Lectures 2020-21

May 4th 2021 at 11am:  Patty Stewart and your Committee

Our Great Leap Forwards – Introduction to Summer Zoom lectures

This short talk will introduce the new summer session, and  is  the perfect opportunity for anyone who has not been at a Zoom lecture yet to have a go at trying it out beforehand!

May 11th 2021 at 11am Chantal Brotherton-Ratcliffe

'First catch a squirrel...' Historical Materials and Techniques of Painting C15-C16th 
 

The 14th century artist Cennino Cennini recommended using “the    chicken bones that you will find under the dining table” for makingcharcoaled bone black to paint with. His treatise ‘The Artists’ Handbook’, introduces us to the surprising materialsthat artists had to master before beginning to paint, such as sourcing the tail of a squirrel to make paintbrushes. This lecture explains the techniques and reasons for some of the featuresof 15th and 16th century paintings which may seem odd to our modern eyes, with examples of materials.

June 8th 2021 at 11am Mark Patton
 

Ice Age Art: the First Artists in Europe
 

Ever since humans  first entered Europe from Africa and the Near East 30-50,000 years ago, art has been an important means of self-expression. Using the latest archaeological and ethnographic evidence, we discuss the social and cultural context of Europe’s earliest art, produced by hunter-gatherers in Europe 50-15,000 years ago. We explore paintings, drawings, sculptures of animals and humans on cave walls, abstract patterns and portable sculptures in bone, ivory, and stone.

July 13th 2021  at 11am   David Worthington

Sculptors and Science Fiction
 

The histories of 20th Century sculpture and science fiction merge and intertwine, creating a new relationship. Starting with Jacob Epstein’s Rock Drill of 1913, many artists searched for a simplified expression of human experience, creating imagery that fed into the depiction of robots and aliens in Science Fiction films. This became a cross-cultural fertilisation as artists incorporated Sci-Fi imagery into their own work. The lecture shows how Modernist sculpture created a new world that became an experimental laboratory for symbols and forms, used by film makers boldly going where no man or woman had gone before.