Thursday, May 15, 2025
Blog Page 58

In photos: 13,000 compete at Oxford Half Marathon

Cherwell News and Investigations Section Editors
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In photos: 13,000 compete at Oxford Half Marathon

Thousands raced through Oxford’s streets this morning for the Half Marathon, a 13.1-mile route that took them from Broad Street to Summertown and University Parks before finishing at Parks Road.

Oxford Half Marathon 2024. Image Credit: David Hays

Runners can fundraise for one of many charities. Corpus Christi College student Grace Wong, who ran for Alzheimer’s research, told Cherwell: “As I ran I tried to enjoy seeing the surroundings and not to feel pressured to run faster because everyone has their own pace. When I crossed the finishing line I was exhausted but I was happy I’d done it despite being under the weather.”

Oxford Half Marathon 2024. Image Credit: David Hays

Spectators crowded around the fences to cheer on runners, so did live bands and DJs. All finishers received a medal and a T-shirt to celebrate their accomplishment.

Books you can’t sink your teeth into: A brief look into unsolvable manuscripts

Caitlyn Tan
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Books you can’t sink your teeth into: A brief look into unsolvable manuscripts

If there’s one thing that most people appreciate, it’s a good mystery with a clever solution. It is no accident that Agatha Christie is listed as the Guinness World Records’ best-selling fiction writer of all time. A genuine mystery that disorientates, befuddles and demands unsatisfied obsession, however, is more of an acquired taste. A brief look into the Voynich Manuscript and the Codex Seraphiniananus will prove this.

The idiom ‘sink one’s teeth into’ originates from a 1832 Belfast News letter to describe an animal literally biting a stick and then in 1935 in Magazine Women’s City Club (Detroit) to refer to a woman reading Europa. It means to tackle something ‘energetically’ as well as ‘productively’. Both manuscripts (I use ‘book’ liberally in the title of the article), can be ‘energetically’ but not ‘productively’ attended to. Though both leave tantalising aromas, they remain inedible and unsolvable.

How to write a baffling manuscript (with the Voynich manuscript as an example):

First, be completely obscure. The manuscript has been carbon dated back to the early 15th century (between 1404-1438). It was written in an unknown language, by an unknown author, in an unknown place. It is especially useful if you get someone who is excitingly secretive to find it. Wilfrid Voynich, the Polish Socialist revolutionary-turned-bookseller found the manuscript, which was then named after him. He was famously cagey about the exact details about its acquisition, but it has since been confirmed he acquired it from Villa Mondragone, outside of Rome, sometime in 1910-1911.

Next, make the manuscript seem like a hoax but then rip the rug under your reader by actually making the language coherent. With its strange language and bizarre plant drawings, it comes as no surprise that many think that the manuscript may be a hoax. Linguists Claire Bowen and Luke Lindemann say it cannot be gibberish, because the word and line level metrics show it to be ‘regular natural language’, although potentially ciphered. They argue that it is ‘natural’, as in occurring without premeditation, and ‘unlikely to be manufactured’ because of its predictability, sequence and structure. They mention that linguist WR Bennett shows that character sequences are more predictable in the Voynich text than European languages, and are comparable to Polynesian languages. The manuscript also contains ‘Voynichese’ but also a little Latin script at the end. 

Once you have made your reader believe you, confuse them with your strange, scientific-seeming diagrams. Bring together what look like protocols, analyses, and conclusions together. Add illustrations that make it seem like you are studying something. Already on the third page, there is a picture with red lines that connect its flowers and roots that look like some kind of primitive vascular system, or maybe just a connect-the-dots.  The Voynich manuscript has 112 folios of herbal drawings, 21 astronomical ones, 20 balneological (study of medicinal springs and their therapeutic effect), 12 cosmological, 34 pharmaceutical and 22 recipe folios. 232 pages and 116 folios in total, some pictures overlap in the same folio. Most seem to function like normal plants but are not like anything on earth. This has likely given it the name ‘extraterresterial’s travel diary’ by the more extreme conspiracy theorists. The zodiac charts have stars on the peripheries and faces and goats in the middle. There are also, naturally, many drawings of naked women. 

