The Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock will host a powerful new exhibition this autumn, showcasing the work of painter, photographer, and filmmaker Paul Joyce.
Remembrances of War runs from 13 September to 18 November 2025, exploring the artist’s deeply personal and imaginative reflections on the Second World War.
Joyce, born in 1940, grew up in the shadow of conflict. Even before his birth, the war left its mark: while heavily pregnant, his mother was chased across a Whitchurch field by machine gun fire from a German plane.
His paintings are infused with this legacy, combining his childhood memories of bombed-out London with imagined visions of destruction in places like Hiroshima.
“My first thoughts on beginning the series were to paint exactly what I remembered,” Joyce explains. “But then I began to throw the net wider, and included London images which I had not personally experienced, as for the length of the war I was based in Hampshire.”
A recurring theme in Joyce’s work is the uneasy clash of the ordinary and the apocalyptic. Bovril and beans sit side by side with bombs; a German fighter plane is downed in the English countryside in Unusual Harvest; and the Tower of London broods beneath barrage balloons.
His dramatic, people-less landscapes recall the influence of Paul Nash and Eric Ravilious, yet are uniquely his own, rendered in bold, striking colours.
“I think I must be one of the last artists born during WW2 still painting the conflict as a subject,” Joyce reflects. “As a painter I find myself returning to a project I started some years ago, representing some of my recollections of the war.”
The exhibition sets Joyce’s paintings alongside artefacts from the museum’s collection, exploring how ordinary people endured extraordinary times.
Families are especially welcome: younger visitors can explore a reconstructed 1940s bedroom, take part in arts and crafts, and step inside immersive displays such as an Anderson Shelter and a First World War Trench.
Visitors can also enter a raffle to win one of Joyce’s paintings, with tickets at £5 and winners announced on 02 December 2025. Entry to Remembrances of War includes access to all other museum galleries, including the temporary exhibition Life Lines.
