coming-of-age horror, Jennifer’s Body (2009). ‘Teeth’ (2023) takes its name from a 2007 film of the same name, on the trope of the toothed vagina (vagina dentata), reimagined as an abstracted Venus flytrap plant in monstrous pinks and greens.
Clichés of femininity and womanhood permeate Yukhnovich’s practice, particularly as perpetuated in popular culture. The artist often transforms these bodily, figurative inspirations into abstract paintings; here, she was particularly drawn to the Dutch and Flemish still lifes of Gallery 48.
Colour - hot, wet, bloody, sticky - characterises her practice. ‘Carcass’ (2023), her first painting in response to the collection, culminates with an 18th century flower painting by Jan van Huysum and, two hundred years later, the flayed beef bones depicted by Chaïm Soutine (recently represented in yet another conversation, at the Hastings Contemporary).
But her bloodiest works are surprisingly vegetarian; the paint coated thickly in response to photographs of baked beans, creating a thoroughly sticky sensation for the eyes. This combination of ‘masters’ and everyday inspirations - and equal importance granted to each - suggests an artist grounded in her practice, something confirmed by her tongue-in-cheek titles.
It’s impossible not to love looking at these works; yet Lena Fritsch’s refreshing curation – and surprising approach, displaying them in reverse chronological order – also makes their abstract forms more accessible. Here, they are afforded the context and captions so often deprived of them in their typical white cube and commercial gallery hangs.
It only highlights how, as much as contemporary artists might draw from permanent collections, a meticulous, careful museum can also serve them too – a conversation in curation which continues.
The Windrush Exhibition is on view at Fusion Arts Window Galleries through summer 2023.
Oxford's Global Networks is on view at the Weston Library, part of the Bodleian Libraries, until 27 August 2023.
Counterpoint is on view at the Ashmolean Museum until 12 November 2023.
Ashmolean NOW: Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubbs is on view at the Ashmolean Museum until 14 January 2024.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app with each exhibition you visit!
Fusion Arts Centre has long explored Oxford’s global connections by partnering with artists from the city’s local diasporas. Its Window Galleries, which line the street of Friar’s Entry, currently reframe three perspectives of African cultural heritage and the powerful narratives of the Windrush generation.
The Caribbean Living Room, a partnership between African Caribbean Kultural Heritage Initiative (ACKHI) and the BK.LUWO group, reconstructs a 1960s West Indian front room for display in a disused shop in Templars Square, Cowley. One of its collaborators, artist and lecturer Rachel Barbaresi, also presents ‘wearable archives’ in Finding Our Way, a trailed tunic which assembles post-war tourist ephemera, and the conflicting messages relayed to the Windrush generation as clothes tags: ‘Not this way, Not that way either, Maybe this way, But probably not’.
Oxford Ankara features ‘African’ textiles, cotton fabrics boldly handprinted by the batik wax resist method, with more local motifs. Students from Oxford Brookes collaborated with London-based textile designers and the Molaloche Concepts in Lagos, Nigeria. In design and distribution, they embody the two (or three)-way flows between these cities.
Back inside, Oxford’s Global Networks considers the city’s long history of global travel and exchange, by rereading texts taken from the Bodleian Library’s large archive. It’s lined with books, one jokingly remarks how Queen Elizabeth I, despite having never left England, understands letters from the emperor of Cathay (China) for she ‘speaks and understands all the languages in the world which are worthy to be spoken or understood’.
Curated in conversation with contemporary ceramics by Loraine Rutt, inscribed with facsimile drawings from Molyneux’s 1592 globe. These three-dimensional maps depict detail of Francis Drake’s 16th century circumnavigation, themselves accompanied by diary entries of the voyage. Mouth-blown, they billow in form, resembling the sails of the boats which have long travelled between our island and others.
Another caption draws attention to the Tradescants, whose ‘rare’ Asian ferns and carved fruit stones were collected through travel, and their own networks of botanists, traders, and colonists. Displayed in Lambeth, the collection was soon sold off to the Elias Ashmole, forming the core of the original Ashmolean Museum.
There, another similar installation adds contemporary narratives to the Museum’s permanent collection. Counterpoint is a conversation between the Chantrey Wall - a collection of heads of the rich and famous, many of whom derived their wealth from the sale and exploitation of enslaved Africans – and people in 21st century Oxford. Artist Mary Chamberlain draws on vellum, a material typically used to archive UK law, and pigments like coffee, saffron, and nutmeg - all colonial imports. The aspects of these faces, all drawn from the local community, are real reactions to the busts they face.
