OXFORD.- Modern Art Oxford opens its summer programme, Boundary Encounters, which brings together creative communities for a participatory series of new commissions, residencies, live events and a collaboratively selected archive display. Through these activities visitors will be invited to use the gallery as a space for exploration and participation as a way to create shared learning experiences with other visitors.

Boundary Encounters features new commissions from Valerie Asiimwe Amani, Julie Freeman, Harold Offeh, and Deborah Pill. Amani’s site-specific installation connects multiple perspectives and histories, featuring moving image, text and textile, celebrating community through the themes of friendship, courage, and revival. Freeman’s commission explores multiple forms of learning from the past through data gathered from the gallery’s archive.

Her sonic work encourages participation, shared experience, touch and physical exploration. Offeh’s commission centres around the creation of a pavilion featuring a work and play space. Offeh will work with a group of young people to understand what ‘encounters’ can be offered in the space, as well as thinking through their concerns, questions and interests. Pill is a sculptor, painter and photographer whose work explores aspects of place, memory and association held in objects and gestures. Pill has been commissioned to respond to her own experiences of facilitating in the gallery’s Creative Space.

During Boundary Encounters the gallery will also play host to the Creatives in Residence who will utilise the gallery space to develop their artistic practice directly with audiences. Alongside the commissions will be a collaboratively selected archival display exploring the history of public programming at Modern Art Oxford, which has long been supported by a commitment to collaboration and participation. The programme will also feature an interactive digital project exploring the way we capture moments of connection, exchange and community, allowing audiences to create their own screen-based drawings to capture their experience of visiting the gallery.

The summer programme initiates an inquiry into the small-scale interactions which take place at Modern Art Oxford through an alternative use of our gallery spaces. Key to Boundary Encounters is a spotlight on the gallery’s vital community connections and the critical role alternative spaces, community centres and local grassroots organisations play in creating capacity for public unity, celebrating difference, and valuing diverse community heritage.

Located in one of the world’s great cities of learning, Modern Art Oxford is a leading contemporary art space with an international reputation for innovative and ambitious programming. We promote creativity in all its visual forms as an agent of social change. Our programmes, both in person and online, are shaped by a belief in dialogue between contemporary art and ideas and celebrate the relevance of contemporary visual culture to society today.

Boundary Encounters is supported by The Elephant Trust, Oxford City Council Community Impact Fund, The Arts Society, and Oxford University Small Community Grants Scheme.

Modern Art Oxford
Boundary Encounters
July 22nd, 2023 - October 29th, 2023