Martin Stott, Ascension Day Well Dressing Ceremony 2013
An exhibition celebrating the 900 anniversary of the foundation of the Bartlemas leper hospital in east Oxford and its continuing influence on the neighbourhood. This is social and cultural history at its best, rooted in contemporary stories, with side orders of 'place', 'spirituality' and 'edgeland’.
This exhibition uses the camera as an historical-archaeological tool to excavate the layers of time between the foundation of St Bartholomew’s leper hospital in 1126 and the present. It engages in a dialogue between landscape and community, looking at how places change over a long time.
I examine the truth of the present and the way it is allied to the truth of the past, and in recovering those links and the place of St Bartholomew in Oxford’s past, the photographs reveal the diversity of Oxford’s communities past and present in a continual, if disrupted, thread over time.
‘A fascinating and moving exploration of an ancient place that harbours many histories. This is local work as a way of thinking about who and where we are. It’s rich with associative encounters between personal feeling and documentary evidence, past and present, trouble and refuge.’
Alexandra Harris, author The Rising Down; lives in a landscape
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Martin Stott has lived in east Oxford since 1979. He is a member of the Arts of Place network at Birmingham University. His photobooks include ‘Wear a mask! Oxford Pandemic portraits’ (Signal Books) and ‘English worker co-operative movement 1980s’ (Café Royal Books).
MARTIN STOTT
OXFORD’S HIDDEN SANCTUARY
Caper Books
74-77 Magdalen Rd, Oxford,
OX4 1RE
1–9 November
Saturdays 11–5pm
Sundays 10–4 pm
Weekdays 12pm–5pm
Book launch
Saturday, 1 November 7.30pm. Free. Booking required.
