Current + upcoming events
Manual for the Overlooked
A takeover exhibition:
Manual for the Overlooked brings BFA3 finalists Z Forbes, Ben Holland, Isabelle Oxford, and Amelia Sleight in a dialogue of material, gesture, and curiosity.
Through this collaboration, they invite viewers to look closer to rediscover what might otherwise remain unseen.
Exhibition runs 28 – 29 November 2025 10:00 – 16:00
Private View: 27 November 2025, 19:00 – 21:00
The Mindful Sketchbook - workshop
The Mindful Sketchbook - with David Elliot
A reflective, two-hour workshop combining mindfulness and drawing exercises for a relaxed, creative and refreshing approach to still-life drawing.
Tickets available here
Together We Make
In celebration of Together We Make turning 1 this winter, we're hosting our first ever group art exhibition at Ovada Warehouse, Oxford!
The emphasis of the exhibition is to provide space for a diverse group of emerging artists to share their works without any boundaries or limitations.
A Time and A Place - Workshop
Guided by art psychotherapist David Elliot, this day-long workshop invites participants to explore the intersection of place, memory and the present moment.
Starting with an artists’ walk through local landscapes, you will capture sensory impressions through sketches, notes or recordings. These experiences will be transformed into layered artworks using abstract mark-making, tracing and mapping techniques.
Words inspired by the walk will be scattered and reassembled into spontaneous poems, offering fresh perspectives on their observations. By the end of the day, participants will leave with unique, layered artworks and poems that encapsulate their journey and creative responses to place.
Tickets available here
Draw a Line Under It
This would be concluding a series of artworks that seem to have been going on for too long, and dedicating a week to their conclusion and extradition from our own studios. Both artists are planning to work in the space independently. Fundamentally it will be a seven day performance, with concurrent audience access, culminating with an ‘open/suggested viewing’.
Diwali Glow 2025
Sharing time with loved ones and the community is the most important feature of Diwali. On Saturday 15 November 2025, we will enjoy a variety of fun, interactive activities and performances for the whole family in the OVADA Warehouse as a part of this year’s Oxford Christmas Lights Festival. This is a free event - open to all!
From 5pm, we will join a diya procession led by traditional dhol players at Westgate Shopping Centre in Leiden Square and make our way to the OVADA Warehouse
From 5:30 - 8pm the OVADA Warehouse will be transformed into a community celebration dance, light installations, food and more
Diwali Glow Workshop
Family Friendly Diwali Crafting Workshops at Westgate
Sunday 9 November 2025 from 11am - 4pm
Find us under the escalators on the Lower Ground floor
Make and decorate clay diya lamp holders which will be used in the Diwali Glow Parade on Saturday 15 November
Create a firework drawings which will be projected onto the walls of the gallery during Diwali Glow
All ages and abilities welcome!
Under 18s must be accompanied by an adult
Poetry at the Warehouse
Poetry at the Garage presents: Poetry at the Warehouse
Readings by Hannah Sullivan & Camille Ralphs
7:30 PM Thursday 6 November
Free entry!
Pumpkin Party
🎃 Pumpkin Party
Friday 31 October 2025 from 3 - 9pm
Join us for a spooky celebration at OVADA Gallery!
Whether you’re bringing the family for some Halloween fun or settling in for an evening of art and entertainment our Pumpkin Party will have something for everyone
YourParty Assembly and Community Organising Day
Your voice, Your community: join the assembly and community organising day to build grassroots power with others interested in Your Party
SNAPPY - an evening of short performance works
SNAPPY tests the constraints of time on the making and experience of live work. It presents a dynamic selection of new works made for a live audience.
The programme will include works that are spoken word, participatory, comedic, reflective, visually spectacular, and powerful.
Friday 26 September 2025
6 - 9 pm doors 5pm
OVADA Gallery, 14a Osney Lane, Oxford OX1 1NJ
Donations at door
Performances by :
Denise Bryan, Filippos Tsitsopoulos, Audrey Baldwin, Veronica Cordova de la Rosa, Katarina Rasic, Jackie Montague, Katarina Balunova, Clare Carswell, István Kováks, Peta Lloyd
Curated by : Clare Carswell, Peta Lloyd & Dr Veronica Cordova de la Rosa
Hosted by : COU COU and LAPER (Live Art & Performance)
YourParty Community Fundraiser
Enjoy an evening of live music, food, games and a Ceilidh with other Oxford locals at OVADA
It's Art: Summer Residency Exhibition
What better way to round off the summer than with an art-filled evening?
