Heirship

Heirship (2020) curated new artwork and writing from second year BFA Fine Art students at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford in direct conversation with specially chosen and curated works from the Hall's illustrious fine art's collection.
Artwork made by Beth Simcock, Antonio Gullo, Willow Senior, Fiona Cameron, and Jamie Brash was shown alongside original paintings, drawings and prints by Victor Passmore, Paul Nash, L.S Lowry, Maggi Hambling, David Hockney, Stanley Spencer, Ivon Hitchen, and William Morris, among others.

“I Can’t Live Without You”

Beth Simcock, in response to David Hockney’s Jungle Boy

My mum likes to point out a palm tree whenever she sees one, as proof that we’re really on holiday. I doubt that I shall ever be able to look at the blonde–furred trunk of a palm without thinking first of her; of the the cuff of dry heat over the lip of a rolled–down rental car window and the apricot coloured Jean Paul Gaultier perfume that comes in the bottle with tiny blown-out glass breasts.

The loamy backyard of my brain has become a small palm forest. Coconut thickets make home between airport gift shops, unsent text messages and the clumsy laughing bump of teeth that happens between kisses. If I stand still here long enough, i know that the tree syrup will pool and congeal to sweet fudge in the cup of my skull.

The snake comes from elsewhere, rising up on its low drunk belly from the shade of the fronds to introduce itself by name: “snake”.

He might shake my hand if he could, but he has no hands nor any arms either. This would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

Snakes are the messengers between upper and lower worlds, he tells me. He has come to remind me about a dream i once had, where an old girlfriend drew an ugly tattoo of a palm tree on my left thigh. One of those lonely desert islands.

In the dream my own legs are each shivering banded trunks. I need to water myself; to push deep, tender white roots into the earth like boxed brownie mixture. I am my own plant; i keep myself like a small, untrained animal for meat.

I am teaching myself floriography, so that the next time i meet a passing snake or hedgehog or garden snail by a particular flower i will be able to tell how it is feeling. Poppy for pleasure, Marigold for jealousy, Pine for hope. Starry Primrose is for yearning “I can’t live without you!”. The palm is for victory. For victory and for holidays and for cold showers in polka-dot bikinis under the faraway tropical moon.