Magdalen Road Studios holds online exhibition 'A Dangerous Field'

Magdalen Road Studios, the Oxford based studio and registered charity, has launched its exhibition 'A Dangerous Field'.

The display is free for anyone to access and will be available online until November 16.

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It runs parallel with the Photo Oxford Festival, which started on October 16 and lasts for a month.

The overarching theme of the exhibition is to show the diverse ways in which artists use photography.

It showcases the work of 12 studio and associate artists who work in and around Oxford.

Cally Shadbolt

The title of the exhibition comes from a quote found in A Short History of Photography by Walter Benjamin, who said photography as an art was a ‘dangerous field’.

Jo Kidner, 52, of Oxford, one of the artists featured, said: “This is the first online show I have had and it’s been good for developing interest.

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“It is really looking at the way artists subvert the field of photography, using unconventional materials, the way they print the photographs. They might not be printed in the professional sense but more as a way of recording practices.

“There are a lot of different approaches within the exhibition, which is predominantly by women artists, inspired by a short history of photography by Walter Benjamin.

“I am not a professional photographer, so my medium is installation art. I was looking at the materials I was using and alternative narratives from reading.”

Ms Kinder’s display looks at the uncomfortable props people used to have to sit on when they were having their portrait taken by professional photographers.

The artist added: “I look at headrests, pillars, knee rests, for the sitters. It was an arduous process for the sitters getting their photographs taken.

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So my practice is looking at how the sitters got fed up for sitting for so long.”

The exhibition asks viewers to consider how much a photographer tell us about reality.

Featured artists use a range of photographs, from high-resolution images, to those taken on low-resolution devices. So far the exhibition has gained ‘really good’ traction on social media.

The studio was registered as a charity in 2011, with the objective of promoting the visual arts to the public through engagement with artists in a studio setting.

Jo Kinder

The studio manages affordable spaces and an exhibition area which creates opportunities for the public to participate in the visual arts.

Magdalen Road Studios offers a programme of arts education for all ages and welcomes the public in to interact with artists and art work, or visit during ‘open studio’ days. All donations for A Dangerous Field will go towards this work.