Finally, just be indecipherable. Egyptologist Rainer Hannig suggested he cracked the code and that the manuscript was written in a Semitic language in 2020. Dr Gerard Cheshire of Bristol University also suggested that he broke it before and that it was a proto-Romance language. Neither have actually translated the text and any identification is unsubstantiated. The researchers themselves agree.

Embrace the gibberish with Luigi Serafini:

The Codex Seraphinianus is much less mysterious, although no less weird. It is an encyclopaedia depicting an imaginary world, written and illustrated by Luigi Serafini in 1981. The writing is also in an imaginary language which is cursive, accented and asemic, basically meaningless. ‘Asemic’ was coined by philologist Frederic W. H. Myers (1843-1901) to mean unable to communicate. One originator of this writing style was the Tang dynasty’s ‘drunk’ monk Huaisu (737-799), who drank to ensure uninhibited calligraphy and shone at illegible calligraphy (‘grass style’ writing). Serafini continues this trend, and the words are more ornament than substance. In an interview for Bird in Flight in 2015, Serafini said that there was no hidden meaning to the text, that he ‘wanted an understanding without the text, a more profound and personal understanding’. Indeed, the words in Serafini’s text are not as important as its illustrations. The most famous picture from the book is likely the couple who turn into a crocodile, but it is filled with even stranger illustrations. For example, the mechanical creature that looks like two chickens stuck together going backwards and forwards at the same time, or the creature that is part bat, part ice cream cone, part screw.

Although created hundreds of years apart, this document can be compared to the Voynich manuscript, because it also looks scientific (although in this case we definitely know it is not) and immediately invests the imagination. The lines measuring creature’s diameters, various arrows that point out specifics in diagrams and pages of writing ensure that it looks like an encyclopaedia. Serafini worked on it in a ‘feverish state’ with the attempt to convey his emotions, perhaps also the excitement of an imaginary world or the way a child would see the world.

The Codex Seraphinianus wins most satisfying read between the two. Not just because we know where it comes from because it successfully portrays wonder. The creatures move surprisingly or are in vibrant colours. The pages that act as imaginary analyses look complete and confident. The Voynich manuscript leaves much to be desired. It cannot decide if it’s an encyclopaedia or a work of art. It looks more like a mishmash of information rather than the standardised, though strange, imaginary encyclopaedia. Of course, this is just based on appearance.

In the spirit of nonsense (or at least bafflement, as the Voynich manuscript may one day make sense), I end with a line from Edward Lear’s ‘The Quangle Wangle’s Hat’:

‘And all were happy as happy could be,

With the Quangle Wangle Quee.’

Have a look at the Voynich manuscript and the Codex Seraphinianus!

Review: Will Heaven Fall on Us? A Béla Tarr Retrospective

Morien Robertson
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Review: Will Heaven Fall on Us? A Béla Tarr Retrospective

Will Heaven Fall on Us? A Béla Tarr Retrospective, which aired in cinemas this summer, confirms the status of the Hungarian director as an auteur with a monumental vision. 

Watching the five films of the retrospective, with a total run time of 981 minutes (16.4 hours), is not an easy task: Tarr is a demanding director, with infamously long shots which can test even the most seasoned cinephile. But the test is a deeply rewarding one, offering profound meditations which go beyond the particular social environment he portrays to something intrinsic to human nature.

Tarr, born in Hungary in 1955, is best known for his magnum opus, Sátántangó, which enjoys the status of the cinematic equivalent of Ulysses. Running for nearly seven and a half hours and based on the structure of a tango (six moves forwards, six back), it’s a vast work which pushes the limits of film. Yet the retrospective shows that there is far more to Tarr than Sátántangó: each film is worth watching in its own right, and viewing the five over the course of a month allows you to notice the threads and motifs which run throughout his work.

