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Thursday 10am - 3pm Friday 10am - 3pm Saturday 12pm - 5pm Sunday 12pm - 3pm

Irving Gallery

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Irving Gallery

Irving Gallery is an independent contemporary art gallery, with a changing programme of exhibitions Irving Contemporary is open to visitors during exhibitions.

Normal opening hours during exhibitions are: 11am to 5pm Thursday | Friday | Saturday. Check our website before visiting for any changes to normal opening.

22/05/2026

Robbie Bushe | Living Rooms
Until 7th June

Open this weekend on Friday, Saturday & Sunday 11am to 4pm daily

with apologies for my lack of video skills…

10/05/2026

Robbie Bushe | Living Rooms - until 7th June

Thank you to everyone who has visited so far, and to all those who joined me and Robbie in the gallery late yesterday afternoon for the opening of this brilliant exhibition. Thank you especially to Robbie who travelled down from Edinburgh to be here, and who spoke so interestingly about his work and practice.

Do visit soon to see this show - it is definitely not to be missed. I will be in the gallery this Wednesday (1-4pm), Thursday (11-4) and Friday (11-4), and Joni Brown will be in the gallery next Saturday and Sunday (11-5) for the first weekend of the Oxford City episode of Oxfordshire Artweeks.

We also open by appointment and I aim to be as flexible as possible - just email me to arrange a visit out of normal opening hours.

All enquiries to [email protected]

09/05/2026

Join us this afternoon from 5pm for the opening of Robbie Bushe’s solo show Living Rooms. Robbie has arrived in Oxford from Edinburgh, and he will be giving an introductory talk about his work at 5pm, with drinks in the gallery until 7pm. It’s a lovely sunny May afternoon - do join us for a glass of fizz/beer/elderflower as we celebrate the launch of this exhibition of Robbie’s brilliant paintings.

01/05/2026

Good morning and happy Beltane! It’s a glorious morning in Oxford. I didn’t join the May morning revellers this morning (next year), but I was out in my garden before 6am looking at the sunlight moving across the chestnut trees, hoping to catch the sound of the Magdalen College choristers drifting this way, which sometimes I can when the breeze is blowing the right way. Not this morning, though, so I stood outside a while listening to the birds: blue t**s, wrens, goldfinch, pigeons and blackbirds, all greeting this beautiful May morning. Là Buidhe Bealltainn!

I’m counting down the days now until I open Robbie Bushe’s solo show ‘Living Rooms’ next week, and I’ve been photographing the exhibition this morning.

The gallery will open again from Thursday 7th May, and Robbie will be heading down from Edinburgh on Saturday 9th May to join us for drinks in the gallery between 5pm and 7pm. We’ll start the Saturday celebrations of his wonderful exhibition with a short artist talk at 5pm, when Robbie will give an introduction to this collection of paintings, followed by drinks, so if you’d like to hear Robbie talk, get here for 5pm!

Robbie Bushe | Living Rooms
7th May to 7th June
Artist Talk & Opening Drinks: Saturday 9th June, 5-7pm. All welcome.

All enquiries to [email protected]

26/04/2026

Robbie Bushe | Living Rooms

Exhibition dates: 1 7th May – 7th June 2026
Opening drinks: Saturday 9th May, 5pm–7pm

Installation day today with for Robbie Bushe | Living Rooms

This brilliant painting is ‘The Pianist’, 2024, oil on canvas, 120 x 140 x 3 cm, with a few details.

We’re still hanging, but more installation photos to follow soon.

Edinburgh-based artist Robbie Bushe RSA has received national recognition, including prizes at the John Moores Painting Prize, the Contemporary British Painting Prize, and the Jackson’s Painting Prize. In 2023, he was awarded the RSA Blackadder Houston Mid-Career Painting Award, which enabled a sustained period of studio work and the production of this ambitious new series of paintings presented in ‘Living Rooms’.

These paintings unfold as expansive, cutaway worlds in which cities, interiors, and subterranean spaces are opened up to reveal layered scenes of everyday life. Across each canvas, moments of domestic routine, private activity, and remembered experience sit alongside imagined narratives, inviting the viewer to look slowly and closely as details and connections begin to emerge over time.

Bushe draws on the visual language of technical diagrams, mid-century cutaway illustrations, and comic imagery, creating works that balance clarity with curiosity. The viewer is drawn into these constructed environments, moving across their surfaces and piecing together fragments of story and space.

Join me and Robbie in the gallery for the opening drinks on Saturday 9th May, 5pm to 7pm.

All enquiries to [email protected]

24/04/2026

Robbie Bushe | Living Rooms

Exhibition dates: 1 7th May – 7th June 2026
Opening drinks: Saturday 9th May, 5pm–7pm

I’m excited to install this exhibition this weekend with Emmett Casley. I couldn’t wait, so I hung one of these incredible oil paintings temporarily (not its final position), and propped a beautiful watercolour up on the shelves too.

Irving Gallery is delighted to present a solo show by Edinburgh-based artist Robbie Bushe RSA. Robbie has received national recognition, including prizes at the John Moores Painting Prize, the Contemporary British Painting Prize, and the Jackson’s Painting Prize. In 2023, he was awarded the RSA Blackadder Houston Mid-Career Painting Award, which enabled a sustained period of studio work and the production of this ambitious new series of paintings presented in ‘Living Rooms’.