Downstairs, Ashmolean NOW commences with the first of three exhibitions, where contemporary artists explore different areas of the Museum’s broad collections. Joining the likes of Kabuki Legends in the Museum’s World in Colour season, this exhibition is the only one to feature two artists in conversation Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubb, alike only in scale, vibrant colour, and their London-based practice.
Crews-Chubbs’ Immortals series lends more obviously from the Museum, reimagining international pre-historic sculptures of non-human figures. In ‘3 Immortals (ultramarine blue)’ (2023), he blows up a tiny alabaster sculpture of ‘The Three Graces’ into grand, monstrous forms. Masks on tilted heads are recurrent motifs, a reference to 20th century primitivism somewhat skipped over.
Next to Crew-Chubbs’ Frankensteins, Yukhnovich’s works take on horror tropes too. Her first painting inspired by the collection draws from the 1976 horror film Carrie; ‘Hell is a Teenage Girl’ (2023) references the first words spoken by Needy, a protagonist in the American coming-of-age horror, Jennifer’s Body (2009). ‘Teeth’ (2023) takes its name from a 2007 film of the same name, on the trope of the toothed vagina (vagina dentata), reimagined as an abstracted Venus flytrap plant in monstrous pinks and greens.
Clichés of femininity and womanhood permeate Yukhnovich’s practice, particularly as perpetuated in popular culture. The artist often transforms these bodily, figurative inspirations into abstract paintings; here, she was particularly drawn to the Dutch and Flemish still lifes of Gallery 48.
Colour - hot, wet, bloody, sticky - characterises her practice. ‘Carcass’ (2023), her first painting in response to the collection, culminates with an 18th century flower painting by Jan van Huysum and, two hundred years later, the flayed beef bones depicted by Chaïm Soutine (recently represented in yet another conversation, at the Hastings Contemporary).
But her bloodiest works are surprisingly vegetarian; the paint coated thickly in response to photographs of baked beans, creating a thoroughly sticky sensation for the eyes. This combination of ‘masters’ and everyday inspirations - and equal importance granted to each - suggests an artist grounded in her practice, something confirmed by her tongue-in-cheek titles.
It’s impossible not to love looking at these works; yet Lena Fritsch’s refreshing curation – and surprising approach, displaying them in reverse chronological order – also makes their abstract forms more accessible. Here, they are afforded the context and captions so often deprived of them in their typical white cube and commercial gallery hangs.
It only highlights how, as much as contemporary artists might draw from permanent collections, a meticulous, careful museum can also serve them too – a conversation in curation which continues.
The Windrush Exhibition is on view at Fusion Arts Window Galleries through summer 2023.
Oxford's Global Networks is on view at the Weston Library, part of the Bodleian Libraries, until 27 August 2023.
Counterpoint is on view at the Ashmolean Museum until 12 November 2023.
Ashmolean NOW: Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubbs is on view at the Ashmolean Museum until 14 January 2024.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app with each exhibition you visit!
Fusion Arts Centre has long explored Oxford’s global connections by partnering with artists from the city’s local diasporas. Its Window Galleries, which line the street of Friar’s Entry, currently reframe three perspectives of African cultural heritage and the powerful narratives of the Windrush generation.
The Caribbean Living Room, a partnership between African Caribbean Kultural Heritage Initiative (ACKHI) and the BK.LUWO group, reconstructs a 1960s West Indian front room for display in a disused shop in Templars Square, Cowley. One of its collaborators, artist and lecturer Rachel Barbaresi, also presents ‘wearable archives’ in Finding Our Way, a trailed tunic which assembles post-war tourist ephemera, and the conflicting messages relayed to the Windrush generation as clothes tags: ‘Not this way, Not that way either, Maybe this way, But probably not’.
Oxford Ankara features ‘African’ textiles, cotton fabrics boldly handprinted by the batik wax resist method, with more local motifs. Students from Oxford Brookes collaborated with London-based textile designers and the Molaloche Concepts in Lagos, Nigeria. In design and distribution, they embody the two (or three)-way flows between these cities.
