It’s usually the Upper Gallery of Modern Art Oxford that changes its guise so dramatically that it sometimes takes your breath away. This time the surprise hits you the moment you enter the ground floor, which has been completely transformed by Pawel Althamer, considered one of the most innovative artists of his generation. Gallery staff, decked out in gold outfits, greet you as you enter and invite you to wear a gold garment too while viewing the exhibition.

“What exhibition?” you may ask as you gaze round the bare white walls and wonder why the information desk is longer in its usual place. Only gold decoration on the white pillars and childlike quotes (written in gold) suggest something has been going on, and indeed may still be going on – as it is.

Entitled Common Task, this is Pawel Althamer’s first solo show. He is the award-winning Polish artist who orchestrates situations and events involving communities of people in real time and in public places – hence the gold suits. Wear one and you will become involved in an ongoing journey that has taken him from Warsaw to Brazil, Belgium and Africa. Now he’s continuing the journey in Oxford and aims to transform the gallery’s ground floor into a space station and zone for teleportation in which the memories of his travels can be shared.

Because Miroslaw Balka, whose work is on display in the Upper Gallery, came of age amid the ruins and landscape of Polish national suffering, he carries with him the burden of a history that was not of his making. His video-installations reflect this fact. On entering the main Upper Gallery, you may be struck, as I was, by the pain captured within the sound effects generated from his works. Close your eyes and you may feel yourself in the centre of a world that’s both in pain and angry. It’s a sound that may haunt you hours after leaving the exhibition.

Open your eyes and you will notice the video entitled Bambi, in which a group of deer graze in the snowy grass among the ruins of the barracks at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Like the artist, the deer are trapped in the concentration camp and wandering through its history. In Carousel, the barracks at Majdanek spin around the walls in a sickening swirl, such that you may feel an overpowering urge to run and run – such is the power of this piece. Other works are cast horizontally into the ground – grave like, thought-provoking.

The exhibitions continue until March 7.