Custodians

CUSTODIANS

JOANNA VESTEY

Oxford Union Library, All Souls Buttery, The Sheldonian Theatre, Christ Church Picture Gallery, Trinity College Dining Hall, The Cloisters, Magdalen College, The Milner Hall, The Parlour, St Johns College, Rhodes House, Christ Church Picture Gallery, The Medieval Kitchen, Brasenose College, Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Ripon College, The School of Anatomy, Oxford Town Hall

CUSTODIANS

JOANNA VESTEY

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Foreword

Xa Sturgis

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Oxford: The Dark Interior

Russell Roberts

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Plates

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Index of Plates

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Afterwords

Joanna Vestey

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Biographies

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Acknowledgements

Su Lockley

Librarian-in-Charge

Oxford Union Library

Robert Wyllie Head Porter

The Milner Hall, Rhodes House

Dr Jon Whiteley Curator

The Randolph Sculpture Gallery, Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology

Norman Allen Relief Custodian The Great Hall and Staircase, Christ Church College

Father John O’Connor OP (Prior) The Priory of The Holy Spirit, Black Friars

Alice Ogilvie Head of Venue Services The Divinity School

Monika Pietruszewska Custodian St. Catherine’s College

Gito Lal Operations Manager St Catherine’s College

Dr Jon Whiteley Curator, The Randolph Sculpture Gallery, Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology

Dr. Norma Aubertine-Potter Librarian- in-Charge The Codrington Library, All Souls College

David Goddard Clerk of Works The Upper Library, Queens College

The Revd. Professor William Whyte Dons Room St John’s College

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afterwords

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joanna vestey

Writing about Oxford Jan Morris said: “Slap in the middle of England stands the city of Oxford, on an ancient crossroads beside ​the Thames. Its origins are obscure but its fame is universal, and it forms a national p​​ aradigm – in whose structure sometimes shadowy, sometimes splendidly sunlit, we may ​​explore the history, the character and the condition of the English” (Oxford, 2001).

With my Custodians work I wanted to explore this further, looking at the ‘structure’ of Oxford that Morris refers to, and in particular what could be revealed by examining the relationship between the Oxford institutions that make up that structure and the individuals that occupied them. I set two criteria: the spaces I photographed had to be in Oxford, and each of the venues should select one person who would be seen within them as a ‘Custodian’ in one capacity or another. I was interested in how multiple time periods can be exposed by a single image, and how those images lead to broader questions about how institutions shape us, and we them, and about how permanence and transience can be seamlessly juxtaposed within the relationship of a ‘Custodian’ to the space they work.

These works all contain traces of other times. Some of the institutions I photographed displayed a ‘patina effect,’ different periods layered on top of each other, sometimes only revealed by the work of the Custodian themselves.

Mikhail Bakhtin created the term ‘chronotope’ to describe the relationship between time and space (space as a trace of time and time as a marker of space).

He used it primarily to understand how a novel is created and defined the term literally as “time-space,” the “intrinsic connectedness of spatial and temporal relationships” saying that “in the literary chronotope, spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought out, concrete whole. Time thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history”. To me, it is the presence of the ‘Custodian’ that often ‘thickens’ and helps the space ‘take on flesh’. Dr Jon Whiteley, photographed in the Randolph Sculpture Gallery in 2013, has recently retired after thirty-six years with the Ashmolean; he is photographed amongst the seventeenth century Arundel Collection of classic Greek and Roman statuary, the oldest collection of its type. I enjoyed the interplay between these different time periods – the thirty-six year career, the

collection assembled in the seventeenth century, the objects themselves dating back several thousand years, the gap between when the image was made and again when it is being viewed.

One aspect of stewardship is perhaps to allow us to make that linear journey through time to consider the history and longterm importance of the spaces.

In the image of Sister Ann Verena, photographed in the Bishop Edward King Chapel at Ripon College, she is captured in a moment of quiet contemplation within a contemporary space designed by the architectural practice of Niall McLauglin.

Prayer is an ancient ritual, marked by daily rhythms that are often unchanged for generations. Contemplative buildings however have changed many times: the architects for this building drew on the original architecture of George Edmund Streets college of 1854 to set the institutional tone for the space, but replaced it with this wonderful modern structure, again reminding us of a continuum and the many different time periods alluded to within one image.

Locating the traces of other times within these images is as much up to the viewer as dictated by the spaces themselves.

Much as an archeologist viewing the layers of history would bring their knowledge of the past, these works require the viewer to bring his or her points of reference to perceiving how these spaces have been used through time and the people who may have passed through them. The spaces and individuals stand as testimony to our knowledge and creativity, honouring the highest echelons of human achievement – think of the marble sculptures in the Randolph Gallery, or the structure of Christopher Wren’s Sheldonian. The buildings themselves are notable, but what went on inside them is also what is to be celebrated and that depends on the knowledge and curiosity of the viewer. The Evolution Debate that took place between Charles Darwin and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce in 1860 in the

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