Major new public artwork unveiled at Oxford North
Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s new public artwork consists of three cloud-like bronze sculptures rising from the wildflower meadow at Canalside Park, a 2.94-acre public park at Oxford North. Oxford North is a state-of-the-art, flagship innovation district being delivered by St John’s development company, Thomas White Oxford.
Titled The Length of a Moment, the work is Ginsberg’s first sculpture commission. Each of her three sculptures captures something normally invisible to the human eye: the plume of scent a flower releases into the air, shaped by the flight of a moth searching for its nectar. Standing over two metres tall and finished in tones of lilac, mint green and pale dove blue, the sculptures appear to drift up out of the meadow, casting a transient moment permanently in bronze.
Ginsberg’s work draws attention to the overlooked work of moths. Where butterflies are celebrated, moths pollinate unseen, mostly at night, and many of Oxfordshire’s species are in decline. Ginsberg has taken a single instant from this hidden exchange and given it lasting form, so that anyone walking the meadow might notice the hidden lives at work around them.
The Length of a Moment responds directly to Canalside Park’s own biodiversity and ecology strategy. They are set within a deliberately wilder green space at Oxford North, a meadow of native wildflowers and slow-growing grasses planted to support pollinators, bridging the city and the countryside beyond.
Speaking of the commission, Ginsberg said:
" These sculptures celebrate the part every living creature plays in the world we share. I wanted to give one of the slightest, most fleeting exchanges a form we can witness, and to invite the curiosity and empathy that come from really looking. To see the sculptures in the meadow they belong to, surrounded by the wildlife they are really about, is the best place this work could be. I hope people slow down, a family wondering aloud what they are, someone on their lunch break pausing to take it in, and feel something of what it might be like to experience the world the way a moth does " Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg
The Length of a Moment is also part of a larger cultural ambition for Oxford North. Through ‘Engage’, its long-term art, culture, social value and legacy programme, Oxford North is embedding art and cultural activity into the life of the new district as it grows. (Read more about Engage here.)
The sculptures were officially unveiled by Councillor Susan Brown, leader of Oxford City Council, on 15 September 2026. Several members of College were in attendance, including Zoe Hancock, St John’s Principal Bursar; Dr Georgy Kantor, The Keeper of Pictures, and Denise Cripps, Director of Communications & Engagement. Dr Kantor was part of a panel that commissioned Ginsberg's artwork and was also involved in commissioning Olafur Eliasson's eight illuminated planetary sculptures set within Fallaize Park, also at Oxford North. Eliasson's permanent sculptures were unveiled in October 2025.
Ginsberg's sculptures are now freely accessible to the public in Canalside Park, situated between the new homes at Canalside Quarter and the Oxford Canal.