Exhibition: Time Capsule: An exhibition of installations and projections accompanied by a monograph – Modern Art Oxford, until 22 May 2011.

The fate of 33 miners trapped underground for 69 days in Chile last year gripped the globe as a precarious rescue mission unfolded.

With an overwhelming succession of worldwide disasters demanding our attention every day, one might be forgiven for forgetting just how extraordinary this unprecedented rescue effort was.

Slovakian-based artist Roman Ondák reminds us of this in his latest works, Time Capsule and Stampede.

Ondák likes to challenge audience perceptions of their surrounding space and he revisits this theme here.

The works have a conceptual and performative focus at their core.

Time Capsule features an almost exact copy of Fénix 2 – the capsule that lifted each miner to safety through a narrow tunnel bored 700m into the earth.

The original capsule was built by the Chilean navy with the aid of Nasa and measured a claustrophobic 55cm wide and 4.5m high.

The replica was commissioned by Ondák and built in Chile before being shipped to Oxford for the artist’s first major exhibition here.

It has a menacing presence, standing alone in an empty half-lit room against bare walls.

A rope is attached to its top becoming hidden by a large metal tube which reaches the ceiling, representing the bore hole that was drilled into the ground.

Stampede shows a projection onto a wall of a room into which a few people, followed by dozens and then hundreds more enter, cramming the small space to saturation point.

The crowd were filmed prior to the exhibition, encouraging the audience to reflect on the movement of people through spaces before watching them filter out.

It would be flippant to presume that the experience of the crowd could even attempt to replicate the horrendous ordeal suffered by the miners – but this isn’t the point.

Ondák conceptually transports the audience to an environment which has a strong resonance with the contemporary psyche.

In doing so, the audience becomes as much a part of the exhibition as spectators of it.

• Open Tuesday-Sunday 10am-7pm (5pm Wednesday, 12pm-5pm Sunday). Admission free.