Visually, Tarr is spectacular. Klassiki writes that ‘few filmmakers are as distinct as Béla Tarr’, and it’s not hard to see why. There are breathtaking pans across barren, muddy fields which stretch endlessly into the distance, and stark shots of nameless Hungarian towns. Central to Tarr’s style is the combination of long tracking shots and leading lines which extend orthogonally to the direction of the camera. This creates a sense of depth basically unique to Tarr, with groups or individuals slowly walking away from the camera down paths which seem interminable.

The openings of his films are always stunning. Damnation begins with a typically desolate landscape, over which a cable car track extends into the distance: the empty cabins hopelessly chug onwards, immediately establishing the Sisyphean ennui that so effectively haunts his work. The Man from London, a noirish thriller, starts with an abstract vertical pan of a boat, the bow bisecting the screen, with a faded grey on one half, almost total darkness on the other.

Other openings start with animals, as if humans are just one species amongst many doing their best to survive the unforgiving natural world. Sátántangó begins in a dilapidated farm completely devoid of human life. Later in the film, a group of horses flood another nameless town: the clatter of their hooves a jarring contrast with the silent suffering.

However, humans are not always so absent. The stunning opening to The Turin Horse tracks a beaten horse pulling a merciless old man. As the camera flies through mist, Mihály Víg’s soundtrack blares over their journey. It seems for a moment that humanity has tamed the wild environment. Yet the following two and a half hours portray the suffering of the old man and his daughter during a biblical windstorm. As the two of them go about their tasks with monotonous regularity, it becomes clear that they are just as subjugated to the landscape as their tortured horse is to them.

Not everything is so despondent, though. Each film features moments of absurd humour: there are extended scenes of dance and singing – in Sátántangó a man balances a stick of bread on his nose, whilst in The Man from London it is a snooker ball; Damnation has a bizarre parody of Singing in the Rain. And even during the moments of most intense pain, the beauty of his cinematography is a bewitching, lamentable sight.

Having vowed not to make any more films, what we have already must suffice – and it certainly does. His works can be watched and rewatched ad infinitum, or rather, for as long as humankind exists, which, Tarr reminds us, is not going to be forever.

Has the romantic comedy lost its charm?

Lara Machado
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Has the romantic comedy lost its charm?

The romantic comedy genre is often criticised for its overreliance on tropes. The romcom is, after all by, designed to be light and fun. Though today we often take that to mean derivative and corny, entertaining has not always meant unserious. A genre that began with Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream must have more to it than the boy-meets-girl box office hits churned out today. ‘Golden age’ romcoms feel like a far cry from this year’s Anyone But You and The Idea of You. So, what’s changed?

It is difficult to discuss the trajectory of the romantic comedy without first considering Frank Capra’s 1934 hit, It Happened One Night. The film follows a young heiress (Claudette Colbert) and an unemployed reporter (Clark Gable) who meet on a bus to New York. The plot features all sorts of scenarios that are very familiar: the begrudging allies-to-lovers arc, forced proximity, and the classic third act conflict. However, at the time of its release, the film was subject to a critical acclaim – alongside its box office popularity – that we don’t associate with the romcom nowadays. It was the first film to collect all five of the main Oscar awards. Not only does the 90-year-old film still feel fresh and charming, but it offers an impressive artistic insight beyond its entertainment factor. 

The film’s shots are composed with a care and intricacy that is rare within contemporary big studio romances. The now famous ‘walls of Jericho’ scene is a prime example of this. Being forced to sleep in the same room, Gable hangs a blanket (the walls of Jericho) between him and Corbert. Not only does this highlight the tensions between them, but also reflects the tentative nature of their alliance. It is one of many similarly inspired moments, but the film is far from an escapist fantasy: class, the impacts of the Great Depression, and the divisions of 30s America underscore the plot, whilst still maintaining its lighter tone. Ultimately, It Happened One Night is a nuanced and character-focused film, in which we are given two flawed, three-dimensional human beings. This is not exclusive to It Happened One Night: later big studio films such as The Apartment,  Roman Holiday and To Be or Not to Be – to name a few – have the same appeal.

