With Modern Art Oxford closing for six weeks, Ovada and Launch Collaborative’s curatorial group have taken up the reins with a new exhibition called Architectural Disorder at Ovada art gallery in Oxford’s city centre.

Rainbow-coloured thread, razor-sharp metallic sculptures, a buzzing black box and life-sized architectural cut-outs greet you from the hustle and bustle of the busy bus station – indeed, Architectural Disorder seems like a utopia in a commuter’s misery.

The exhibition includes nine artists, all of whom take their inspiration from architectural concepts and notions of changing space; responding to the environment around them, sometimes enhancing, sometimes making jokes, measuring it with their bodies and even flipping it on its head.

Chloe Brooks’ work was recently featured in the renowned Emergency 4 exhibition in Portsmouth’s Aspex Gallery.

In Architectural Disorder, Chloe has produced large-scale site-specific sculptures by replicating a section of Ovada’s architecture in wood and white paint.

The work I had seen previously in Emergency 4 was so enormous that it could be mistaken for part of the building, making one feel a bit ridiculous for initially missing it.

This piece, The Incongruous Effect of Misapplication, works in a slightly different way.

Although equally large in scale, the work is evident immediately you enter the gallery but it makes the viewer explore the architecture for clues of its original location.

With a lot of stylised minimalist structures in the exhibition – possibly a few too many – I was immediately drawn to the tactile elements of celebrated artist and lecturer in fine art at Oxford Brookes University, Myfanwy Johns’ Re-covered Fragment 5 and 6.

A less literal architectural disorder, the laboured and loved little pieces of debris seem to escape all the clean lines and harsh emotionless structures – instead they immediately made me reflect about the history of a building and the sadness of destruction.

The artist seems to have rekindled the magnitude of the debris; by meticulously painting the traces of an existing surface pattern back on, giving it worth, and life again.

This work is only strengthened by the stark visual contrast of what Johns has exhibited next to them, her ugly, acrylic, tower block-reminiscent objects and surface patterns – Tower 1 and Tower 2.

The content of these pieces challenges customary aesthetics by using a mathematical and digital approach rather than any human process but somehow they still reflect an unforgiving human reality.

With nine artists on show, there is plenty to explore, so if you are in Oxford city centre over the next few weeks and feel like a break from the well-trodden tourist path, Architectural Disorder may prove that there is more to Oxford’s architecture than the dreaming spires.

I can highly recommend a visit to this exhibition that explores and enhances one small, sometimes forgotten building.

The exhibition in Ovada art gallery continues until Saturday 27 March. It’s free and suitable for all audiences.