Come and see what our summer residents have been working on in our Warehouse space this August
Deja Vu
Déjà Vu is the sensation of looping through something already lived. Familiar, uncanny, persistent - this exhibition leans into that feeling
Déjà Vu is a group exhibition by OVADA Associates
أيادي Ayaadi: Helping Hands for Palestine
Art can be an act of resistance and survival
Join us for a family friendly community solidarity and art-activism day at OVADA Gallery on Saturday 12 July 2025 from 11:30 - 5:00pm
All proceeds will be donated to Medical Aid for Palestinians and the Gaza Biennale
Echoes & Embers
Echoes & Embers is an improvised, live performance/installation which uses analog and digital projections together with a multichannel spatial speaker system.
Echoes & Embers is a performance and installation. Audience members may arrive at any point during the three-hour time window and stay as long as desired.
Presented by Oxford Contemporary Music, Oxford Festival of the Arts and OVADA.
Creative Thursday
Come and get a sneak peek of Echoes & Embers by Ezra Gray and Giles W Bennett as part of Oxford Festival of the Arts and Oxford Contemporary Music
All welcome, please come along to catch-up, connect and chat
All Shall Be Afforded Dignity
Visit “All Shall Be Afforded Dignity” – An Exhibition by Norman Kaplan
24 June - 1 July 2025
Open daily from 10 - 5pm
Free Entry
Step into a powerful story of resistance, creativity, and hope through the art of Norman Kaplan—South African artist and activist. All Shall Be Afforded Dignity showcases Kaplan’s striking lino-prints and cartoons, created under apartheid and from exile in the UK, highlighting art as a tool of struggle, resilience, and transformation.
Community Day Rave
A community day rave in Oxford …the type where you are in bed before late…
at the stunning OVADA Gallery with eight hours of electronic music starting from 12pm
Expect minimal, psytrance, trip hop, dub techno... visually, projections, installations and artistic collaborations
Almost Myself
‘Almost Myself’- Exhibition by Patricia Sheldon-Hicks
What if the parts of us deemed “too much” — the brightness, the passion, the sensitivity, the joy— are actually our superpowers? These works explore the cost of shrinking ourselves to fit a world that fears emotional intensity, and ask: who might we become if we made space for the full spectrum of feeling and stopped muting what makes us vivid?
Screen Printing: Optical Colour Mixing with Berkshire Printmakers
Berkshire Printmakers will take you through the step by step how to print using the colours cyan, magenta and yellow to create vibrant optical mixes. The two expert printmakers will run a fun creative workshop, demonstrating how to print using the translucent inks and combine them with combined with, plain and patterned photoscreens (including half tone dots) to create complex multilayered prints
This workshop is ideal for both painters and printmakers and as a for beginners/refreshers workshop.
No printmaking experience necessary as Berkshire Printmakers will take you step by step: how to create paper stencils, make the inks, and get to grips with a squeegee to create your own print using the CYM colours.
Everything is provided during the class from 30 plain and patterned screen, waterbased inks to good quality paper, as well as two experienced printmakers.
Dress for mess and bring a A3 folder to take your prints home
Maximum 10 attendees
This event requires a minimum number of bookings to proceed. To help make it happen, please secure your spot by 12 May.
Ankara Headdress Workshop
Join Oxford Brookes University as part of their Think Human Festival for a collaborative Ankara Headdress Workshop and experience the quiet power of making together.
If you are concerned about the damaging effects the textile industry is having on our world. Come and remember the solutions that are embedded in hand crafted textiles.
The workshop will be taught by Amy Harris from Oxford Brookes in collaboration with Elizabeth Abere (via zoom) CEO of Molaloche Concepts based in Lagos Nigeria. As part of this workshop we will promote discussion around how we can help to achieve a more sustainable future through the protection and respect of traditional craft techniques that are inherently both sustainable and ethical.
QUEUE Opening Party
You're Invited: QUEUE Opening Party! 🚶🚶♂️🚶♀️🏃♂️🚶♀️
Join us on May Day for the grand opening of QUEUE at OVADA for Oxfordshire Artweeks! What better way to continue the festivities than enjoying an evening of refreshments from the OVADA bar, conversations with local artists and makers an art-filled evening?
May Day is a time-honored tradition here in Oxford — the whole Oxford community queues up on Magdalen Bridge to hear the Magdalen College Choir greeting the dawn and celebrate the rising sun
The art and costumes, morris dancers, frolicking in fields and community gatherings are spectacularly fun!
QUEUE Exhibition
Join us at OVADA for a vibrant group show as part of Oxfordshire Artweeks.
Radically inclusive and refreshingly unfiltered, this exhibition is built on the simple idea of the queue—fair and open. No theme. No selection. No rejections.
On hanging day, artists lined up to install their work, turning the queue into a space of spontaneity and connection. As each piece found its place, the exhibition organically took shape.
