THE idea of absence is explored in a photographic exhibition in Jericho.

Artist Sharon Boothroyd’s pictures at Art Jericho look at children and fathers who are separated from each other.

Ms Boothroyd, of Hollow Way, Cowley, said: “I looked at phrases which kids had spoken to their dads and then interpreted what they might have meant.”

She used friends to stage her interpretation of the uttered phrases, in locations ranging from Mr Simm’s sweet shop in Oxford High Street to a greasy spoon cafe in Slough, where one father used to take his daughter for breakfast before school.

Ms Boothroyd’s work in the exhibitions sits alongside a photographic series by Tim Crooks focusing on images of abandoned mental hospitals.