In contrast, Anyone But You, released in late 2023, made headlines not by a sweep at the Oscars, but by turning over eight times its $25 million budget at the box office. The picture was hailed as the return of the romcom, with its director stating that the film was “the last romcom in the history of cinema and theatricality.”. But if Anyone But You is supposed to revive the romcom, then the genre is doomed. Visually, the film is stale: there are few memorable shots, and between Sydney Sweeney’s monotonal delivery and Glen Powell’s unexplained shirtlessness, the chemistry between the two leads is equally sparse. The main issue, however, lies with the script, which contains pearls such as: “Trust me, bro. We’re all in seventh grade when it comes to this stuff [love].” Bea (Sweeney) and Ben (Powell) are already, at best, thin characters, and are further let down by the seemingly interchangeable supporting cast. We watch as the plot jumps from gimmick to gimmick – she runs away before he can explain, fake-dating, an ex-lover returns to the picture – without any kind of natural flow. This film just isn’t interested in love and its nuances in the same way its predecessors were. 

The difference, then, seems to lie in the modern approach to the genre and entertainment. At some point, the romantic comedy became less of a comedic exploration of love and human relationships and more about hedonistic fulfilment. In theory, perhaps there’s nothing wrong with this, but recently it has made much of mainstream, big-studio cinema deeply uninspiring. This isn’t to overly-romanticise the cinematic past, but there used to be space for films like It Happened One Night and The Apartment, which were extremely entertaining but also extremely well-crafted pieces of art. Increasingly we seem to want to separate entertainment from intellectual stimulation. But why can’t it be both? Why can’t we be entertained and provoked at the same time?

Palimpsest

Isobel Estibeiro
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Palimpsest

This is a secular city, built on holy bones.

We’re on the edge of another fissure. Nothing so grand as a revolution. But the grey looming face of the clock, the ticks that cut up time into neat seconds, they belong to the old gods now.

Bodies fill the city, dreams fixed like hats to their heads.

This is a stalemate. The swollen library, gorged with books and words, looms at the city’s centre like a closed eye.

The air is thick with stagnation. Swarms of people clot the streets. They go so slowly. Words heavy and clumsy as bumble bees, flung out for anyone to hear. “It is! 24, it’s the general!” Or else, “Spare any change?”, like a hook that beds itself into people’s skin. Guiltily, they dig it out with their fingernails.

The past is bleeding through, like a scar that will not heel. The tarmac wears away, beneath our feet, eroding into Victorian cobblestone, so long covered up and forgotten. Days pile on top of each other, burying us beneath them, numb as falling snow. They build into terms, years, generations.

And we are caught, in the blistering moment. Time, condensed and frozen, in an innocuous sentence, in a leather bound book.

Could the words, so long left for dead, shed their hard black shells and come alive? Could the city shed the obligations of the past and expectations of the future… and reach into the present?

2024 was for the girls: The rapid success of female artists

Olivia Sloan
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2024 was for the girls: The rapid success of female artists

The last nine months of pop can perhaps be summed up in one word: ‘Femininomenon’. The title of Chappell Roan’s 2023 hit, a portmanteau of ‘feminine’ and ‘phenomenon’, embodies a spirit of unapologetic female independence: one that has dominated much of the music of 2024. Sabrina Carpenter’s hit single ‘Espresso’ spent five weeks at the top of the UK Singles Chart, and the release of Taylor Swift’s new album, The Tortured Poets Department, made headlines worldwide. The ‘pop girls’ even infiltrated political campaigns as Kamala Harris famously became the first presidential candidate to be declared a ‘brat’. 

The first of these hits was an album released in 2023, but one that rose to prominence in 2024: Chappell Roan’s debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. Defined by a thematic interest in queer identity and culture, Roan takes the listener on a journey of love, loss, and self-acceptance. Her most notable release, ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ topped charts worldwide, and was nominated for ‘Song of the Summer’ at the 2024 VMAs. With lyrics exploring the complexities of ‘comphet’ (compulsory heterosexuality), and self-denial – ‘shoot another shot, try to stop the feeling’ – Roan brought the nuances of queer relationships to the forefront of mainstream art. The singer also attracted attention through her homage to drag culture, clear in her eye-catching approach to makeup and staging. In an interview with BBC Radio One, she aligned her appearance with the ‘outrageous spectacle’ of drag queens, citing the ‘humour’ that connects a career in pop music to the experience of performing drag. From nearly giving up on her music career entirely to performing at the VMAs within a year,  Chappell Roan has finally received the success she has always deserved.

