by Daisy Dunn

Common Threads-An Exhibition of Patchwork Panels

Jacqueline Du Pre Building, St. Hilda’s College, October 28th-December 1st

There is something innately youthful about ‘patchwork’ as an artistic medium. It is this very nostalgic feeling, heightened by the intensity and fiercely clashing nature of a full palate of colours and dyes, that  first strikes one upon entering the glass anteroom of the ‘JDP’ building.  ‘Common Threads’, an exhibition of wall-based textile artwork produced by the Oxford multicultural textile community, falls  midway between a monarchically traditional tapestry array and a primary school display board.  And yet, the thought behind each of the textile panels is embraced by neither of these parodies. 

The belied naivety of the exhibition as a whole, as well as being promoted by the primitive associations  of  patchwork craft, arises from the internal imagery of many textile squares.  One of Junie James’ pieces, for instance, alights upon those very features which differentiate England from her time-old memories of Jamaica.  Visualised through the eyes of a child, a Christmas tree looms jovially before a  claustrophobically terraced Oxford street.  Patricia White’s journey, whilst geographically not quite as extreme, is realised in the panel entitled ‘Mobility’, which portrays her transition from a depressingly  industrial northern town to an aesthetically stunning Oxford College.  Oxford as home is also envisaged by Judy Hammond, whose intensely moving artwork was influenced by the Botanic Garden’s former  existence as a Jewish cemetery; Hammond, who never knew the whereabouts of her Jewish grandparents’ graves, interns them symbolically in this fruitful spot. The Common Thread between such disparate tales of disparate places, Oxford, is most poignantly played up by patchwork itself, a  medium which strives to collocate disparate materials in an harmonious way. 

It is not only the highly personal experience that is explored in this show.  As a reflection of the group’s  connection with Out of Africa 2007, a project which celebrates the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the  Transatlantic Slave Trade, more pandemic issues such as civil rights have sparked inspiration.  One sizeable panel features a selection of ironed-on images and quotes from both Martin Luther King and proponents of the Black Power Movement, such as Stokely-or ‘Stokey’ as he is here rendered- Carmichael.  As political art, the ostensibly congruous inclusion of two historically conflicting  movements on one canvas seems both ironic and falsely idealised; unless, of course, the artist is to be  taken as exploring the common thread between Peaceful Resistance and Black Power.  Such a realisation seems unlikely, but the political failings of these panels do little to render them contrived or  any less emotional. 

All in all, much of the success of the exhibition itself is dependent on comprehending the feelings of  culture-clash versus integration, which form the backbone of many of the panels.  Without the emotion of each story elucidated, either visually or literarily, one cannot help but fall prey to the more obvious  decries of amateurism, albeit sympathetically, which are evoked upon first viewing. 

A concert featuring Black Voices, linked to the exhibition, will take place on November 30th. The textile  group welcomes new members: see www.oxnet.org.uk/textilesforpeace

Exeter College closed its doors to the general public today as it mourned the loss of two of its students.Sundeep Watts and Harcourt 'Olly' Tucker, both first-year undergraduates, died of unrelated causes on Sunday. Sundeep Watts was diagnosed on Saturday with meningitis. He was taken to the John Radcliffe Infirmary where he died last night. In the same day, Olly Tucker suffered a heart attack while playing hockey.Teresa Cash, Communications Manager from the Health Protection Agency said: "All people that had been in close contact with [Sundeep] have been offered proventive antibiotics" as a precaution and confirmed that there would be no increased meningitis risk to other students.University Authorities have advised students to remain in Oxford rather than to return home early and urges anyone who is concerned to seek medical advice immediately. In a statement made earlier today, Frances Cairncross, Rector of Exeter College, Oxford, said: "Exeter College is devastated by the deaths. Our hearts go out to their families and friends."Cairncross confirmed: "All the specialists dealing with them have assured us that there is no connection whatsoever between the two cases."The College is closed to the general public for the time being, in order to ensure that our students have peace at this difficult time."
by Daniel Millichip and Fiona Wilson

Possibly the ultimate showdown of the Oxford clubbing scene. Loyalties are divided, but can the winner be found? Our intrepid reporter Sam Harding takes on the task of finding out….
 