These paintings unfold as expansive, cutaway worlds in which cities, interiors, and subterranean spaces are opened up to reveal layered scenes of everyday life. Across each canvas, moments of domestic routine, private activity, and remembered experience sit alongside imagined narratives, inviting the viewer to look slowly and closely as details and connections begin to emerge over time.

Bushe draws on the visual language of technical diagrams, mid-century cutaway illustrations, and comic imagery, creating works that balance clarity with curiosity. The viewer is drawn into these constructed environments, moving across their surfaces and piecing together fragments of story and space.

Join me and Robbie in the gallery for the opening drinks on Saturday 9th May, 5pm to 7pm.

All enquiries to [email protected]

23/04/2026

Tereza Horáček’s solo show Afterlight marks a milestone in Irving Gallery’s short history, the first occasion that an exhibition has sold out completely! These wonderful, small paintings were very much in demand, and sold paintings are heading off across the UK, and to the US and Europe, too. Tereza will be working towards a new collection of paintings over the next few months. Get in touch if you would like to be amongst the first to hear about these new works.

In the meantime, here are a few installation shots of ‘Afterlight’, which I’m currently packing up for collection and shipping. I’m going to miss these brilliant paintings glowing from my walls. Congratulations, Tereza, on your sell-out show!

21/04/2026

Charlotte Brisland’s beautiful solo show ‘Altered States’ closed at the weekend, but the paintings remain available to view and purchase online, or by contacting the gallery directly (email [email protected]).

Charlotte has described her paintings with their secluded, unpeopled spaces inhabited by just a single isolated building as ‘stage sets waiting for a script’. Visitors to the exhibition definitely picked up on that sense of waiting for something to happen, or perhaps even the quiet that falls after some drama has already unfolded, describing the works as ‘filmic’, ‘cinematic’, ‘Lynchian’ - adjectives which certainly capture something of the particular mood and character of these works.

The paintings are characterised by their deep hues, shifting forms, dappled light and shadow play. Intensified by a saturated palette and surreal elements, with their applied motifs of house, tree, and landscape drawn from ordinary life, these beautiful yet unsettling paintings engage with Freud’s concept of the uncanny or ‘das Unheimliche’, shifting between familiarity and unease.

All enquiries to [email protected]

17/04/2026

Last day today! ⌛️🏃🏼‍♀️🏃🏾

Charlotte Brisland | Altered States
&
Tereza Horáček | Afterlight

These two beautiful solo shows by Charlotte Brisland and Tereza Horáček which have run concurrently in our two gallery spaces over the last four weeks, close this evening at 7pm.

The gallery will be open today 11am to 4pm, and we’ll also be open 5pm to 7pm when we’ll be hosting a celebratory finissage event. At 5pm, Charlotte and Tereza will be in conversation with each other about their painting and practice, followed by drinks in the gallery from about 5.45pm to 7pm. All welcome, and it would be great to see you for this last opportunity to see these wonderful exhibitions.

Both exhibitions are also available to view online, via the links in our bio.

All enquiries to [email protected]

16/04/2026

Tomorrow is the final day of Tereza Horáček’s glorious solo show ‘Afterlight’, which has been a sell-out! All twenty paintings from the exhibition have found homes, across the UK and beyond, in the US and Europe.

It has been a delight to collaborate with Tereza on this beautiful exhibition of her landscape paintings, which have been so much admired by visitors to the gallery. The carefully selected title of the show, ‘Afterlight’, aptly means both a view of past events, and the fading light after a sunset. The paintings, referencing Dutch 17th-century and English 18th- and 19th-century landscape paintings, seem simultaneously both nostalgic and hinting at times long past, and to capture with a fresh immediacy the weather, atmosphere and light, the natural drama of a passing moment that might just have occurred. These are gorgeous small paintings, characterised by freshness and vigour, and a wonderful sense of place and atmosphere. Tereza Horáček is most definitely one to watch, and I’m glad that we will continue to collaborate with each other in future.

Tereza writes about her work: ‘My landscapes are imagined, or inspired from past paintings. I look at Dutch seventeenth-century painters and English eighteenth-century landscape painters. Through use of evocative colours, fluorescent orange backgrounds, loose washes, and gestural brushstrokes, I rework, layer, and scratch into the paint until I have a suggestion of a particular tree, lively clouds, a field. The land is almost always flat, leaving room in the picture plane for expansive skies and trees, which are often silhouetted and swaying. When I paint, I am often thinking about Jacob van Ruisdael’s trees: moody, modest, grand, oppressive and hopeful. I am painting landscapes that are familiar, yet timeless.’

Do come along to see Tereza Horáček’s show before it closes tomorrow, and if you can, join us 5-5.45pm tomorrow (Friday 17th) when Tereza will be in conversation with Charlotte Brisland, talking about the paintings in their concurrent solo shows, their influences, and practice, followed by drinks, 5.45 until 7pm.

Address

28 Essex Street
Oxford
OX43AW

Opening Hours

Thursday	10am - 3pm
Friday	10am - 3pm
Saturday	12pm - 5pm
Sunday	12pm - 3pm

Telephone

+447969673349

Website

http://www.irvinggallery.com/

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