Announcing the 2025 festival

Submitted by Esther Lafferty on Fri, 17/01/2025 - 9:33am
Image by Ann Spencer

Announcing Oxfordshire Artweeks 2025
Over 1000 artists to open their studios & showcase their art in 400 venues across Oxfordshire this May

Oxfordshire Artweeks, the UK’s oldest and biggest open studios and pop-up exhibition event, returns to Oxfordshire this year for three weeks in May (3rd-26th) to showcase the art of over 1000 artists, including more than 200 who are new to the festival for 2025. These range from world-class painters, printmakers, photographers, ceramicists, sculptors and silversmiths to the talented and enthusiastic members of a variety of community groups across the county. For 2025, artists include Freddy Paske who was appointed Artist-in-Residence by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II during the Platinum Jubilee and Elizabeth Armstrong, artist in residence at Royal Windsor Racecourse.

As Oxfordshire’s creatives open their doors and offer a warm welcome, visitors are invited to explore art, for free, in four hundred artist’s studios, galleries, houses and gardens, potteries and pubs and other fascinating venues. These include the University of Oxford’s Rhodes House, two Oxford colleges, The Abbey in Sutton Courtenay and hidden cloisters in an Oxford church, Wytham woods and an orchard in The Wittenhams.

Artists, makers and designers working with oils, clay, textiles, watercolours, wood, metal, mosaic and glass will be showcasing their talents, explaining their materials and, often, demonstrating their methods. Visitors will be able to see, touch and talk about hundreds of thousands of pieces of art and craft, and uncover the stories of their inspiration.

The art on show will include local landscapes and iconic Oxford scenes; architectural stained glass, and serendipitous portrait photography taken in strange places; ceramics, textiles and silversmithing inspired by the past, collage art with ‘Where’s Wally’-esque details, and ‘Not So Still Life’ paintings. Look out too for female stories that explore the social impact of art through the life and work of artist-activist Barbara Steveni in Modern Art Oxford and, in Woodstock’s Oxfordshire Museum, ‘Michael Black, chisel, wood, stone’. This exhibition explores the work and legacy of the Oxfordshire sculptor best known for carving the Emperors' Heads outside Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre in the 1970s.

Artweeks is also a time to expect the unexpected, and this year’s festival includes

• Water magic, folklore and witchcraft through painting, illustrations and storytelling aboard a canal boat.
• Millinery, and an Aladdin’s cave of jackets embroidered with satin threads and Swarovski Crystals.
• 65 children’s costumes, worn for adult roles in classic films set in the 16th, 18th and 19th centuries.
• Chinese brush painting and extraordinary tessellated origami art.
• 3D political satire in papier-maché and wire sculpture.
• Steam-punk upcycling.

There’s so much to see whether you’re arty, an art aficionado or simply curious. Where will you go first?