April 19th marked the release of the much-anticipated The Tortured Poets Department. Despite being released to a mixed critical reception, Taylor Swift’s eleventh album still attracted a record-breaking 1.8 billion streams in the week following its release. As the most awarded artist in MTV history, Taylor Swift continues to prove her place as one the leads of pop iconography: her Eras Tour was also one of the most anticipated events of 2024 for millions of fans worldwide.

The VMA’s ‘Song of the Year’, however, was claimed by Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Espresso’, from her pop album Short ‘n Sweet. The star-studded cast of the album’s music videos, most famously Barry Keoghan (‘Please Please Please’) and Jenna Ortega (‘Taste’), further amplified Carpenter’s presence in the public eye. But Carpenter’s success, like Roan and Swift’s, was not achieved overnight. She had a long career in acting before moving into music in 2022. Having ended her summer success via her mashup VMAs performance, it is surely justified to deem Sabrina Carpenter as one of the key pop icons of the 2020s. 

Finally, the 7th of June 2024: the day the world was ‘bratified’. Though a previously well-established artist, Charli xcx relaunched herself into the public consciousness with brat. Her team’s innovative marketing style helped to propel the artist to number one on global charts. Her tribute to hyper-pop legend, Sophie, and discussions of being compared to other female artists also expressed a clear solidarity with women within the music industry.

From the EDM undertones of Charli xcx’s ‘Von Dutch’ to Chappell Roan’s virtuosic pop ballads, it is clear that there is no single way to create a hit. The fact that there is a growing space for new female sounds within the industry can surely provide an incentive for artistic risk taking: it seems that now more than ever, the music industry is rewarding artists who have developed and experimented with their craft over years. If there’s one thing we can learn from the careers of these exceptional female artists, then, it’s the importance of perseverance. Is it that sweet? I guess so.  

The office siren doesn’t exist

Emma Heagney
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The office siren doesn’t exist

What did you want to be when you grew up? An astronaut maybe, or a rockstar? A life-saving surgeon? You probably didn’t envision yourself working a 9-5 desk job. Do little girls dream in Excel spreadsheets?

When we think 9-5, we often think of gruelling, monotonous work. Answering emails, attending meetings: all to line a man’s pockets. Outside of the office, we’re subject to American Psycho-esque materialism and impersonal LinkedIn connections. In 2024, it seems that fashion has become an essential means of navigating a faceless, consumerist world. 

Enter the ‘office siren’. She’s chic, an undeniable ‘girlboss’, and is never seen without heels in the workplace. She is the latest iteration of womanhood to have her moment of internet fame.

Does the office siren exist in real life? In most cases, the answer is no. Sure, Linda from HR may rock a white YSL blouse and vintage Dior kitten heels, but this cyber-constructed identity is just that: entirely fabricated through the internet. What is most striking is the demographic of those participating in the trend: young women posturing as corporate professionals in a world that still denies them such opportunities. The glass ceiling  remains a material reality, with only 29% of managerial roles worldwide  being occupied by women in 2024. Even where women enter the corporate workplace, sexualisation is rife, and the HR-averse outfits worn in ‘office siren’ lookbooks certainly contribute to the proliferation of the male gaze.

However, it is crucial to note that for the most part, these outfits aren’t branded as work outfits, but rather as casualwear, constructed around an identity as an office siren. Time and time again, it is enough to appear online as the type of girl who would be a CEO, or read Sylvia Plath, or go to raves in Berlin. Perhaps part of the appeal is nostalgia bait – growing up we were presented with images of women in the fictional workplace, sporting high fashion with no regard for codes of conduct. Think The Devil Wears Prada. To me at least, this is what we crave. In a world where graduate employment prospects are plummeting, perhaps pretence is all we have left.