 
Thursdays @ The Bridge

I arrived at the Bridge with a friend who insisted that we go ridiculously early. Thankfully that meant that we only had to queue for twenty minutes. It was quick to get a drink, as there are multiple bar areas, and the staff are efficient. A good choice if you’re with friends is the £11 bottle of Cava, which is more fun than a standard shot of vodka & red bull. The regular drinks are generally reasonably priced, and there is a very wide range. The music is a good mix and keeps the crowd going, and dancing is not confined to the dancefloor.

As a Londoner however, I tend to assume that you can show up at any club, at any time, and not have to queue for more than a few minutes. But when I showed up at The Bridge a few weeks previously at 11pm, I queued for over an hour outside, before being shunted into Anuba, known as the ‘waiting room’ or ‘airport lounge’. I waited with my ticket for another hour until my number was called. It’s not uncommon, I hear, for the entire process to take well over two hours. And for anyone who thinks that they can avoid this by being on the guestlist, everyone tries that trick. It doesn’t work. The VIP lounge inside the club, whilst easily avoided, is a rather unnecessary addition. It is guaranteed to be compromised of a clientele of pretentious and generally unattractive male students paying £100 for a bottle of vodka in order to entice some naïve, inebriated, and far more attractive female students. Not a classy touch.

Fridays @ Filth

Traipsing through the back of the Westgate centre isn’t exactly the most glamorous way to arrive, but thankfully, even when the queue stretches down the stairs, you are unlikely to wait for more than half an hour. No sign of the Cava inside though, only £20 bottles of Prosecco, but there’s usually some sort of spirit-mixer promotion to keep you well-fuelled. The music alternates from drum and bass, to R&B, to chart, to cheese, and back again, which is good fun and keeps everyone in high spirits. The DJ fuels the fun by periodically announcing various Oxford colleges, met by the cheers and screams of their loyal party-goers. The atmosphere is far more laid back, mainly because it’s hard to be pretentious at Filth, and people are there to have a good time, rather than to pose and be admired. Filth is on a much smaller scale, but not necessarily more crowded, so it’s far easier to find your friends after a trip to the toilets or the bar.

Unfortunately, Filth can be somewhat grimy, in a ‘keepin’ it real’ way. The toilets leave much to be desired, or avoided, although their users are usually drunk enough not to notice, whilst the sobering queuing process at The Bridge makes one appreciate the cleanliness of their toilets. Filth also tends to have something of the town-gown problem, which has lead to some unpleasantness before, as people simply can’t help bumping into each other. The air-conditioning has been known to be temperamental and, thanks to the Westgate’s policy, it’s a long walk to go for a quick smoke in the two hour slot in which you are allowed to leave and come back. There is notorious queue jumping, which tends to happen far less at The Bridge. If you leave early, prepare to be hassled for the ubiquitous wristband, which is traded, bought, and sold with the same frenzy that gripped Pokemon.

The Verdict

If you’re willing to arrive unfeasibly early, or endure the tedious queuing process, then Bridge has a lot to offer, but for good old-fashioned, unpretentious fun, the way Oxford clubbing should be, then Filth is the way to go.

The government’s new diploma for 14-19 year-olds, due to be launched next year, has been slated by an Oxford University professor.

The Nuffield Review – which was led by Richard Pring, a professor at Oxford’s department of education – said that the introduction of the diplomas had been rushed and badly researched.

The new qualification, which is the brainchild of Schools Secretary Ed Balls, is aimed at narrowing the gap between vocational and academic learning, but the report dismissed this notion.

It said, “Such middle-track qualifications have in the past been regarded as an alternative for the less academically able and the review predicts that teachers will view diplomas in the same way — with A levels and GCSEs remaining the more prestigious qualifications.”

