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Matthew Arnold's life among 'the dreaming spires'

2:56pm Wednesday 8th February 2012

Isuppose Matthew Arnold, coiner of the phrase “City of Dreaming Spires”, embodies for many of us — who vaguely remember reading bits of him at school — the very essence of Oxford. But some might say that the spirit he affirms is more that of a relatively new Oxford — Victorian, mainly masculine, self confident, empire building — than that conjured up by his other much-quoted description of the place: “Home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties.”

Recalling the cult of Bishop Blaze

3:12pm Wednesday 1st February 2012

February 3 is the feast of Bishop Blaze, the patron saint of woolcombers — and for centuries any woman found using her distaff on that day did so under the threat of having it confiscated and burned.

Sue Johnson's paper Museum: The Pitt Rivers Museum

3:07pm Wednesday 1st February 2012

In Sue Johnson’s Paper Museum her striking paintings provide portraits of ethnological artefacts whose whereabouts is unknown. She places them where they jostle, nestle and otherwise interact with birds, fish and plants, all in empathetic shapes. The artefacts have been drawn from the catalogue of General Pitt- Rivers ‘second’ collection.

Preview of performance art at Ovada Warehouse, Oxford

2:30pm Wednesday 1st February 2012

OVADA (Oxford) and roves and roams (Reading) are co-producing a show of performance art at Ovada Warehouse, 14a Osney Lane, Oxford on Tuesday at 6.30pm.

We're knee-deep in history

2:25pm Wednesday 25th January 2012

Can any county be as full of the shades of dead writers as Oxfordshire?

David Hockney: The Bigger Picture. The Royal Academy, London

1:45pm Wednesday 25th January 2012

‘We think winter is drab, but you’re just not looking for the colours. They are there,” says David Hockney.

Art Teachers Show: O3 Gallery

1:50pm Wednesday 25th January 2012

Oxford’s O3 Gallery is hosting an exhibition of 26 pieces by those who teach art in the county, to adults or children. It provides an insight into the creative processes of the teachers and an opportunity to experience a rich and varied body of work executed to the highest standards.

High-tech key to secrets of the past

9:09am Thursday 19th January 2012

Anyone with a computer can fly about in time these days like a butterfly in air. For instance, I clicked Listed Buildings in the vicinity of my home the other day — and came across a Royal Palace that had flourished from the time of King John (1167-1216) until as late as 1614, in which Henry VIII courted Anne Boleyn, and Edward IV (1442-1483) probably first came across his future bride, Elizabeth Woodville, of which I had never before heard.

Peter Miko, Ugly Glass and other things: The North Wall, Summertown, Oxford

8:53am Thursday 19th January 2012

Peter Miko works in glass. Most of the work you see at the North Wall is not entirely typical, however. Generally, glass working is associated with celebrating the material’s natural qualities in some sense, the innately beautiful drama of its translucency, the reflections and meditations it sets up, and such like. Miko, Slovakia born, now living in Oxford and working in London at the Adam Aaronson Glass Studio, Earls Court, uses the small broken pieces of glass you find in any glass studio, the throwaway pieces, and makes something completely different from them. His are works that border on painting: glass reliefs constructed on plates of glass or canvas, using scraps of glass, poured molten glass, silicone and spray paint that look as though they are made without control. Whereas each is thought through and progress can be slow, says Miko. Working like this “makes me feel very free. It’s the same kind of expression as Jackson Pollock, but it’s not copying him”.