The Ashmolean’s first artist-in-residence has recorded its redevelopment, from the beginning of expansion in 2006 to its completion and opening last year. While it’s not always clear if the medium suits the content, He’s work is striking for its human sympathy within scenes of mechanical mess.

The first thing you see is a wall mural, which manages to convey the noisy, dusty chaos of a construction site within a carefully balanced composition. Bits of brickwork, wooden planks and workers carrying objects to and fro make the image bustle with activity wherever you look, but each area includes just enough white space for it to remain legible. I wanted to stand up close to the mural, but unfortunately the curators have a placed an odd batch of laminated extra drawings all along the floor in front of it. These obstruct both the mural and one of the best mounted ink drawings, on the wall to the left: its sharp tonal contrasts, unique in the exhibition, create a sense of the new building’s vast depth.

He seems to have made himself a quiet observer of daily life during the redevelopment, and much of the work on show here – not originally planned, one suspects – comprises portraits of construction workers and museum staff. The exhibition information is keen to reconcile He’s ancient Chinese ink and paper techniques with his images of a contemporary and Western world, but this didn’t entirely seem to work. Particularly in the portraits, the use of traditional ink to depict people in crumpled suits in front of laptops drew attention to its own anomaly in a distracting way. However, the ancient world of the Ashmolean’s concern is frequently suggested too: one of the portraits shows a museum conservationist retouching a large vase which sits on her office desk, in charming contradiction.

The most striking works are the woodblock prints, which exploit the hard, opaque lines to emphasize the rigidity of construction scaffolding. The scaffolding itself often acts a compositional grid laid over each picture, contrasting with the fluid expressiveness of the workers’ bodies as they twist, bend, reach and loll about.

Indeed, He manages always to highlight the humanity of his subjects in their industrial surroundings. His images are intricate, and nearly always rendered in stark black on white. Yet there is something in the loose smudginess of the lines, and the slightly cartoon-like workers’ bodies, which conveys the friendly camaraderie between everyone involved. The overwhelming sensation is of human warmth, underlined by the myriad further portrait drawings included in the catalogue: one depicts a pregnant woman sitting quietly, another a man with Star Wars toys all over his office desk. The tone is softly humorous, and He seems to genuinely love the people he draws.

(four stars)

Image: Ashmolean Builders VI, woodcut printed with oil based ink, Weimin He

On the west side of Naples is a steep little park with winding paths. Near the spot where Vergil is supposedly buried is a botanical garden at the bottom of the hill: if you bend down to peer at the labels, you will see that every plant in this garden has been plucked from the poetry of Vergil, together with a couple of lines of Latin. It was here, among the rain-jewelled tamarisks and clumps of rosemary, that I finally got the brilliance of Vergil’s descriptions of the Italian landscape. To see, to scent, physically to grasp the object of a thought or feeling: this is the way we truly learn and understand.

Orhan Pamuk has chosen this mode of experience as the theme for a new novel stunning in its simplicity. Kemal has it all: a sinecure in his father’s company, a smart set of friends and beautiful, cultured fiancee. When he wakens to the impossibly good looks of his distant relative Füsun and makes her his mistress, he thinks his life is complete. Everything, of course, falls apart, Füsun leaves him, and he collapses into a pit of despair. Wracked by emotional and physical agony, he can soothe himself only by the touch and smell of objects that remind him of his lover. He snitches earrings, postcards, fragments of wallpaper, anything, until he becomes a connoisseur of memory, and assembles his hoard into a museum dedicated to his love. The painfully honest narrative is told as a kind of guide to this museum. ‘The ancient Chinese thought that things had souls,’ the narrator says, but it would be more exact to say that he gives little shards of his own soul to his exhibition. Each item recalls a host of memories, and so we are told the life-story of a love affair through cigarette butts and smashed cars.

Yet this is also a story about Istanbul. Pamuk’s deep affection for his home city suffuses all of his work, and it is not much of an exaggeration to say that he has done for Istanbul what Dickens did for London and Hugo for Paris – he has made her a living icon. In part of his memoirs of Istanbul, he sets out to describe what the Turks call hüzun, the city-wide melancholy compounded of nostalgia and unrequited longing that settles in the streets from time to time like a sea-fog. Istanbul may be European Capital of Culture this year, but the seventies were dark days of extremism on right and left. Kemal’s desperate passion for Füsun comes to symbolise this tragic love affair between the city and her ideals. Every object he cleaves to in his hunger for memory speaks as much of his city as of his emotions.

Pamuk’s delicate portrait of obsessive love has drawn inevitable comparisons with Proust, but his style is less subtle and anaemic, less slumbrous and cumbersome. When he describes hüzun in Istanbul, he reaches not for Proust but for the livelier wisdom of Montaigne, and that same spirited frankness is found in The Museum of Innocence. Kemal bares everything. It is such an immediate book that any reader could fall into it on the spot. Maureen Freely’s translation is limpid and simple, larded with the occasional homely Turkism: people of integrity, for instance, are called ‘straight arrows,’ and a woman is said to hate another woman so much that she ‘would drown her in a spoonful of water’.

