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Thought Forms: A collaborative exhibition by Catalina Renjifo and Peter Vance

Renjifo and Vance’s new show explore text as image and object, utilising ceramics, abstract photography and audio-visual installation. Through this variety of media and methodologies, their works seek to explore how different materialities can be employed to re-imagine language.   Catalina Renjifo presents a wall-based installation of ceramic glyph structures alongside ten ceramic slabs, each bearing arrays of the same glyphs stamped into their surface. The installation’s text-like appearance invites us to view language as a physical, tangible object. Its potential readability provides an opportunity to reflect on how meaning arises from physical form. Peter Vance, exploits the interaction between a mirror, vibrated with sound, and a laser reflected onto a photographic medium to visualise the audible. The exhibition features an audio-visual installation that allows viewers to see forms and shapes language produces in real time in addition to his latest series of abstract works that employ the same process to photograph words. Catalina Renjifo and Peter Vance are based in Oxford at Magdalen Studios and the exhibition is part of a new gallery exchange organised by Sam Stead.

Exhibition Opening 

Saturday 15th June: 6pm - 8pm

Opening Times

Thursday 13th June: 12pm - 6pm Friday

14th June: 12pm - 6pm

Saturday 15th June: 12pm - 6pm

Sunday 16th June: 12pm - 6pm

Monday 17th June: Open by Appointment

Tuesday 18th June: Open by Appointment

Wednesday 19th June: Open by Appointment

Thursday 20th June: 12pm - 6pm

Friday 21st June: 12pm - 6pm

Saturday 22nd June: 12pm - 6pm

Sunday 23rd June: 12pm - 6pm

About the artists

Catalina Renjifo is an Oxford-based artist and practice-based researcher. Her practice interrogates the creation and interpretation of visual meaning, utilising a diverse range of mediums such as ceramics, textiles, photography and drawing.

Born in Cali, 1977, Catalina earned an MFA in Sculpture and Printmaking from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in 2000. In 2017, she was awarded an MA in Education with Distinction from Oxford Brookes University.

Currently, Catalina teaches art in Further and Postgraduate education, focusing on the correlation between skill acquisition and the development of personal vocabularies. She exhibits her work regularly in the UK, with three solo shows to date. Notably her work was selected by a curatorial platform for the exhibition ‘She Performs: The Body’ in 2020. She collaborates with art organisations and artists to support professional development, contributing to the growth of the artistic community.

Since graduating from Camberwell College of Art in 2014, Peter Vance (b. 1991) has exhibited work both nationally and internationally. His practice is focused on the various means by which information is transmitted, exploring this through the formulation of processes that translate or arrange information into new forms. 

Whilst Artist in Residence at the Pilotenkueche International Art Program in Leipzig, Germany (2017), and later as Artist in Residence at the Print and Paper Museum in Tartu, Estonia (2018), his works centred on the theme of language. His research focused on photographic techniques to make the audible become visible and methodologies inspired by weaving to translate visual data into auditory experiences.

Currently based in Oxford, UK, Vance’s recent works have been shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship Visual Art Prize and selected for Juniper Rag’s Vanguard exhibition. This September (2024), his work will be exhibited at ImagoArs, Venice as part of the Yicca International Art Prize.

Where to find us

This event is at 571 Oxford Road, Reading. Public transport is available from Reading town center and Reading station if you are visiting from elsewhere.