Plot Holes: exhibition opening & performances

Join us for the opening of Plot Holes by Frank Wasser.

Location: Dolphin Gallery, St John's College, Oxford OX1 3JP

18:00 - doors open

19:00-21:00 - performances by Frank Wasser, Adam Gallager and Kelly Lloyd.

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In 1874, within the village of North Hinksey in Oxfordshire, a seemingly unremarkable road, later designated Ruskin Road, captivated the keen, contemplative eye of John Ruskin. The story that unfolded might well have vanished into historical obscurity had it not been preserved through the writings of notable figures such as Oscar Wilde and Hardwicke Rawnsley (the founding force behind the National Trust), as well as the sharp satirical sketches in Punch magazine.

Ruskin's recurrent presence in Oxford stemmed from his influential position as the Slade Professor of Fine Art and his establishment of The Ruskin School of Drawing in the University Galleries in 1871. These roles afforded him not only an academic platform but also an opportunity to address what he considered pressing societal concerns. He conveyed his social philosophies in a series of publications known as Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain (1871-1884), wherein he advocated for societal reforms that he hoped would elevate the welfare of the working class. This project reflects Ruskin's commitment to fostering a more equitable society, underscoring his vision of ethical labor practices and community well-being.

A crucial aspect of Ruskin’s initiative involved his engagement with the labouring class through a practical, hands-on approach. Concerned by the dilapidated state of roads connecting Upper and North Hinksey, Ruskin famously organized a group of Oxford students—often unaccustomed to manual labour—to participate in road repairs. He intended for this project to serve as a form of experiential learning, urging these young men, whom he referred to as “diggers,” to gain a direct understanding of the working class by immersing themselves in physical, meaningful labour. By repairing the road with their own hands, these students were encouraged to confront the dignity and difficulty of manual work, fostering empathy and an awareness of the inequalities faced by labourers whose efforts were often overlooked or undervalued. Ruskin saw this undertaking not merely as a civic improvement, but as an exercise in social consciousness, aimed at bridging class divides and challenging perceptions of labour within the rigid hierarchies of Victorian society. The Hinksey diggers, under John Ruskin's guidance, worked to repair the road between North and South Hinksey over several weeks in the autumn of 1874. Ruskin began organizing the project in early October, with actual digging commencing on October 15, 1874. The project continued intermittently through November, though weather and other factors affected the consistency of the work.

This legacy of Ruskin’s intervention is re-examined in Plot Holes, an exhibition by Frank Wasser that revisits the site through three cast pothole sculptures drawn from Ruskin Road as it exists today. This installation, animated by Wasser’s voice, integrates performance and historical reflection. As an artist and former DPhil researcher at the Ruskin School of Art, Wasser presents a dialogical narrative shaped by 15 months of research. In this imagined encounter, the potholes become listeners, capturing the echoes of voices spanning from the original labourers of 1871 to contemporary workers. The text, infused with humour and critical inquiry, questions institutional frameworks and the power structures that determine value and inclusion within the archive. Frank Wasser’s exhibition is the culmination of a Diversity Fund sponsored project ‘Revisiting/ Revisioning the Ruskin’, which aims to look at the history of the Ruskin School of Art in new ways. It also addresses one of our 38 commitments to become an anti-racist art school. This event will be cohosted by TORCH and the Dolphin Gallery (St Johns College), and practically supported by the Ruskin’s EDI academic lead and Director of Research, Professor Daria Martin.

The exhibition will open on November 28th, featuring a performances from Kelly Lloyd Adam Gallagher and Frank Wasser. These commissioned performances will offer fresh responses to Wasser’s research, expanding on Ruskin’s legacy of questioning labour, value, and the ethics of institutional memory.

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Adam Gallagher is an artist and writer from and based in London who works through performance, sculpture and publishing. He works against the performative artist ego; disassembling its reliance upon the myopic context, history and industry of art to produce new meaning. He self-publishes a series of pamphlets called ‘E.A.R.F’. The series transposes original fictionalised biographies that aim to dramatise instances in which disparate subjectivities appear, relate, contradict, and attempt to coexist, to form a picture of the fallout, failures and flatulence of global capitalism

Kelly Lloyd is a Practice-Led DPhil candidate at the Ruskin School of Art and graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015, and Oberlin College in 2008. Lloyd has exhibited her work at, among others, the National Sculpture Factory, Cork; Royal Academy Schools, London; Institute for Contemporary Art, Baltimore; fluc, Vienna; the Hyde Park Arts Center, Chicago, and has an upcoming solo exhibition at No Show Space, London. Her interviews, writing and art appear in publications including BOMB Magazine, Art Review Oxford, and The Smudge; and she has work in two upcoming publications, HAIR and WAITING (Occasional Gallery Press, 2024) and Three Days Toward the End of my DPhil (The Just Business Agency Press, 2025). Www.k-lloyd.com

Dr Frank Wasser is an Irish artist, curator and writer from Dublin, living and working in Dublin, London and Vienna. He has exhibited internationally, including Tate Modern, Jerwood Arts, London, the University of Oxford, and he currently teaches Fine Art and Critical Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Recent and upcoming projects include a performance at the Irish Museum of Modern Art 'SPLIT' (July 2024) and DEBT at the Salzburger Kunstverein (which opens December 2024). His writing has been published in Flash Art, Art Monthly, and Art Review and he is editor of the international journal The Posthumanist. Wasser is currently an artist in residence at Tate Library supported by Askeaton Contemporary. His work unfolds through a variety of materials, forms, and encounters, both discrete and explicit, in the form of the body of an artist, as lecture-performances, teaching, lies, sculpture, publications, images, and slips of the tongue. He follows an investigative preoccupation with class, colonialism, contemporary and historical governing structures in the workplace, the art institution, and the university. Wasser received the Arts Council of Ireland Visual Artist bursary in 2024.

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