A lingering, sweet melancholy drifts through the story’s veins; as Kemal wastes away with love, the old, old city about him is fraying at the edges. The streets are full of running battles, the televisions full of military coups, the beautiful chalets of the Ottoman nobility are crumbling in the sunset on the shores of the Bosporus. The sense of loss and the passage of time sometimes threatens to overwhelm the reader, but there are always slender moments of hope and humour to soften the darkness. The final thirty pages describing the composition of the museum are as sure of life to come as they are tragic, and the novel’s end is possibly the best passage of new writing I have seen this century.

This book is not perfect. I remain to be convinced that Pamuk can conceive real, living women in his books who are more than just the bearers of ideas; perhaps, too, the story dwells too lovingly on some feelings and moments. Yet Pamuk has written a book for anyone and everyone: a book that teaches us the thick magic that gathers like dust about china dogs and matchboxes, the little things we touch and love and forget that mark out the course of our lives.

Director Anna Hextall has put together an ambitious, effective and imaginative production of Peter Shaffer’s Equus, which will open at the OFS studio next week. Joe Murphy deals well with the complexities of playing the horse-blinding Alan Strang and Edward Fortes (as child psychiatrist Martin Dysart) is more than enough to match him, even if one or two of his mannerisms (such as running his hands through his hair at every stressful moment or keeping his hands on his hips when addressing the audience) could be toned down without losing any of the drama.

Helen Slaney and Tim Kiely worked well together as Alan’s parents – especially in the flashback ‘television’ scene. Slaney’s vocal range was particularly impressive, as she made a sudden yet believable transformation from mousy housewife to religious zealot.

Kiely’s performance was also strong but a habit of closing his eyes on certain words while speaking was a little distracting. Elizabeth Bichard (as magistrate Hester Saloman) gave a very strong facial and vocal performance, but at times the very stationary staging of her scenes with Dysart was a little restrictive.

Cuppers Best Actress Ruby Thomas plays stable girl Jill Mason and was strong in her opening scene (although, due to the shortened length of the press preview, we were given little clue as to how her character would develop). The scene involving the ‘horse’ chorus was atmospheric, even without the lighting which should add a lot to the whole performance.

Rachel Beaconsfield Press’s ‘horse head’ constructions gave the play a much-needed visual interest. Combined with the eerie humming of the ‘horse’ chorus they looked quite otherworldly and added a lot to the sinister atmosphere.

But what stood out most about the preview was the success of the piece’s direction – scene changes were fluid, staging was well thought-out. A challenging play was well executed. From the acting to the marketing this is a student play with the attributes of a professional endeavour and I am looking forward to seeing it in full next week in a setting that will do the production justice.

four stars

Equus is at the OFS studion, 2-6 February, 19.30 

CORRECTION: In today’s newspaper, an additional paragraph was included in this article suggesting that Anna Hextall’s production would feature no nudity. This was factually incorrect, and we can assure you that there will indeed be nudity in the play. Cherwell apologises to its readers and to those involved in the play for the confusion.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock with earplugs in for the last few years you will not have been able to escape the infectious sound of Scroobius Pip vs dan le sac. In 2007 the Brit hip-hop duo seemed to appear out of nowhere with their debut single ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill,’ comprising of a satirical spoken word rant from Scroobius Pip and undercut with an electro dance beat from dan le sac: it was simple, fresh and effective. Now they’re back with a new album, The Logic of Chance. I caught up with one half of the Essex two piece, producer dan le sac, to discuss their sophomore album, song writing and Simon Cowell.

Dan describes their sound as ‘a mish mash of everything I’ve ever listened to; sometimes from the electronica stuff, like Squarepusher and Lack Luster and, on a more commercial level, maybe Underworld. It also incorporates the hip hop and disco stuff that I love.’

One of the reasons for the duo’s success is that each artist is bringing something fresh and exciting to the table; as a collaborative effort it’s something really special. They push each other into new territory. ‘I’ve got this blank slate where I can write anything that I want and it works because the diversity of what I do enhances what he’s already doing with his vocals. I’m like a child in a toy store!’

The thought provoking and witty verses that Scroobius composes are slammed down on top of Dan’s beats to create their own original brand of hip-hop. Would he rather that their music made people think or make people dance? ‘As the producer, the ones who makes the beats, I would always go for dance. People are bombarded with information everyday. There’s too much to think about already. I’d rather give people an opportunity to let off a some steam.’
Whilst collaborations can be restrictive, this doesn’t seem to be the case for Scroobius and Dan. The duo write separately most of the time. ‘90% of the time he’ll be writing vocals and then when I’ve finished something I send it across to him. I’ll e-mail him five or six beats and he’ll pick one or two and come up with a vocal for them.’

