The Ruskin School of Art

03/07/2026

Visiting Oxford this summer? Don’t miss Modern Art Oxford where you can experience Unspeak the Chorus—the Turner Prize-nominated solo exhibition by British artist Kira Freije.

A Ruskin alumna (BFA 2011), Kira Freije's first major UK solo exhibition brings together around twenty hand-welded, life-size metal figures, alongside animals and textiles, into an immersive environment. Arranged in intimate groupings, the sculptures evoke moments of connection, care, grief, and celebration without prescribing a fixed narrative, inviting visitors to interpret the relationships for themselves. Freije constructs each figure from cast hands, feet, and faces, welding steel into delicate skeletal forms enriched with fabric, found materials, and hand-blown glass to balance strength with vulnerability. Created in collaboration with lighting designer Matt Daw, the exhibition uses atmospheric lighting and the gallery’s architecture to deepen the emotional impact of the installation.

Until 16th August
More info on MAO's website: https://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/

02/07/2026

Ruskin BFA and MFA presentations 2026
Thank you to everyone who visited the Ruskin Degree Show 2026! The Show has now come to an end, but you can still explore the work of our graduating BFA and MFA students. Browse their presentations to discover the projects, ideas, and practices that formed this year’s Degree Show.

BFA: https://www.rsa.ox.ac.uk/degreeshow/2026/bfa

MFA: https://www.rsa.ox.ac.uk/degreeshow/2026/mfa

24/06/2026

An update on the opening hours for the Ruskin Degree Show! Today, the Show is open 9-11am and 7-9.30pm.

Due to the extreme heat forecast this week, the Show will be open during the cooler hours of the day for the safety of staff, students and our visitors. Hope to see you there!

23/06/2026

Updated opening hours for the Ruskin Degree Show due to the extreme heat this week:

There is still time to visit this ambitious showcase of work by our graduating BFA and MFA students this week, however due to the extreme heat forecast for the coming days, the Ruskin Degree Show opening hours will now be as follows:

Monday 22nd June: 12-5pm (as originally intended)
Tuesday and Wednesday 23rd - 24th June: 9am-11.00am and 7-9.30pm

Opening hours may be further adjusted in light of prevailing weather conditions on each day. We will endeavour to update this information as soon as possible if so.

Images from the Private View. Thank you to everyone who came along!

12/06/2026

New audio installation by Ruskin’s Anna Barham is currently on show at Matt's Galley in London!

Ruskin tutor Anna Barham’s 'ZYX' is a sound installation that explores mishearing as a creative process, examining how meaning emerges as language moves between people, technologies, and material environments. The work follows a woman recounting a psychedelic experience through a fragmented voice narrative and immersive soundscape, creating a sense of perceptual instability that draws the listener into the acoustic field. By comparing human hallucinations with speech-to-text errors, Barham uses machine-generated mishearings—produced through an audio filter that amplifies vocal textures such as breath, repetition, and hesitation—as material for the script. The installation presents mishearing not as a mistake but as an alternative mode of thinking and writing that resists standardisation, automation, and authority.

Until 28th June. Please visit www.mattsgallery.org/exhibitions/zyx for further information.
Accessibility info for visitors can be found here: www.mattsgallery.org/visit

'ZYX' is supported by The Elephant Trust, and Ruskin School of Art

11/06/2026

Ruskin DPhil researcher Rafael Pérez Evans presents Horizontals, a series of participatory wooden sculptures for the sick and burnt out body, in conversation with Henry Moore's reclining figures. Commissioned by Wakehurst, Kew Gardens, as part of a year-long exhibition.

Horizontals is a series of participatory wooden sculptures made from fallen ash trees within the Wakehurst landscape. Carved on site by Wakehurst’s arboretum team, the forms emerge from the trunks through the lightest of cuts, pared back to what is necessary for rest.

Each sculpture is shaped as a horizontal platform, slightly slanted to cradle a single visitor’s body. Bed, plinth and bench at once, the works speak to Henry Moore’s reclining figures while asking what kind of pose we can hold today. In Horizontals, the contemporary body does not recline with ease. It is burnt out, sick and exhausted. Moore’s bronze reclining figures are recast for the present as living bodies that cannot hold the pose: flat out, lying down.

The work begins from the body’s knowledge that it needs to stop. In a world where public space makes rest suspicious, Horizontals offers a clear invitation: to lie down horizontally, like a fallen tree, rest, look up, and be held by the forest.

Installed in the near extinct Nothofagus southern beech forest at Kew, Wakehurst. Curated by Laurence Sillars. Specially commissioned by Wakehurst in partnership with the Henry Moore Foundation.

