LUMINOUS is the latest project by the Shadowlight Artists, a group of seven artists with learning disabilities based in Oxfordshire, supported by Film Oxford and established in 2009.

Commencing in late summer 2019, the LUMINOUS project has come to be defined by the lockdown, which presented significant additional challenges to people with learning disabilities. Animations have been created using drawings exchanged by mail; sculptural work has been created collaboratively via Skype; dance for camera has been transposed from the studio to the outdoors and art materials and paintings exchanged by courier.

The body of work presented in this exhibition does not engage the COVID-19 crisis as a subject in itself, but instead underlies it as a sub-text. The work in this exhibition is diverse in media and subjects. Painting, photography, animation, dance for camera and sculptural installation all feature in the show, covering subjects from a personal relationship with the landscape to bullying. Some of the work looks back on the changing industrial landscape and to historical portraiture. Other work draws on a huge range of emotions from joy to sorrow, and from humour to exasperation. All of the work has in common that it represents an honest response to the day-to-day world from this unique group of artists.