Oxfordshire Artweeks 2024, the county’s giant three-week visual arts event bursts into life with hundreds of artist open studios and pop-up exhibitions, and in North Oxfordshire, venues will be throwing open their doors from Cropredy to Deddington and Milcombe to Middleton Cheney for the first week of the festival between the 4th and 12th May. Within a 10-mile radius of Banbury Cross, you’ll find 27 art spaces – both open studios and pop-up exhibitions – where as many as 100 artists and makers are welcoming you, for free, to see their art and chat about their materials, methods and inspiration. From the traditional to the contemporary and multidisciplinary, there’s something to delight, intrigue and inspire everyone. Explore painting, sculpture, ceramics and printmaking; look out for fashion and furniture; discover glass art, mosaics and other marvels; and perhaps choose a treasure or two to take home with you.
Banbury
In the centre of Banbury, you can visit three venues including Church Lane Gallery which hosts local artists and makers with an amazing range of original artworks, prints, jewellery, sculpture, pottery, textiles, glassware, millinery and homeware. For Artweeks, they have extended opening hours 10 am to 5 pm.
In The Mill, mixed media artist Asha Pearce – also known as Mala of Hearts – presents emotive work informed by spirituality & universal connection, each of which, she hopes, offers a whisper of a thought, energy or a wish, like a little magical spell and love within in an emotionally dark age and a dysphoric world. Full of hearts, Asha’s work is largely informed by meditation and emotion: in strong blues and glowing pinks, the pieces are powerful, energetic, tactile and entirely intuitive.
“My work heavily features hearts as it is the simplest expression of love in all its forms, a universal symbol, which all humans understand no matter the language or culture.
I often work with the number 108 which appears within Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism as a significant number. It appears in many forms with these spiritual and religious disciplines: from 108 beads in a string of Mala beads, to 108 mantras chanted, 108 steps in a temple to the number of snails upon the Buddha’s head. Many of my pieces feature this number or a derision of 108.”
In addition, over on Kingsway, in a garden studio Artweeks newcomer Helen MacCarthy is exhibiting a varied selection of drawings and paintings including life work, still life, portraiture, abstract, landscapes and mixed media.
Middleton Cheney
Over in Middleton Cheney, there are five talented artists and makers in The Barn at The New Inn showcasing a variety of art – and stretching the definition of art! Here, alongside stylised townscapes and boats bobbing in bright blue harbours and ceramics inspired by the local countryside, you’ll find handmade journals by designer-maker Sharon Highway of Mallory Journals and illusory glitter-balls for your wall by Melanie Charles, who is best known for her friendly animal portraiture.
“I’m also known for my love of anything sparkly, spangly, glittery and glitzy, I love the 80’s disco vibe so what better to paint than a disco ball!” she laughs. Painted on flat wood in straightforward colours, each appears to glint and sparkle in the light as if it were created with mirrored glass.
Kings Sutton
There’s more to see over in King’s Sutton where ten potters – mostly new exhibitors for this year’s festivals – are showing their latest work in Helen Ward’s Fired-Up pottery studio. This includes both functional pottery and unexpected pieces including a pottery hamburger and a series of leggy doughnuts inspired by Charlie’s Angels!
Helen explains how these came about! “Usually my work has a meaning, even if the piece in question is a humble ashtray, there’s usually a conceptual idea behind how it looks rather than it being just designed to look good, but the first legged doughnut came about purely by chance, and it was such fun I had to make a few more. I’ve been running ceramics classes from my studio for 6 years now, and part of the joy of teaching a free form pottery class is that everyone comes with their own goals, ideas and ambitions. Sometimes it’s straightforward, they want to learn to throw on the potter’s wheel… other times there are more bizarre requests. One lady wanted to make a sculpture of a drinking giraffe, for example, but in the case of the doughnuts, one student wanted to learn how to throw a doughnut vase on the wheel so I demonstrated, then at the next class someone was struggling with making the legs for her sculpture of a dancer, so I sculpted a leg to show them and needed somewhere to stick it. My demo doughnut was on the shelf and so I attached the leg and it looked quite fun & quirky. I then made a second leg so that it looked like the doughnut was going in for a sliding tackle, or perhaps it had just slipped on a wet bathroom floor and was mid-fall! It looked so bizarre and fun I knew I had to make more, each one in a different “action” pose, and grouped together they just looked like Charlie’s Angels in doughnut form!”
You can also visit a jeweller’s studio, and a printmaker, and see the work of eight women artists in the wonky-steepled church including inventive mixed media sculpture of circus characters and animals by Anna Steiner, that tell mythical stories, drawing on her theatre background.
Adderbury
Across the M40, Adderbury Church is hosting 17 artists and welcoming visitors for a second year. Look out for ceramic cottages by Ceri Wills, legs in the sunshine by Tania Humphrey, and wonderful details architectural montages and stone carvings by Louise Regan. Nearby there is stunning stained glass, jewellery and stylised landscapes and still lifes in a home-gallery on the Oxford Road and an open studio at Beehive Cottage on the High Street.
There are paintings at Broughton Castle stables, photography by Cliff Kinch and paintings by Ronny Loxton in Milcombe; in Williamscot, David Shapiro, Juliet Eccles and Julie Herd have developed pieces individually on a theme of ‘Pilgrims Way’; and in Deddington, look out for a delightful new venue where a group of sculptors are showing their work in metal, stone, mixed media and more for both indoors & outdoors.
For more information on Oxfordshire Artweeks 2024 visit http://www.artweeks.org