Back inside, Oxford’s Global Networks considers the city’s long history of global travel and exchange, by rereading texts taken from the Bodleian Library’s large archive. It’s lined with books, one jokingly remarks how Queen Elizabeth I, despite having never left England, understands letters from the emperor of Cathay (China) for she ‘speaks and understands all the languages in the world which are worthy to be spoken or understood’.
Curated in conversation with contemporary ceramics by Loraine Rutt, inscribed with facsimile drawings from Molyneux’s 1592 globe. These three-dimensional maps depict detail of Francis Drake’s 16th century circumnavigation, themselves accompanied by diary entries of the voyage. Mouth-blown, they billow in form, resembling the sails of the boats which have long travelled between our island and others.
Another caption draws attention to the Tradescants, whose ‘rare’ Asian ferns and carved fruit stones were collected through travel, and their own networks of botanists, traders, and colonists. Displayed in Lambeth, the collection was soon sold off to the Elias Ashmole, forming the core of the original Ashmolean Museum.
There, another similar installation adds contemporary narratives to the Museum’s permanent collection. Counterpoint is a conversation between the Chantrey Wall - a collection of heads of the rich and famous, many of whom derived their wealth from the sale and exploitation of enslaved Africans – and people in 21st century Oxford. Artist Mary Chamberlain draws on vellum, a material typically used to archive UK law, and pigments like coffee, saffron, and nutmeg - all colonial imports. The aspects of these faces, all drawn from the local community, are real reactions to the busts they face.
Downstairs, Ashmolean NOW commences with the first of three exhibitions, where contemporary artists explore different areas of the Museum’s broad collections. Joining the likes of Kabuki Legends in the Museum’s World in Colour season, this exhibition is the only one to feature two artists in conversation Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubb, alike only in scale, vibrant colour, and their London-based practice.
Crews-Chubbs’ Immortals series lends more obviously from the Museum, reimagining international pre-historic sculptures of non-human figures. In ‘3 Immortals (ultramarine blue)’ (2023), he blows up a tiny alabaster sculpture of ‘The Three Graces’ into grand, monstrous forms. Masks on tilted heads are recurrent motifs, a reference to 20th century primitivism somewhat skipped over.
Next to Crew-Chubbs’ Frankensteins, Yukhnovich’s works take on horror tropes too. Her first painting inspired by the collection draws from the 1976 horror film Carrie; ‘Hell is a Teenage Girl’ (2023) references the first words spoken by Needy, a protagonist in the American coming-of-age horror, Jennifer’s Body (2009). ‘Teeth’ (2023) takes its name from a 2007 film of the same name, on the trope of the toothed vagina (vagina dentata), reimagined as an abstracted Venus flytrap plant in monstrous pinks and greens.
Clichés of femininity and womanhood permeate Yukhnovich’s practice, particularly as perpetuated in popular culture. The artist often transforms these bodily, figurative inspirations into abstract paintings; here, she was particularly drawn to the Dutch and Flemish still lifes of Gallery 48.
Colour - hot, wet, bloody, sticky - characterises her practice. ‘Carcass’ (2023), her first painting in response to the collection, culminates with an 18th century flower painting by Jan van Huysum and, two hundred years later, the flayed beef bones depicted by Chaïm Soutine (recently represented in yet another conversation, at the Hastings Contemporary).
But her bloodiest works are surprisingly vegetarian; the paint coated thickly in response to photographs of baked beans, creating a thoroughly sticky sensation for the eyes. This combination of ‘masters’ and everyday inspirations - and equal importance granted to each - suggests an artist grounded in her practice, something confirmed by her tongue-in-cheek titles.
It’s impossible not to love looking at these works; yet Lena Fritsch’s refreshing curation – and surprising approach, displaying them in reverse chronological order – also makes their abstract forms more accessible. Here, they are afforded the context and captions so often deprived of them in their typical white cube and commercial gallery hangs.
It only highlights how, as much as contemporary artists might draw from permanent collections, a meticulous, careful museum can also serve them too – a conversation in curation which continues.
The Windrush Exhibition is on view at Fusion Arts Window Galleries through summer 2023.
Oxford's Global Networks is on view at the Weston Library, part of the Bodleian Libraries, until 27 August 2023.
Counterpoint is on view at the Ashmolean Museum until 12 November 2023.
Ashmolean NOW: Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubbs is on view at the Ashmolean Museum until 14 January 2024.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app with each exhibition you visit!