Are there ever any problems with this method of song writing? ‘Every now and then he’ll send me something with a beat underneath it where he’s sampled The Cure or whatever and then I’ll spend days trying to figure out what I’m meant to do with it without using a big Cure sample!’

Debut album ‘Angles’ was released in 2008 and followed the success of their first collaborative single. The album entered the UK top thirty and the progressive pair embarked upon a tour of Europe and the US.

As the release date for the highly anticipated The Logic of Chance approaches I wonder what new directions this album might take. After all, ‘Thou shalt not make repetitive generic music.’

Is it important for them to progress musically or are they happy to stick with their winning formula? ‘Well it’s only important for yourself as an artist really. If I felt like this was the exact same album as we did last time I wouldn’t feel very excited about it.’ As if unconsciously echoing their upcoming single ‘Get Better’ Dan continues, ‘it’s the same with all creative processes; you’ve got to feel like you’re progressing, to feel like you’re getting better. And if you’re not getting any better then why are you releasing it?’

Although the new album has only been finished for a matter of months I still want to know if there’s a particular track we need to look out for. Dan is quick to say that they haven’t had time to fall in and out of love with the songs yet but that if pushed he’d probably select ‘Inert Explosions’ as his favourite ‘because its lyrically the strongest track on the album and the beat is just really simple’.

One thing that has changed for the duo since they started out is the amount of influence they can have on their music videos.

‘On the first album I didn’t take part in that side of it at all because we were touring and writing at the same time. We didn’t have time to sit down with a director and hammer out ideas. At the pitching stage, where we were choosing directors, I’d been involved just to say ‘that guy is good, we like him’ and that would be it. This time we’ve been a little more involved.

‘We spent a few weeks emailing the director of ‘Get Better’ before we shot that video. It’s important that this five minutes is a representation of us; that it’s a representation of our song’.The video for ‘Get Better’ (which is directed by Richard Heslop, who has worked with such legendary bands as The Smiths and New Order) shows Scroobius Pip delivering a motivational lesson to a group of teenagers through his modern poetry. It is a typical music video for the pair; low budget and high energy.

Dan claims the ‘Look for the Woman’ video as his favourite so far, ‘just because it has a really nice premise.’ The video shows a man with a TV set attached to his head being accompanied through his day by an angelic representation of Scroobius Pip, as if he were being guided by his guardian angel: ‘Pip is his inner self; he’s the voice in this guy’s head.’

A few years ago Scroobius and Dan created a spoof video of themselves doing an X Factor audition, spliced together with footage of the show’s panel. They are clearly not fans of Simon Cowell, however, Dan insists that there’s a fascination there, as well as hatred.

‘I wouldn’t want to hang around with him for too long but I’d like to meet the bloke, it would be quite interesting; I’d like to see if he really is that up himself. If I met him I’d ask, ‘why is your hair like that, has no-one ever told you it looks terrible? And you don’t need to pull your trousers that high!’ It’d be simple little helpful hints and tips.

‘He may be the face of commercial pop music, but there are still a lot of other people in the industry who are equally evil as he is; it’s just that they don’t choose to go on television.’

Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip certainly practise what they preach when they tell us that ‘thou shalt learn to think for yourselves’ they managed to avoid becoming victims to commercial music giants by showing a bit of independence and foresight.

Dan admits that ‘it was really hard finding a label. After ‘Thou Shalt’ we talked to quite a lot of the major labels and we had some really big offers, a lot of money. We thought about doing it. We spoke to one label in particular and the boss said he was really into us. Then we saw him on TV talking about a truly terrible pop band, saying the same things about them that he’d said to us..’
Instead of taking the easy way out, they held out for the right label and eventually signed to Rob da Bank’s ‘Sunday Best’. Having almost reached the point of giving up and doing it all themselves they realised that the perfect label had been right in front of them all along.

‘It is really important to find a label on your level,’ says Dan, ‘If we’d signed to Sony or Warner we’d be in a really dangerous position; we’re a little bit too far left to make loads of money out of record sales. We’d have released that first album, the label would have lost loads of money, we’d be sitting there wondering if they’re going to let us put another one out. We found a label that was big enough to do all the promotion it needed but small enough not to need millions of pounds back in return.’

It’s no surprise that the artists that inspire dan le sac are also independent thinkers pushing the boundaries of their music. He cites Michachu and the Shapes as one of the more exciting bands of the moment: ‘it’s really exciting to see someone doing something so off kilter and also receiving acclaim for it. I’m inspired by people who are being themselves, by people who do what they’re meant to be doing and not trying to bend what they do to fit a commercial model and make vast sums of cash.’

Refusing to compromise from the beginning seems to have been the making of Scroobius Pip vs dan le sac. With a firm base of fans, a supportive label and their combined talents they can confidently begin to build on the solid foundations they have created.