Much can be said about the patterns of consumption that go into becoming the office siren. The Shein micro-glasses and H&M pinstripe trousers that complete the look often rest upon the toil of exploited workers. This corporate façade comes at the expense of real, dehumanising labour. Ironically, in the attempt to survive a heartless, materialist world, the devastating impacts of fast fashion are only exacerbated.

Ultimately, however, a lack of authenticity is the reason the office siren look will never work for most people. If fashion is a mode of self-expression, then there is surely little to be gained from mindlessly mimicking internet trends. Besides, is there anything more stylish than being true to yourself? 

Oxford’s Alternotives take the Fringe

Rose Evans
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Oxford’s Alternotives take the Fringe

This August, the Oxford Alternotives joined the ranks of Oxford performers heading to the Edinburgh Fringe. For our twelfth Fringe performance, we brought a BBC-featured acapella show to theSpace Triplex at 16:05, with hits for all ages from a Frozen mashup to Billie Eilish to Queen and much more.

Those were the lines diligently drilled into our heads as part of our ‘elevator pitch’, delivered to those wandering along the Royal Mile this summer – along with the occasional “Roll up! Roll up!” (declared theatrically whilst balancing on a bollard) and “Have you seen Pitch Perfect?” as a last resort. These marketing strategies, on top of some impromptu busking, played a key role in the success of our run. The Fringe website states that selling 33% of tickets should be a ‘benchmark for success’ for performers, so it is fair to say that we were delighted at our final figures: 95% of tickets sold, with 6 of 8 shows sold out (which you might have guessed from the number of #soldoutselfies on our Instagram stories…)

However, creating a show that will “send you on your way humming with a smile on your face” (according to our professional reviewer) is no easy task, and preparation began early on. The executive team put in an incredible amount of work throughout the year; our co-presidents Augustine Luk and Liv Fisher led the project with passion and flair, designing our eye-catching flyer and supporting us throughout the year. Our musical director, Hattie Twigger-Ross, helped to bring all of our arrangements to life, and our welfare officer/secretary (otherwise known as ‘Dad of the Group’), Gianni Tam-McMillan, provided the organisational glue. 

There is no denying that taking a show to the Fringe is an expensive venture. All the proceeds from our concerts this year went towards funding the performance, with college art funds and a GoFundMe helping to ease the financial burden. These initiatives enabled us to make the Fringe a reality, supported by the kindness of all of our family and friends. The final touches for our show were perfected at our Fringe Boot Camp in Oxford just before we headed up to Edinburgh. It was much like the boot camp in Pitch Perfect 2, but without the drama, or the bear traps…

The team worked tirelessly to ensure that everything was ready far ahead of time: accommodation and venue were booked by January, our show was listed by February, and train tickets booked by May. Waking up at 6 a.m. to a Trainline cancellation alert promised to put a spanner in the works, but in true Alts spirit, we merrily boarded the next service and arrived only an hour late to Edinburgh station. 

Highlights from our time in Edinburgh must include when our show’s title became a little more real than expected; ‘Acapella Off the Rails’ became ‘Acapella Onto the Street’ when a city-wide power cut forced the cancellation of our first show. Nonetheless, we performed in our venue’s fire evacuation area to an incredible audience, prompting a headline feature for the Oxford Alternotives in a BBC article! We were also fortunate enough to be able to see all the other shows at our venue for free, enjoying everything from mind-reading lawyers to Elvis impersonators. We loved making connections with the other performers whilst we were there, and even organised an acapella social with another (fantastic) Oxford-based group, Out Of The Blue. 

However, if you asked any member what was most memorable about the Alternotives’ trip to Fringe, they would undoubtedly say the close bonds forged within the group; our sense of cohesion was strengthened immeasurably after two weeks together. On the evening of our last performance we embraced our inner tourists, climbed Arthur’s Seat, and shared a bottle of Prosecco at the summit, recounting our favourite moments of the run. Our experience of the Fringe is something that we will always treasure, and though we have said our goodbyes to departing members of the group, there are already plans underway for a Fringe 2024 reunion. I have no doubt that we will sing our Fringe classics together again soon.  

