What must it have been like to be Sergei Krikalev in 1991/1992? Dubbed the last citizen of the USSR, the American artist, Kerry Tribe, calls him The Last Soviet. Why the title? Sergei was left for almost a year, circling the earth on the MIR space station, while the country he left in July 1991— the Soviet Union — dissolved on December 26. That experience of isolation obviously didn’t put him off because he continued his career as an astronaut and has spent more time in space than any other human being. I discovered this story not in the library or on the net but at Modern Art Oxford.

The Last Soviet is a haunting video installation with a feeling of disconnection, and yet a keen observation of how small is the planet from which he is separated. The image of his environment within MIR contrasts with the serenity of the view beyond.

Kerry Tribe’s second installation is equally intriguing. Milton Torres Sees a Ghost is a sound installation in which reel-to-reel audio tape traces the gallery walls playing and erasing a first-hand account of the American fighter pilot’s encounter with a UFO over British airspace in the 1950s. The Ministry of Defence reports are worth reading! The artist has cleverly invoked a kind of deliberate amnesia. Her installation is in the John Piper Gallery.

The show in the Upper Gallery is new work by the Mexican artist Abraham Cruzvillegas. Those three new works include Untitled Scratching Relief with builders Groove 3, a drawing incised directly into the walls. It is an unusual and elegant diagram of a journey.

Walking down St Ebbes, glance in at the summer location of the café (now inside) and see a work that would have fitted in The Pitt Rivers’ exhibition on the theme of Recycling — not the kind practised in the UK but the creative reuse of objects and materials. Cruzvillega’s Simultaneous Promise is a trike fitted with multiple mirrors and a sound system of him whistling songs from his childhood and new songs by Oxford bands. It would be fun to see him actually using it to cycle around the city. The Pitt Rivers has examples of tsantsas or Amazonian shrunken heads which inspired The Optimistic Failure. The artist has used animal dung, soil and grass collected from Port Meadow to make his version of tsantsas suspended on the large-scale mobile sculpture. Abraham Cruzvillegas will be in conversation discussing his work on October 27 at 6pm. The exhibitions remain until November 20.