The Ruskin School of Art

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you to everyone who came along to the launch reception for the Ruskin Print Portfolio last week!

A message from Ruskin Senior Tutor Graeme Hughes:

"Thank you to all the guests who joined us last night for a magical celebration of the Ruskin Print Portfolio at Wadham College Chapel. A fun evening of art, music and good company was had by all.

Thank you to Rozen Whitworth, Clare Ruthven-Stewart, & team of staff at Wadham for your generous hospitality in facilitating the event.

Thank you as ever to Jane Garnett at Wadham and Michael Burden at New College for your support and encouragement of the project.

Most importantly, well done and thank you to all the Ruskin students involved in making the project and reception such a beautifully stylish event, and an enjoyable project to work on! The curation of the work through the chapel was magical, & Oliwia Kamieniecka's wonderful music animating the Wadham quad through until dusk!

Good energy, beautiful work and great company!

Thank you to Ruskin colleague and fellow artist Neeli Malik for your support and taking some decent shots of the event and Ruskin colleague Johanna Gullberg for your support.

Graeme"

The Print Portfolio includes twenty risograph printed works made by Ruskin School of Art fine art students and invited staff. It was printed at The Bodleian Library Bibliographic Press, Oxford University, in an edition of thirty. Each print is individually signed by the artist.

The Print Portfolio is available for purchase. Please contact Ruskin Senior Tutor Graeme Hughes for enquiries: [email protected].

Winner of the Emery Prize, Cerena Parkinson (MFA 2025) will present her solo exhibition 'Paradise' at Pembroke College Art Gallery!

Private view on 15th May. Please find further info and rsvp to attend the opening 👉 www.pembrokejcrart.org/copy-of-2024

Cerena Parkinson is a multidisciplinary artist and writer based in London, whose work explores migration, identity, and the legacies of colonialism through an autobiographical lens. Awarded the Emery Prize for her MFA research at The Ruskin School of Art in 2025 and the Drawing Year 2026 Scholarship at the Royal Drawing School, she has exhibited in London, Surrey, New York City, and at the Pastel Society Exhibition at The Mall Galleries in 2025 and 2026. Her Emery Prize exhibition, Paradise, presents an installation of multidisciplinary works grounded in “The Parenthetical Theory,” a concept she developed to examine the marginalisation of subaltern narratives within Western systems of knowledge. Drawing from her experience as a Jamaican American woman, Parkinson’s practice combines observation, imagination, and storytelling to celebrate joy, resilience, and womanhood within diasporic communities.

The Ruskin Print Portfolio 2026
RISO EDITION

We are pleased to present the 2026 limited edition portfolio of original prints. The collection includes twenty risograph printed works made by Ruskin School of Art fine art students and invited staff.

The portfolio was printed at The Bodleian Library Bibliographic Press, Oxford University in an edition of thirty using soy based risograph inks, on Colourset ‘Natural’ 120gsm. Cover Paper in Colourset ‘Deep Blue’ 270gsm.

Each print is individually signed by the artist.
The portfolio is available to purchase. Please contact Ruskin Senior Tutor Graeme Hughes for more information about the project, [email protected]
Participating Artists:

1. Florence Armstrong
2. Bliss Ashley
3. Joni Brown
4. Adam Ben David
5. Carle Gent
6. Sasha Hardy
7. Clara Hill
8. Hattie Hone
9. Graeme Hughes
10. Oliwia Kamieniecka
11. Molly Lugsden
12. Lewis McCulloch
13. Tala Mikulska
14. Angel Dan Rong
15. Rowan Briggs Smith
16. Lillian Tagg
17. Maya Todd
18. Naiya Ellis-Woodward
19. Jack Woolley
20. Yolanda Zhou

Cover Design & Printed by Lewis McCulloch

About The Ruskin Print Portfolio Project:

The Ruskin Print Portfolio Project is a publishing initiative supporting the production of original limited edition printed works of art on paper, taking the form of one-off prints and editioned portfolios made by Ruskin School of Art students and invited staff artists. The portfolio is shared and disseminated annually through print fairs, exhibition events, college art collections and library archives. It seeks to inspire discussions about what we do as makers and researchers, animating The Ruskin School of Art archive, broadening teaching by supporting the learning of specialised craft skills, enriching professional practice opportunities for students and allows for fund raising for the School.

Bringing together a network of students, creative makers, artists, paper makers, typesetters, publishers, historians, librarians, archivists, designers, event organisers and printmaking enthusiasts, The Ruskin Print Portfolio aims to create a dialogue for those interested in sharing in visual and material culture.

The Ruskin Print Portfolio Project was conceived and is convened annually by Ruskin Senior Tutor and fine artist Graeme Hughes. The making of the portfolio forms an aspect of wider educational research and teaching tools exploring the benefits of creative practice to wellbeing and self-development.