Five British artists, below, are exhibiting their work, entitled Dialogue, in Oxford, writes SARAH MAYHEW.

Oxford is so packed full of fantastic creative happenings, it seems too often we find ourselves slapping our thighs in dismay as friends smugly exclaim: “Oh dear, you’ve missed it, it closed yesterday. What a shame, you really missed out there!”

Well, consider this your warning. You have until 5pm tomorrow to make the most of Dialogue, an exhibition by five UK artists that has just leapt across the channel from France to make a flying visit to the Richard Hamilton Building, on Headington Campus, at Oxford Brookes University.

Dialogue features work by five artists from the UK, all of whom make work inspired by architecture and environments and their effect on the individual.

Joss Burke, Graham Chorlton, Peter Grego, Dr Myfanwy Johns (a lecturer at Brookes) and Tom Ranahan were all commissioned by the Arts Chartrons Association to make work for an exhibition in the geometrically beautiful and light Halles de Chartrons as part of the inaugural Arts Chartrons festival in Bordeaux.

The artworks, representative of the variety and richness of contemporary British art, span sculpture, painting, print, photography and installation, and were made last summer, with each artist responding in their unique and different ways to the city.

Dr Myfanwy Johns was captivated by the decorative conventions that she identified in the elegant, 18th century mansions of Bordeaux. Interested in pattern and architecture her large, wooden, floor-based installation with its waxy, red vein running through it, is a response to the human, tactile connection to architectural surface and history.

Graham Chorlton’s sepia toned, oil-based snapshots take the viewer on a poetic journey, as if swept away on the back of a bicycle in a fabulously French romantic flirtation.

Peter Grego engages with problems of nationality, location, identity, and historical memory through print, video and photography. In Dialogue he presents us with a poignant installation created in response to his time spent at Cité Frugès, a residential ‘garden city’ designed by Modernist architect Le Corbusier.

Ultimately all works in Dialogue are a response to place, and the ways in which humanity adorns, customizes and makes use of the world.

Dialogue marks an important shift for Oxford Brookes University, as the School of Art will soon merge with the School of the Built Environment.

This exhibition offers the chance for members of the public, students and staff to see the kind of exciting, inter-disciplinary links that we can anticipate emerging between the two schools as a consequence of this new-found relationship…catch it whilst you can, and brace yourself for more, similarly exciting stuff.

* Dialogue continues until tomorrow at Brookes University, Richard Hamilton Building, Headington Hill Campus, Headington Hill.

myfanwyjohns@brookes.ac.uk Admission free, display open 10am– 5pm