I spent a relatively normal day in Brussels, eating chicken, breaking into duck ponds and other such  leisurely activities. A friend took me to the train station, I waited for half an hour and hopped on a train  that was clearly marked "Liege". The porter had told me it was quite a slow train so I listened to Lou Reed  and read for a while. An hour and a half had passed, I was beginning to get suspicious. Getting to Brussels had only taken  me an hour.I was restless. A PVC ball with a tennis ball inside rolled towards me so I stood up and  asked the whole carriage if it was theirs. I spoke in French, no-one responded. So I sat back down and  tried to extract the tennis ball from the PVC ball surrounding it. A gang of grannies to my left were  giggling at me so I said in French, would you like to try? They didn't understand me, one of them spoke  to me in English, twist it, she said. I handed her the ball and they didn't succeed. It was getting dark outside. I thought it was a good idea to check that the train was indeed going to  Liege. I stood at the end of the corridor and got chatting in English to a man who looked stereotypically sleazy (leather jacket, gelled hair, gold necklace). He explained that we were in (Dutch-speaking)  Flanders, that the train had split a while ago and this part was not going to Liege. That gave some  explanation for why no-one could understand me, and also made me see that half of the Belgian  population cannot communicate with the other half. It's as if the Welsh couldn't understand the English.  Absolute madness. I asked Mr. Sleaze what he thought the best route was for me to get back to Liege. He said to get off at  the next stop, then he paused and said "but we can go get a drink, then I can drive you. It is nicer in a  car." "No, no," I replied. "Why you say no? You scared?" "Well, it is a bit dangerous don't you think? I  mean I don't know you." I hopped off the train and Mr Sleaze said, "quick, quick, there is a train to Liege on platform three," and  I ran and I caught it. It delivered me home safely.

Join Leon Harrington and Connie Han for a roundup of science news, features and events.This week: Supermouse, PS3 for science?, IVM babies, HapMap moves forward, Queen opens Diamond Light Source.Events: 'Perspectives' @ Science Oxford, Book of Imaginary Science & Small Worlds @ History of Science Museum.Download the podcast here
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US human rights activist Rev Jesse Jackson is heading up a campaign to encourage more black students to apply to Oxford.The project, which will be headed under the title of 'Aspire', is being pushed by Regent's Park College, Canterbury Christ Church University and the Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI) racial justice team. The programme will focus on establishing and adding to mentoring schemes around Britain, in an attempt to identify problem areas faced by those thinking of applying to universities.Of the applications made to Oxford last year, only 151 of the applicants were black. Of that number, 26 were offered places. Myra Blythe, chaplain of Regent's Park, said: "We are tapping into what is a nationwide issue but looking at it from the Oxford perspective." "It is a major problem, not only in this country, but as Jessee Jackson is highlighting, in the United States too." 

by Griselda Murray Brown
The Ashmolean’s latest exhibition will not satisfy the Sunday afternoon escapist’s desire for a display of Oriental beauty or delicate depictions of distant Chinese rice fields. After wandering past the Renaissance frieze compositions, past the winking jewels in glass cases, the exhibition of late twentieth century and contemporary Chinese prints feels immediately ‘modern’, uncomfortably relevant. The prints are political: each image responds, overtly or obliquely, to the massive economic and cultural upheavals experienced by the Chinese people from the outset of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

 Chinese artisans began practicing print-making over a millennium ago – the output of printed books and illustrations being particularly high during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) – and continue to choose this medium to express today’s issues. There is a continuity of basic ‘effect’ then, but not of content.  Religious images have been replaced by exercises in Communist propaganda, portraits of revolutionary female campaigners, and supposedly apolitical townscapes, to cite just a few from this collection.

‘Golden Sea’ (1972), by Zhao Xicomo, portrays a group of school graduates sent to the countryside to work the land during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), under Mao’s call to ‘receive re-education from the poor and lower middle peasants’. The group of young labourers smile, somewhat exaggeratedly, as they work. It is disturbingly reminiscent of an unsophisticated, 1950s toothpaste advertisement. According to the curators’ blurb, ‘schematic smiling is a typical symbol of that period’; ‘schematic’ says it all. Xicomo was one of the graduates sent out, though his portrayal is an idealised, propagandist one.  Such labourers’ terrible hardship (there was widespread rural famine) is more accurately portrayed in Chao Mei’s ‘First Track of Footprints’, an image of the labourers in the snow, walking against a bitter wind.

 Another of Chao Mei’s prints, ‘September in the North’ (1963), depicts agricultural labourers harvesting the sorghum, during Mao’s so-called Great Leap Forward (1958-63). Two thirds of the print are composed of long sorghum stalks in the foreground, and the tiny figures bending round the bottom of the stalks provide a sense of their scale. The print is dominated by a striking red, with occasional blocks of yellow; primary colours are in keeping with the simple definition of the woodcut print.

