The Oxford Art Society’s annual open exhibition has a well-earned reputation for high standards of work. And the pieces in this year’s show are no exception. This is a substantial exhibition, comprising the work of 91 artists, each of whom can exhibit up to two hung pieces of work and four unframed pieces, which are held in the browsers.

The exhibition features a large number of portraits, ranging from the formal and traditional head and shoulders made in oil, water colour or print to the more unusual as in Annie Wotton’s use of paper pulp and Jill Cooper’s use of mixed media. In Chatting, Cooper combines watercolour with black-coloured thread and transparent gauzes to create a light-hearted portrait of three ‘old geysers’ on a park bench. The central figure becomes more and more confidential with the character on the right, while the geyser stage-left dozes through the whole episode.

In Wotton’s 3D portrait The New Look both the head and shoulders evidence this woman’s pride in her new look, her pride in her wide-brimmed hat and folded shawl in contrast to the bare newsprint of which they are constructed.

Jago Pryce also makes use of newsprint in Just Good Friends (pictured). She has created this endearing quirky pair, where both giraffe and bird have a clear symbiotic need of each other, suggesting how even seemingly diverse pairings can work to mutual benefit. The formal little bird displays nothing of the giraffe’s goofy grin or its heart, which is as it were, on its sleeve: its markings are composed of newsprint — lonely hearts small ads.

Land- and city-scapes also feature. Most striking is Francesca Shakespeare’s Tuscan Landscape Frieze, where she has used egg tempera on lime plaster to make a triptych of tiles, their deep earthy colours burnished and distressed and celebrating a landscape that absorbs the sun’s heat year on year.

The show is open from 10am to 4pm, until October 30 (closed on October 27 and 28).