Opening event 1 May 6 - 8pm
Exhibition runs 1 - 25 May
Open hours: Weds-Sun 12pm-6pm
Recipes for Care with Mita Vaghela
Do you have any family recipes that have been passed down for good health? Maybe herbal teas, broths, or a tried and tested home remedy?
Perhaps you have discovered your own…I always remember being told that sugar and fat are great for treating migraines and an almond croissant has been my go to ever since!
As Red Clay draws to a close, please join us for an afternoon of food, stories, and shared wisdom, where we’ll explore the connection between what we eat and how we feel.
Bring along your favourite food remedy, a snack to share, and let’s nourish each other with knowledge and deliciousness
Not Your Mum's Sex Ed with Haley Drolet
A drop in crafting session offering education and resources with a focus on queer sexual health. Reclaim your understanding of sexual health through an interactive evening of discussion, badge making, zine making and collage
Red Clay reading groups
A free online, intersectional reading group facilitated by Red Clay artists and guests as part of a month long exhibition at OVADA.
A warm, supportive weekly discussion group exploring texts and poems of themes specific to Red Clay. Each session will offer a summary of the readings and conversation around the selected texts. Themes include: intersectional, embodied experiences of sickness, disability, menopause and queer resistance.
Join Haley Drolet who will round off our reading group sessions discussing ‘Queer Creativity as Resistance’
Book on Eventbrite
Red Clay reading group
A free online, intersectional reading group facilitated by Red Clay artists and guests as part of a month long exhibition at OVADA
A warm, supportive weekly discussion group exploring texts and poems of themes specific to Red Clay. Each session will offer a summary of the readings and conversation around the selected texts. Themes include: intersectional, embodied experiences of sickness, disability, menopause and queer resistance
In week 3 are welcoming Emma Thomas from ‘The Pause’ project to talk about perimenopause and the menopause
Book on Eventbrite
Conceptual Portraits Session
Join artist Audrey Baldwin to create a series of playful, exploratory conceptual portraits using collage, drawing, abstract mark-making and mixed media
This free workshop invites you to look at portraiture through a different lens. Whether representing the self or another, we'll be using playful, exploratory methods and materials to capture the essense of the individual. Expect collage, drawing, mark-making and mixed media - create a layered portrait which goes beyond the visual.
No experience is necessary to have a fun afternoon in the gallery
Red Clay reading group
A free online, intersectional reading group facilitated by Red Clay artists and guests as part of a month long exhibition at OVADA.
A warm, supportive weekly discussion group exploring texts and poems of themes specific to Red Clay. Each session will offer a summary of the readings and conversation around the selected texts. Themes include: intersectional, embodied experiences of sickness, disability, menopause and queer resistance.
This week we will have Yasmeen Thantrey discussing ‘Endometriosis and Psycho-Social Wellbeing’
Book on Eventbrite
Gentle Listening Session
Join Sarah Catterall to co-host a Spotify playlist with other artists and creatives as you drape a corner of OVADA together with layers of fabric, found objects, music & light
We encourage you to bring snacks, drinks and board games for a fun filled Saturday afternoon
Free / donation suggested
Red Clay reading group
A weekly, free online, intersectional reading group facilitated by Red Clay artists and guests as part of a month long exhibition at OVADA.
A warm, supportive weekly discussion group exploring texts and poems of themes specific to Red Clay. Each session will offer a summary of the readings and conversation around the selected texts. Themes include: intersectional, embodied experiences of sickness, disability, menopause and queer resistance.
Kicking off with Laura Jagger & Hayley Drolet talking about ‘Sick Woman Theory’, 7pm- 8.30pm
Book on Eventbrite
Painting with Marcia Scott
Join abstract painter Marcia Scott for a calming and uplifting workshop that explores the healing connection between creative expression and mental well-being through playful engagement with paint and materials. We’ll explore abstract mark making as a powerful tool to silence your inner critic, reconnect with your creativity and spark your personal artistic journey
Red Clay Exhibition
A Celebration of Womxn’s Health Through Art & Community
6 March – 5 April 2025
Open Thursdays – Sundays from 12–6 PM
We're thrilled to announce that Red Clay is back! Join us for a vibrant month-long celebration dedicated to exploring the complexities of womxn’s health through art, conversations and connection
This is your invitation to listen, connect, and celebrate the amazing womxn in your life!
Whether you're an art enthusiast, wellness advocate, or simply curious—there’s something for everyone!
Hover on calendar to see what’s on at OVADA
Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you would like to schedule an event at OVADA
Sometimes we can schedule more than one event on a given day
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14A Osney Lane, Oxford OX1 1NJ
5 minutes from Oxford Rail Station!
5 minutes from Westgate Shopping Centre!
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Our opening hours vary from week to week and are not always accurate on Google
Please check this calendar to confirm our opening hours and when we are hosting exhibitions + events + workshops
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Please get in touch