The art of rowing: In conversation with Emily Craig

Yueshi Yang
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The art of rowing: In conversation with Emily Craig

After a formidable finish in the Lightweight Women’s double sculls at the 2024 Paris Olympics in August, Team GB’s Emily Craig and Imogen Grant secured their places as the last Olympic champions in this event. Whilst Grant has now started working at the NHS, Craig is re-paddling into the art world. Cherwell caught up with the Olympic gold medallist Emily Craig just after the closing ceremony, discussing her art history degrees, netsuke, and rowing-life balance…

When did your rowing journey begin, and when did you start thinking of going into the art world?

They were pretty separate. My parents used to go to the British indoor rowing championships. When I was about twelve, they asked me, ‘‘do you want to give it a go?’’ I went along and somehow got a silver medal. So, I thought, maybe I could be good at this. Went down to my local club that summer, got in a boat and was like– I wanted to do this in the Olympics.

But the pragmatic side of me, thankfully, as I got older, thought it was always important for me to not have either one or the other. Passion for art probably came from family holidays, particularly Barcelona. Dalí especially is obviously technical and skilful, but also weird enough to capture your imagination and be interesting when you’re a child.

Apollo magazine has said this about you ‘Do an art degree and you might just end up a sporting hero. Does this ring true for you?

I was quite lucky; the Courtauld is a great place to study, and it was also part of the University of London, so I could join their boat club. I was very determined that one wouldn’t affect the other. I was very, very organised. As soon as lectures finished, and it was the period between March and exams, I had already started revising. So, when I get to these exams and I’m racing, I know I’ll be okay.

What motivated you to do both and achieve excellence in both?

When I was at uni and I was doing both, if one was going badly, I’d throw a lot more time into the other. If rowing was going badly, never mind! I’ll just do well at my degree, and one day I’ll run Tate Britain.  if I wasn’t enjoying uni as much – well, I’ve got the rowing.

Since being on full time on the team since 2015, it’s been more challenging. But certainly, a way for switching off has always been going to an exhibition, going around galleries. I can wear nice clothes. I’m not in tracksuits, like a normal person!

Why have you chosen East Asian Art as a particular sector?

I always knew that I wanted to do something non-Western. In my last year of the Courtauld I got to study contemporary Chinese art, which I found completely fascinating. I ended up picking the Sotheby’s masters, partly because I knew I wanted to go more into the commercial side of things, and partly because their degree covered everything from Neolithic up until modern, from China, Korea, and Japan.

Would you say that the industry has evolved a lot since you first started? 

One good thing with the more ‘classical’ Chinese, Korean, and Japanese art, rather than super modern art is that you’ll always get a stable core market of people who love it. But particularly from the Chinese side of things, a lot younger buyers are coming through who are getting more interested. There’s definitely a way to modernise how auction houses connect with their potential buyers, such as the social media space which would make it relevant and interactive, but without debasing the brand a little bit.

How do you gain enough first-hand experience getting started?

After my break after Tokyo, I had such a long list of auction houses, I just emailed and emailed and emailed. There’s a lot of asking around, and you’ve got to throw quite a wide net to make sure you get something.

You’ve also got to be okay to go with the flow. You might go for a job interview, and they think you’re really great, but they think you’d be a good fit in our furniture department, not Asian Art. Get your foot in the door!  A lot of people whom I’ve spoken to in the art world have taken very winding paths, and it’s all turned out to be the right thing for them.

Do you have any special connection with any artwork or artefact that you have worked with?

I really love netsuke. I did my first work experience in 2017 at Grace Tsumugi’s. I walked in, and I had no idea what was going to happen! She put down a tray of netsuke in front of me, asked me to re-thread the cord and put the beads on all these. I was like – Oh my gosh! That’s going to be my job for the next two weeks. It’s always been that tactile thing and the humorous nature.

 Do you find any kind of artworks inspirational?