Pérez Evans works with sculpture, installation, and sound to think from and with fractured communities. His practice explores breakdown as both a lived condition and a potential site of liberation, shaped by q***r, rural, and disabled life. The materials he works with are often unstable, mirroring the degraded lands, voices, and bodies that have been devalued and rendered surplus.
Open until 23rd May 2027. Find out more about Henry Moore and More: www.kew.org/about-us/press-media/wakehurst-henry-moore-and-more

Images: Rafael Pérez Evans' work at Wakehurst

01/06/2026

We are delighted to announce the Ruskin Degree Show 2026!

The Degree Show is an ambitious showcase of the outstanding creativity, commitment, and hard work of our young artists. This year’s exhibition features a wide range of work across painting, photography, moving image, sculpture, installation, and performance. Representing the culmination of their learning journey at Oxford , the Degree Show offers a unique opportunity to encounter the work of Ruskin's emerging creatives.
Welcome!

Private View: Friday 19th June, 7-10pm
Saturday 20th June - Sunday 21st June, 12-6pm
Monday 22nd June - Wednesday 24th June, 12-5pm

Location: The Ruskin School of Art, 128 Bullingdon Rd, Oxford OX4 1QP

This year, visitors can also view presentations at the Old Music Hall, entrance via 54 Marston Street (side entrance of the Old Music Hall), Oxford OX4 1JU

A performance will be held in Restore Garden, Manzil Way (timings tbc)

BFA Finalists:
Bliss Ashley - Vita Sunshine Bannister - Matt Bartlett - Rachel Briggs - Jiyong D**g - Abigail Edu - Naiya Ellis-Woodward - Hannah Feren - Z Forbes - Felix Gibbons - Eva Hamilton - Sasha Hardy - Ben Holland - Harriet Humfress - Elias Lemoniatis - Lewis McCulloch - Tom Meldrum - Reuben Meller - Aidana Orazgaliyeva - Nicholas Owen - Isabelle Oxford - Gruffydd Price - Amelia Sleight - Lillian Tagg - Lottie Thompson - Joyce Wei - Monty Williams - Cecelia Yuan

MFA Finalists:
Maliha Abidi - Adam Ben David - Fatima Butt - K.B Clear - Gabriel Cohen - Tessa Domsky - J Jiang - Alexa Kanarowski - Bomi Kim - Yanqi Lu - Shuge Ma - Tala Mikulska - Lola Pedersen - Qi Baiting - Angel Dan Rong - Maya Campbell Todd - Scarlet Topley - Ed Twaddle - Jack Woolley - Mou In Yao

Wheelchair accessible. Accessibility info at the link https://www.accessguide.ox.ac.uk/ruskin-school-of-art

01/06/2026

27/05/2026

Kira Freije: Unspeak the Chorus is now open at Modern Art Oxford!

15/05/2026

Huge congratulations to Ruskin DPhil candidate Valerie Asiimwe Amani who is presenting an installation as part of the Tanzanian Pavilion exhibition at this year’s Venice Biennale!

Curated by Lorna Benedict Mashiba and Martina Cavallarin, Minor Frequencies: The Inner Life of a Nation explores Tanzania’s inner architecture through four interconnected themes — the Body, Gesture, Archive, and Mind — represented by Tanzanian artists whose works collectively expand perspectives on the nation’s cultural identity. Through diverse artistic languages and multidisciplinary practices, the exhibition creates a shared space that values interiority, opacity, and listening over spectacle, while positioning Tanzania more prominently within the international contemporary art scene. It argues that art goes beyond documenting reality, instead uncovering hidden, spiritual, and metaphysical dimensions that challenge conventional ways of seeing the world. Ultimately, the exhibition becomes an immersive and reflective environment that encourages dialogue, curiosity, and a deeper understanding of the subtle “minor frequencies” shaping both the nation and human experience.

Valerie Asiimwe Amani's work delves into myth making and collective imagination as a tool for creating tangible realities. Aiming to centre African epistemologies as a lens through which to interpret the world and its various realities, specifically departing from the institutional knowledge perpetuated by The Church, The Museum and The Library, her research utilises artmaking, language and body as a means to excavate memories held within folklore, poetry and oral histories. Valerie's multi-media installation in the Tanzaninan Pavilion is titled The Dream Depository// Ndoto Zako Zita Fufuka, and includes a participatory live sound element made in collaboration with composer Jason Langheim.

Find out more about the Tanzanian Pavilion, www.tanzanianationalpavilion.com

Visit until 22nd November, 2026
Images: Photographs by Fabio Scopel