 The period after the Cultural Revolution has been described as the ‘spring of arts and literature’. Li Xiu’s ‘The Return of the Graduate’ (1977) shows the influences of the Cultural Revolution (most noticeably, the ‘schematic’ smiling), yet has a fresh sense of hope. Three students alight from the train looking expectantly at figures beyond us, extending the pictorial space. Li Xiu was one of a tiny minority of female printmakers, and her print was one of the most published in 1970s China.
The most striking twenty-first century print in the exhibition is Hong Tao’s ‘Galloping Rhythm’ (2000). It depicts a modern train travelling at high speed, its shapes and colours blurred into horizontal streaks of colour. The effect is one of vibrant dynamism, suggestive of China’s rapid economic growth.
The exhibition, though small, showcases a variety of printing techniques, from fine etching to bolder woodblock methods. It shows the print in its simplest monochrome form, as well as its most exuberant. In terms of content, the prints are genuinely thought-provoking. The exhibition comes in two installments, the next one next term: watch this space…

  Part 1: until 9 December 2007

  Part 2: 18 December – 24 January 2008

by James Taylor

Bella (Harry Creelman) is celebrating her twenty-ninth birthday with a group of friends who are intricately connected in a web of sexual relationships and desire, whilst her father (Charlie Holt) lies in hospital dying of a brain tumour. Gradually the fairly charged, but superficially trivial, conversation probes deeper into the real problems that concern the play: feminine identity in the modern world and how a woman can participate in institutions such as marriage without surrendering to the oppression on which they were founded.

The plot of the play is interrupted continually by Bella’s memories of her and her father, a masculine authority figure who seems to have shown little respect for her mother. It is significant that the play’s name should be his pet name for her, since this articulates how Bella rebels throughout the play against masculine dominance.  She does this mainly by having control in her relationships and yet fails to find a new identity for herself outside of his definition of her as Rabbit.

The occupation with the sensual and the immediate runs throughout the play: Richard (Jonathon Rhodes) is chastised at one point by Sandy (Emerald Fennel) with the words, “You dislike looking at something, you have to turn it into something else, love, romance…,” which emphasises the feminine characters’ rejection of the masculine categories of meaning.  The realisation comes late in the play that “you need light and dark”, that you need some categories of meaning or binaries to have a meaningful existence. The question it leaves is how feminism might redefine the masculine categories that it has so far failed to do.

Though the thematic aspects of the play deserve due respect, it often fails to deliver in form and style: the father’s scenes often fail to seem relevant or make their meaning clear and thus appear as intrusions. The play sometimes fails to keep the balance in creating colloquial and natural conversation between stylistic exaggeration and clichéd caricature.

However, the cast manages to conceal this most of the time: the dialogue throughout the play has vast amounts energy, especially the dialogue between Jonathan Rhodes, Harry Creelman and Emerald Fennell, which injects life and authenticity into the play. Alex Bowles (Tom) and Jenny Ross (Emily), though playing less acerbic and domineering characters, inhabit their characters excellently, recreating a more genuine social atmosphere in their responses to the other characters’ violent outbursts. Charlie Holt had the hardest task in this play in handling the intrusive father scenes in a role that would have suited an older man, but often manages to salvage them through the sheer intensity of his performance. Seeing Rabbit is not a matter of life and death, but it certainly asks some interesting questions about feminism, though its style is at times clichéd, and even at its low points the actors provide an energy and intensity that makes it an engaging play.

Two men were contaminated with chemical powder earlier this week, after a drum of waste products began to leak behind a shop in Oxfordshire. The incident took place in Banbury on Wednesday morning, after the cleaners came into contact with waste products from the Specsavers Optician branch on Bridge Street. The men began vomiting, itching and broke out in blisters, and emergency services were called to the scene at around 9:15am.The incident is being investigated by Cherwell District Council and the Oxfordshire fire service.Deputy Chief Fire Officer Mike Smythe commented: "We just had two of our specialist officers in gas-tight suits enter the area, they've made tests of the substance. "We are confident, at the moment, that the substance is in fact inert but we do need to finish off those tests results." Officials have not released details of the results of the testing, but it is believed that the waste products in question were the plastic shavings of spectacle lenses, which created a white powder, created after opticians resized the lenses to fit inside the frames. The two men involved were taken to Horton Hospital, after they were washed down with warm water in a decontamination tent and dressed in sterile white paper suits. The clothing has been taken away for forensic examinations.