Modern Art Oxford is in the pink and everyone is noticing. How can they miss it? Impossible! It’s making a statement, which even those who don’t enter have to take in whether they like it, or not. MAO’s new colour scheme is the work of Ernesto Salmeron from Nicaragua, who has taken several tins of bright pink paint and a few other colours besides and used them to cover the gallery’s exterior with a pink foundation. He has then added daubs of black paint, which suggest graffiti artists have added their voices too.

Ernesto’s statement is simple. He says his country doesn’t have a national colour; the colours disappear and are consumed by the darkness of their history. It is his statement about Nicaragua during the Sandinista People’s Revolution. Passers-by respond positively once they realise that MAO has not been vandalised.

This is one of Ernesto’s contributions to MAO’s latest exhibition Transmission Interrupted, which remains on show until June 21 and features work by 14 artists who work internationally. The exhibition suggests art’s ability to make visible and audible that which remains unseen and unheard at a time when free speech and democracy are invoked as universal values to which we can all subscribe.

One of Ernesto’s other works is a ceramic manhole cover that has been placed in the centre of the upper gallery. We all know where a manhole cover leads when we step over one in the street – but where does it lead to when placed in an art gallery?

And why is a life-sized ceramic model of a burnt-out car dominating the lower gallery? This tactile exhibit, the work of Adel Abdessemed, is entitled Practice Zero Tolerance. MAO had to remove a wall to get it safely installed in one piece. It stands as a mute witness to the riots that took place in the working-class districts of Northern Paris in 2005.

Each gallery contains similarly thought provoking pieces. Some artists use photography to make their statement, others have used film, paint, sculpture and performances to state their case. All command the visitor’s attention.

Helen Peacocke