Anita Joice | Pippa Hetherington – Oxfordshire Artweeks

328 Anita Joice | Pippa Hetherington

Region: Woodstock – North & West

Artform: Mixed Media, Painting, Photography, Textiles

‘The River Boundary’. Anita Joice and Pippa Hetherington come together for an exhibition at the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum. Their practices, though distinct in medium and geography, meet through a shared focus: the river as a site of memory, imagination, and shifting perspective. Through photography, painting, performance, and material investigation, both artists explore how landscapes hold stories – some well-known, some silenced, and some still emerging.

Anita Joice’s work remembers the ancient and contemporary life of the Thames, its landscapes, wildlife, structures, poetry, and the subtle ways it invites observation and play. Pippa Hetherington’s work engages with her ancestry as a descendant of the British 1820 Settlers in the Eastern Cape of South Africa – and the Great Fish River, once set as a formal boundary during periods of conflict. She uses pigment ground from riverbed rock, material long used by Xhosa communities, who were later prohibited by British rule from collecting it. By reintroducing this pigment into her work today, she reflects on layered histories, inherited narratives, and the shifting ways stories are told.

Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum provides a thought provoking context to examine the idea of rivers as boundaries, and sites of conflict and cultural meaning. The museum holds artefacts from conflicts related to the themes. Cafe and on street parking. Free access to the exhibition during Artweeks. Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum is in the grounds of The Oxfordshire Museum, Park St, Woodstock. Enter via The Oxfordshire Museum.