A new exhibition opens tomorrow at Modern Art Oxford welcomes new and returning artworks which reflect on concerns surrounding the environment and unsustainable consumption, including a work by Yoko Ono that was created using a hammer and nails.

The show takes its inspiration from an observation by German artist Gustav Metzger that “every step in nature is a moment of grace”. Metzger was the founder of the Auto-Destructive art movement in the 1960s, which aimed to undermine the commodity status of artistic production through the self-destruction of the art object.

His celebrated work, Liquid Crystal Environment 1965, returns to the gallery, immersing patrons in a psychedelic environment created by light projected through glass slides filled with heat-sensitive liquid crystals.

Japanese artist Yoko Ono also participated in the Destruction in Art symposium with Painting to Hammer A Nail, 1961. It was recreated for her 1997 retrospective at Modern Art Oxford, which invited audiences to contribute to the work by hammering nails into the canvas.

Beijing-based multi-media artist Guan Xiao appropriates visual imagery she finds online to create sculptural works, employing the Internet’s destruction of different source materials.

Also on display are large-scale paintings by Zimbabwean artist Gareth Nyandoro depicting the marketplaces of his native Harare and incorporating inanimate objects used and discarded in everyday life.

Drawing on art historical and literary sources, Nigerian artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby makes large-scale figurative compositions combining drawing, painting and collage on paper. Using the visual language and inherited traditions of classical academic western painting, she creates multi-layered works that reflect transcultural identity, employing family photos, magazines and images from the Internet.

The exhibition will also feature a new audio work by Open Music Archive, for which the artists have mined the gallery’s archive of taped events and live recordings. The resulting piece captures and collages together the sounds made by audiences at Modern Art Oxford over the past 50 years, playing them back to today’s visitors to the gallery.

A Moment of Grace is the second exhibition in KALEIDOSCOPE, a yearlong programme of unfolding exhibitions at Modern Art Oxford in 2016. During the year, iconic works from the past return to the gallery alongside new commissions by internationally acclaimed and emerging artists of the current generation.

Modern Art Oxford, 30 Pembroke Street, Oxford. Saturday, April 16 until Sunday, May 22. Details: 01865 722733