Closed for Ceremony...

... as only Oxford knows how.

But open today was a superb small exhibition at the Ashmolean museum by the Chinese artist Xu Bing who, among other things, makes landscripts - landscape paintings that incorporate Chinese characters - much more compelling than the description sounds. During the cultural revolution he spent three years (aged 19-22) being 're-educated' in rural areas far from his native Beijing and agriculture - and, more recently, environmental concerns - are a major influence on his work.

I fell in love with a series of 11 large woodcut prints, the first a print of the entire block of wood, so all black, then each subsequent print showing more and more cut away. At first the fields of varied crops emerge from the black, dark then lighter. then gradually they too are cut away so the last print is almost entirely blank. Night, day; yin, yang; creation, destruction; flourishing, dying.

Also exhibited were some fascinating large paintings that had emerged out of art workshops he's done with children in Kenya on protecting the environment. This exhibition closes tomorrow but if ever you get the chance to see his work...

Edit: Ceridwen's comment has prompted me to say more about the 'Bulldogs' - the University of Oxford's private police force set up in 1215 (until 1829 all policing in the UK was private) whose uniform included a bowler hat. Nicknamed 'Bulldogs' since the 1950s, they had the same powers as regular police constables within four miles of any university building and averaged one arrest a year.

In 2002 after concerns about policing 'not accountable to any public authority' (people in the UK who know about Group 4/G4S will find this bitterly ironic) they lost their royal warrant and the power to arrest suspects and their role was reduced to stewarding at ceremonies and exams and helping to investigate disciplinary breaches. Until today I hadn't seen one for ages.