Oxford's biggest student newspaper, produced by and for members of the University of Oxford, since 1991.
Claire Davis explores the pages of the Ashmoleon’s Al-Qur’an al-Karim exhibition. What better way to spend your time on a rainy Oxford afternoon than to go and visit a new exhibition at the Ashmolean? In through the busy entrance, up the white stairs teeming with chattering tourists and ducking to your right, you enter a […]
Continue ReadingStarting out as a band has a lot in common with becoming a model; you set out with big dreams, artistic integrity and buckets of self-worth, and within two weeks you’ve sold all of your self respect and are your tits are on page three of The Sun. Perhaps this is a bit of a […]
Continue ReadingWith its plain title the East Side Gallery could be anywhere. But despite its simple, understated name, the gallery is in fact a one of a kind. So what is the East Side Gallery? It’s open air, covers a 1.3km stretch and is predominantly concrete. It is, of course, the remnants of the Berlin Wall. […]
Continue ReadingRosa Schiller-Crawhurst rehearses with one of the best orchestras in Oxford. The Oxford University Philharmonia was founded in 1992 to be run by and for students. It is regarded to be one of the friendliest and most open of the university orchestras – players are selected not simply on the basis of their technical competence, […]
Continue ReadingOn the Oxford a capella scene the Gargoyles offer something a little different. Instead of the pop beats of Out of the Blue or the Oxford Belles the Gargoyles scat their way to sweet jazz melodies. Rehearsals are full of ‘shoo-bopping’ and feet tapping – they just can’t keep still. They call it ‘the Gargoyle […]
Continue ReadingIsabel Saunders examines how scandal and secrets can make or break art On the sixth of April, 1895, Oscar Wilde was arrested in his room at the Cadogan Hotel in Knightsbridge for ‘gross indecency’. After the first jury declared themselves unable to reach a verdict, Wilde was retried and subsequently convicted. Wilde was imprisoned, in […]
Continue ReadingSupermarkets are certainly convenient, but in order to buy tastier, more locally sourced and even cheaper produce it’s often worth looking a little further afield. Shopping in markets and ethnic supermarkets is much more enjoyable and you can often pick up things impossible to find in a regular supermarket. East Oxford Farmer’s Market Saturdays from […]
Continue ReadingEmily Moore asks what can be done with the problem of internet piracy. Student living asks the vast majority of us to make some money-saving moves: why pay to access new music, TV series and films, when these products of popular culture are readily – and most crucially, freely – available online? Peer-to-peer software and […]
Continue Reading“The Gothic cathedral,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson in his Essays, Of History, “is a blossoming in stone subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in man.” Gothic architecture is a style that originated in twelfth century France and lasted into the sixteenth. It was known during the period as “Frankish work”, with the pejorative term […]
Continue ReadingIt has fast become a fixture of Trinity Term. Numerous weeks across Oxford allowing students to put down their books, take off their lab coats and pick up a paintbrush, or a mike, or maybe even an African drum. The Arts Week revolution has been spreading secretly across the carefully mown lawns of Oxford colleges, […]
Continue ReadingDangerous Liaisons, set to run at the Playhouse theatre from 2nd – 5th May tells a chilling story of seduction, passion and betrayal, set in 1930s France. The play has been adapted by Christina DroIlas from a controversial Renaissance novel that was banned for more than a century. I visited the rehearsal studio to try […]
Continue ReadingThe Arrival in Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 comprises of one huge painting of multiple canvases and fifty one iPad drawings blown up. It was made for, and fills, one of the largest rooms in the Royal Academy as part of Hockney’s recent ‘A Bigger Picture’ exhibition. The viewer is drawn down the […]
Continue ReadingDamien Hirst is no longer the darling of the art world. More than any other artist today he divides opinion with a razor-sharp knife. “Polished shit” is how one critic, Brian Sewell, describes him; Will Brand, bemoans that “this is what the end looks like”. So reviled is he that his obituary has already been […]
Continue ReadingTracey Emin’s My Bed holds more significance than its success in engendering countless, glib remarks about the trite which is contemporary British art. Although arguably not a whole lot more. She was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1999, Britain’s annual prize for visual art awarded to an artist under 50 years old. Rather unfortunately […]
Continue ReadingRosa Schiller-Crawhurst has a look at the wealth of talent at this year’s festival. I have to confess that I spend very little of my time reading for pleasure. It is indeed ironic that whilst most of my time here is spent in a library, flicking through the pages of a Penguin classic or commercial […]
Continue ReadingEven if you have never read a word of Dickens, it is unlikely to have escaped your notice that two hundred years ago he was born. Dickens is everywhere – on our television screens in the form of the beautiful Douglas Booth, in museums, on the radio, and on the publishers’ submissions lists. It is […]
Continue Readingby Susheel Gokarakonda A new exhibition of “inversive art” by German painter Daniel Eltinger opens on Wednesday at the Said Business School Gallery, Oxford. It is curated by Katharina Kim Alsen, a postgraduate at St Catherine’s College, and organised by members of Nuffield College. A free private viewing will be held on Wednesday 2 May, […]
Continue Reading