Program 2024
Monday, 5 Feb at 6pm
The Art of Deception: Greedy, Gifted and Guilty
Hilary Kay (UK)
Join us for our first ArtsNational Coffs Coast talk for 2024 with Antiques Roadshow personality Hilary Kay.
Join us as Hilary Kay looks at fakes and forgeries and introduces the audience to the most ruthless and talented rogues of the twentieth and twenty first centuries. Rogues whose 'masterpieces' fooled respected experts in galleries and international auction houses.
Monday, 11 March at 6pm
Public Art
David Worthington (UK)
Public Art is a contentious subject. It is the most visible art form and therefore an easy target. But how do these works appear in our public spaces? this lecture tracks the development of public art over the last century and examines why some are loved and others loathed. It also explains the process of procurement from the initial commissioning to the production and installation. Using case studies, David takes the audience through the process and aims to show why we are all richer with the presence of art on the streets.
Monday, 15 April at 6pm
Well Heeled: Shoes Through Time
Claudia Chan Shaw (Australia)
No matter how many pairs you have, there's always room for another pair of shoes. Throughout history, shoes have been seen as symbols of power or status in society. High heels were worn by aristocrats and nobility. Thongs started out in Ancient Egypt and made their way to Bondi. Sometimes we suffer for the love of our shoes. They don't call them "killer heels" for nothing. Join Claudia Chan Shaw for an intriguing look at our fascination with shoes and the stories behind them.- from flats and stilettos to trainers and Crocs and the catwalk. Just think of Cinderella or the Wizard of Oz - it's all about the shoes in the end.
Monday, 20 May at 6pm
Scandinavian Glass: Orrefors to IKEA
Andy McConnell (UK)
The Nordic Countries played a minor role in the development of world glass making. So it is astonishing that these nations with some 20 million inhabitants produced more Post War glass designers of international consequence than the rest of the Western World combined.
Monday, 17 June at 6pm
Friends, Fashion and Fabulousness: The Making of an Australian Style
Dr Sally Gray (Australia)
Sally's lecture focuses on a group of artists and designers including Jenny Kee, Linda Jackson, Peter Tully and David McDiarmid, who came together in Sydney in the 1970's, becoming friends and achieving fame in one way or another through to the 1990's. Well travelled, sophisticated and ambitious, these young Australians made a mark on Australian art and fashion which continues to resonate.
Monday, 22 July at 6pm
The Architecture of Mughal India: Palaces, Mosques, Gardens and Mausoleums
Dr John Stevens (UK)
Prior to British rule, India was governed by the Mughal Emperors. The stunning buildings and gardens they constructed from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries left and indelible stamp on India's cultural landscape. Mughal architecture fused elements from Islamic, Persian, Turksish and Indian traditions giving rise to some of the most beautiful iconic buildings in the world. From the Jama Masjid Lahore in Delhi to the Taj Mahal in Agra, to Shalimar Gardens in Lahore, this lecture will take you on a tour of some of India's greatest buildings. examining their historical contexts and the colourful personalities involved in their construction.
Monday, 19 August at 6pm
The Honourable East India Company: East - West Trade 1600-1800, Chinese Export Chinoiserie
Vivienne Lawes (UK)
This lecture explores how the East India Company developed its methods of trade and facilitated the increasingly sophisticated an profound exchange of ideas between East and West. It focuses on textile design as the vehicle for this analysis, but also includes other materials such as wallpaper, porcelain and furniture. Concentrating at first on the 17th century textile trade with India, the lecture then turns to the 18th century and trade with Imperial China. The distinction is drawn between export trade and evolving Western culture.
Monday, 23 September at 6pm
The Explosive World of Cornelia Parker
Rosalind Whyte (UK)
Contemporary sculptor and installation artist Cornelia Parker is known for her large sale installations such as her literally explosive work Dark Matter: An Exploded View ,1991 (pictured above), in which Parker took the archetypal British garden shed and had it blown up by the Army! The debris was then installed around a light bulb, freezing the dramatic explosion in time. Intrigued with 'cartoon deaths' where things are squashed, stretched dropped from a height or detonated, she transforms everyday objects to investigate their nature and value. However, such destruction can also result in work of extraordinary beauty, an intriguing and unique creative process.
Monday, 28 October at 6pm
British Pop Art
Paul Chapman (UK)
Although the term Pop Art is usually associated with artists based in New York and Los Angeles in the 1960s, the movement actually found its earliest voice in Britain a decade earlier. From the early work of the Independent Group in the 1950s, Pop emerged to become the dominant style throughout the 1960s. Artists drew inspiration from their own lives or things they saw around them every day such as Hollywood movies, advertising, product packaging, pop music and comic books. Many were horrified by such 'low' subject matter but Pop Art can be seen as an early manifestation of postmodernism.
Monday, 18 November at 6pm
Ten Novels That Changed the World
Susannah Fullerton (Australia)
Literature has always had the power to change. Just think of the impact of the King James Bible, Darwin's On the Origin of Species, Dr Johnson's Dictionary, Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams, Marxs' The Communist Manifesto and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. And yet Fiction too has the power to change - to evoke sympathy, to make us take on different opinions and even to bring about political and legal change.
This talk examines ten novels which altered our world when it came to race relations, charity, the shape of literature, and the plight of the poor and the different. Discover which novels have had universal impact and be encouraged to think about which books you would select as having in some way brought about enormous change.