Modern Art Oxford

24/06/2026

Need somewhere cool to spend an hour?

- Air-conditioned gallery spaces
- Free iced water in the Ground Floor Gallery and Café
- Three exhibitions to explore

The rest building stays surprisingly cool too!

Drop in and escape the heat.

24/06/2026

We're delighted to be teaming up with St Clare's, Oxford and can't wait to welcome students to the gallery for a packed summer programme!

We're delighted to announce a new relationship with Modern Art Oxford, bringing fresh energy and real-world insight to several of our Summer Courses this year! 🎨

Interactive English & English for Life students will visit Modern Art Oxford to engage with the Turner Prize nominated exhibition Kira Freije: Unspeak the Chorus. Supporting this, our English Language teachers will take part in a CPD session led by the Modern Art Oxford education team, designed to help students get the most out of the experience through active speaking and critical thinking.

Art & Digital Design students will go further still, with curator-led tours of the exhibition and direct conversations with the team behind it, followed by expert feedback from a member of Modern Art Oxford on the Art and Digital Design course's judging panel during their final exhibition!

It's an exciting addition to our Summer Courses, giving students direct exposure to professional practice in the arts. 🖌️

18/06/2026

Easy to lose yourself in here. If your in Oxford come and spend some time at Kira Freije: Unspeak the chorus.

On show in our upper galleries until 16 August.

17/06/2026

‘I often work in relation to topics that I’m angry about. I have an experience; I get angry and then I want to find out why it is like this.’

Thanks to University of Oxford for this wonderful piece on Olivia Plender's Little Fennel's Complaint.

Come along and discover this fascinating and powerful exhibition, showing now at Modern Art Oxford, and running until 16 August.

When patients describe pain, illness or symptoms, what happens when they're not believed?

Artist Olivia Plender's exhibition at Modern Art Oxford explores women's experiences of healthcare, medical history and the enduring question of whose knowledge counts.

Drawing on research across Oxford's libraries, gardens and hospitals, Little Fennel's Complaint traces stories of diagnosis, dismissal and the power of being heard ⬇️
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/pulse/society-culture/olivia-plender

12/06/2026

Join us at Modern Art Oxford on Tuesday 16 June for Make Play, a creative play session for children aged 6 months–5 years and their grown-ups.

This week's activities include:
- Large-scale collaborative wall painting
- Sensory sand play inspired by artist Kira Freije
- Drumming, shakers and sound exploration
- Tactile obstacle courses and stepping stones
- Potion-making with flowers, herbs and water
- Light and shadow play inside a table tunnel

Designed to encourage curiosity, creativity and sensory exploration, Make Play offers a relaxed and welcoming environment where children can play, experiment and discover at their own pace.

📅 Tuesday 16 June, 11am-12pm & 1-2pm
📍 Modern Art Oxford
🎟 Booking essential (pay-what-you-can): https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1985989754818?aff=oddtdtcreator

07/06/2026

A cube-shaped planet made entirely of emeralds. A world with 2,500 moons. Fish-ducks swimming beneath the water. Chickens and zebras living side by side.

Last year, artists Lilli Tranborg and Arbie Edward invited young people from Children Heard and Seen to imagine planets of their own. Together they invented worlds filled with gem mountains, diamond cores, endless flowers and impossible colours, before bringing them to life using handmade botanical inks and clay. Here you can listen to one of the children explain their planet, with images from the process of creating the small worlds.

In a new blog post, Lilli and Arbie reflect on the workshop, the stories behind the planets, and how an idea from one of the children led to the creation of a palette of inks made from foraged walnuts, berries, nettles and flowers.

Read the full blog: https://modernartoxford.org.uk/blog/chickens-gem-mountains-and-2500-moons?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=facebook_page&utm_medium=Modern%20Art%20Oxford

What would your planet look like?

Foraging Connections closes to the public Sunday 14 June - don't miss it!

06/06/2026

Is this figure sad? Happy? Exhausted? Relieved?

The figures in Unspeak the Chorus gather in groups, leaning, holding, embracing and drifting around one another. Their relationships remain unresolved, leaving space for multiple stories and emotions to coexist.

Emerging one after another in the studio, each figure spurs on the next, accumulating into a society bound not by a single narrative, but by what the artist calls a “strangeness or an unknownness” between them.

Light plays an equally important role. Working with lighting designer Matt Daw, Freije transforms the gallery into an atmosphere that feels at once intimate and monumental. Pools of light and shadow evoke spaces we instinctively recognise, a domestic interior, a church, a place of gathering, each loaded with its own histories, memories and emotions.

Rather than telling us what to think, Unspeak the Chorus invites us to linger in uncertainty, allowing meaning to emerge through our own associations, emotions and experiences.

“I don’t think I have to tell someone what they’re feeling or seeing,” Freije explains.

What do you see?

Kira Freije: Unspeak the Chorus is on show now at Modern Art Oxford, co-commissioned with