There’s a couple of landscapes and a lot of watery based things. They don’t necessarily capture the competitive side of things, but one of the lovely things about rowing was training outside on the water. So, it’s a beautiful, sunny day; flat and calm. You are paddling along, you’ve seen kingfishers and the peaceful English countryside. There are works that encapsulate the feeling of peacefulness at the fresh air, being outside, and the joy that it can bring.

What would you say to Oxford students (quite a number of them rowers!) wishing to pursue all aspects of their passion?

You’ve got to be so organised and keep on top of things. Plan well in advance, but that also means planning on taking time for yourself, and learning when the right time is to say no. It’s definitely a very hard thing to learn to do, but also very beneficial.

You can’t choose your (college) family

Amy Lawson
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You can’t choose your (college) family

“Good evening. Due to multiple people divorcing and remarrying…”

It’s the end of July, and I’ve just received this email in my inbox. Some friends showed surprise, and some saw it for what it was: the inevitable result of encouraging freshers into a long-term commitment within only a few weeks of knowing each other, only to inherit ‘children’ and a pressure to avoid being part of a broken home’. Welcome to the (college) family.

Not a phenomenon unique to Oxford, ‘academic families’ at St Andrews, where first years are adopted by third years in their first term, existed as early as the 1980s. While traditions can vary, the ethos behind it is clear to see. College parents are there to do some much-needed hand-holding in the time running up to and during their child’s first Michaelmas, answering all kinds of questions (no, you don’t need that wok). And when the time comes, first years find the person or people (we don’t judge polyamory here) they want to ‘marry’ and the cycle continues.

Like many aspects of Oxford life, the college family feels peculiar when examined from the outside – yet makes perfect sense to everyone who participates in it. Coming home after my first term for the Christmas vac, I was faced, inevitably, with an abundance of questions about the system: how are college parents assigned, how do you know who to marry, and from my confused and slightly concerned grandma – “you’re not actually getting married, are you?”. I answered each one with a level of confidence and faith in the system which could be considered slightly strange for someone who had only been attending Oxford for just over a month.

But the similarities between college families and actual families go further. The college family is as dynamic as any blood family. Clashing personalities and sibling rivalry, awkward encounters with your college great-uncle, absent fathers… Oxford students (yes, probably you) are often perfectionists, and my naïve visions of a ‘perfect’ family life, such as meeting parents for coffee, venting about deadlines and so on, soon fizzled out. The saying ‘you can’t choose your family’ had never been more true.

Yet if each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, Oxford students are alike in their happy approval of the college family system. A snap poll at St John’s College for Cherwell found that the college family system continues to be exceedingly popular, despite the emotional labour involved. While nearly two thirds of freshers surveyed thought the system was “pretty weird”, this did not stop 94% saying it was a good thing, overall.

Just as in real life, ‘families’ are something which you find and form of your own accord, and are not always the people you inherit. A college family can look however you want it to look, and a college marriage is a special kind of friendship which is forged in adversity (read: weeks 5 and 6). This is the beauty of the system.

There are bound to be awkward moments. It could be anything from an ill-advised night out, a joint costume for a bop gone wrong, to a Freudian intra-family crush. In a regular friendship devoid of a faux-marriage contract, these issues, while painful at the time, can often be overcome without too many unwanted consequences. This is not the case with the Oxford college marriage.

It’s all too obvious that the idea places pressure on freshers to cement themselves in committed platonic relationships too soon. There is a concerted effort to find someone ‘before all the good ones are gone’. 46% of 2nd years met their spouse in a non-clubbing freshers week event and 30% of incoming freshers surveyed said they would also be on the lookout for a partner during freshers week. Much like an early marriage, when the initial infatuation (for Oxford, if not for your partner) has worn off, one or both parties realise that they might have made the wrong choice. When you bring children into the equation, the stakes can increase further.

But perhaps it’s exactly this kind of hurried, in-at-the-deep-end way of going about things which is so quintessentially Oxford. After all, it’s an institution known for its lengthy reading lists, scary deadlines, and short but intense terms, after which you often feel like you’ve lived multiple lives rolled into one. The idea of surviving all of that without at least someone to grumble to before an early morning lecture, or over a pint in the college bar, is practically impossible.

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