Modern Art Oxford: Year Ahead Selected Programme 2025

The first retrospective exhibition of pioneering and influential artist-activist Barbara Steveni (1928-2020) represents her pivotal role as an artist initiator, energetic organiser, negotiator and pioneer of social practice. It includes early assemblage pieces and materials from the Artist Placement Group, which she initiated in 1965 and co-founded the following year with Barry Flanagan, David Hall, John Latham, Anna Ridley and Jeffrey Shaw. With a career spanning 70 years, Steveni was influential on many artists of different generations and the exhibition includes new commissions responding to her work from Laure Prouvost, Anne Bean and Eloise Hawser. This exhibition is co-curated by Gareth Bell-Jones and Jo Melvin.

Movements for Staying Alive

28 June – 7 September 2025

Modern Art Oxford’s second participatory exhibition draws attention to the importance of experiencing the world from a place of motion, rather than stasis, and foregrounds the vital movements of life. Inviting artists, local partners and schools to respond to the theme of embodiment and movement as a means to learn, communicate and foster a sense of community, new commissions will form touchable, participatory artworks which encourage movement within the gallery spaces. The exhibition gives audiences the opportunity to celebrate the potential and the power of movement and foster embodied interaction and exchange with others.

Jes Fan

27 September 2025 – 18 January 2026

This major exhibition by Hong Kong and New York-based artist Jes Fan spans his interdisciplinary practice in video, sculpture and installation, and considers the intersections of biology, technology and identity. Often working with organic matter or casts and scans of sections of the human body, Fan’s abstract forms and site-specific installations explore the invisible substances and technologies that enhance and support the body. The exhibition will be Fan’s first solo exhibition in a UK/European Institution and will include significant new commissions alongside recent works.

ENDS

Notes for Editors

For media enquiries contact Clare Stimpson, Head of Digital and Communications, media@ modernartoxford.org.uk

About Modern Art Oxford

Located in one of the world’s great cities of learning, Modern Art Oxford is a leading contemporary art space with an international reputation for innovative and ambitious programming. We promote creativity in all its visual forms as an agent of social change. Our programmes, both in person and online, are shaped by a belief in dialogue between contemporary art and ideas and celebrate the relevance of contemporary visual culture to society today.

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