College Record 2017

Arts Society
The Secret Staircase opened our exhibition programme in Michaelmas Term. It
featured works by artist Caroline Isgar and writer Michèle Roberts inspired by
the eighteenth-century tokens left by mothers with their babies at the Foundling
Hospital, which included artefacts, an inscribed table used as a massive printing
block, a print taken from this and the artist’s work book. The opening included an
informal talk by Michèle Roberts. Organised in conjunction with the Oxford Centre
for Life-Writing, and originally shown at the Foundling Museum in London, it was
a poignant exploration of mother–child separation.
This was followed by Re-visiting China’s Silk Road, an exhibition of photographs
by Jacob Ghazarian (MCR) taken in the winter of 2010 as he travelled through
the towns and oases of the ancient Silk Road. In use for millennia, this ancient
superhighway has never ceased to be important, recently inspiring a new Chinese
initiative to develop a twenty-first century land-bound economic network that will
re-connect China to Europe via its Central Asian neighbours.
The link between the ancient and contemporary worlds was also the theme of Welsh
artist Susan Edwards in A Permanent Presence: Paintings and Original Prints of
Neolithic Cromlechs in Pembrokeshire. Susan
Edwards has spent several years visiting ancient
burial grounds, cromlechs and standing stones
scattered across Pembrokeshire, and recording
them in her sketches, painting, collagraphs
and etchings, one of which was bought for the
College’s own collection.
At the beginning of Hilary Term, the College
showed a selection of children’s work. This
very popular exhibition was organised by
Leanne Johannson (GS) and the Wolfson
Families Society, and opened a window onto
the wonderfully imaginative and creative
world of the many younger people who live at
Wolfson with their parents.
69