ADFAS Canberra provides for its members a yearly program of illustrated lectures given by overseas and Australian lecturers chosen for their communication skills and expert knowledge in their fields. Occasional afternoon sessions are also held when topics can be examined in more detail.
Monday 15 February
Sylvia SAGONA**
Desperate housewives: French bourgeois women and the velvet prison of the boudoir
The tightly-policed upbringing of the young bourgeois bride often led to neurosis and 'wasting illness'. The medical profession discovered new 'female' syndromes like hysteria, kleptomania and 'green disease' which proved how unsuited women were for anything but bearing children! Only with the development of department stores and the invention of shopping could a lady walk free in the City. Her confidants were her diary, her piano and the pampered pets whose condition mirrored her own. This lecture examines the real meaning behind the images of a seemingly idyllic life portrayed in the work of the French Salon and Impressionist artists such as Beraud, Renoir, Stevens, Manet, and Degas as well as in the posters, advertisements and bottle labels of the time.
Monday 22 March
Frank WOODGATE*
Look at me - self portraits in modern art
Self-portraits tell more than just a story about self; they reflect not only the inner turmoil experienced by artists like Van Gogh and Rembrandt but also the outer turmoil of the world in which they lived. Work by artists of the 20th and 21st centuries depicting such traumatic events as the two World Wars continue this theme. This lecture looks at works by artists including Matisse, Picasso, Frida Kahlo and Lucian Freud, as well as paintings by some lesser known artists, including Brian Charnley, a paranoid schizophrenic and admirer of van Gogh who recorded his mental disintegration in a deeply moving and varied series of self-portraits accompanied by a diary documenting his mental state.
Monday 12 April
Adrian BODDY**
The aesthetics of traditional Japanese architecture and design
Traditional Japanese building materials inform the lecture's structure. As renowned potter Bernard Leach said "the plain and un-agitated, the uncalculated, the harmless, the straightforward, the natural, the innocent, the humble, the modest: where does beauty lie if not in these qualities?" Study trips between 1985 and 2009 have yielded rich photographic material and personal knowledge of traditional Japanese architecture. Rather than analyzing the complex, stylistic changes in Japanese traditions, this lecture conveys the overall form and structure of houses, temples and shrines and the links with landscape that typify and characterize intrinsic Japanese design.
Monday 17 May
Louise IRVINE*
Fired with imagination- the decorative use of tiles and architectural ceramics
This lecture outlines the origins of tile decoration in the Middle East and Europe , traces the evolution of the industry in Victorian Britain to the early 1900s and explores stunning Art Nouveau designs followed by jazzy Art Deco patterns and the use of glittering glaze. Australia imported British tiles in the late 1800s and Art Nouveau style tiles were widely used in colonial cottages in suburban Sydney and Melbourne. Your imagination will be fired with this 'potted history' of architectural ceramics still in situ and this important aspect of Australian design heritage. Full of interesting details about stylistic trends, famous artists, decorating techniques and social factors, it is illustrated with a kaleidoscope of images.
Monday 21 June
David DOLAN**
How art invented heritage
In the mid-20th century, the work of artists like Russell Drysdale and Sidney Nolan offered a fresh view of Australian landscape, history and identity, helping us to understand we have a heritage worth preserving.
Monday 19 July
Tim STIMSON*
Every picture tells a story: Victorian narrative art
Victorian narrative pictures can be described as the visual equivalent of chapters from Dickens, George Eliot or Thackeray. They provide fascinating insights into the attitudes, values and morals of this period of British cultural history. This lecture will consider the visual legacy of the 19th century and the lost art of 'reading' pictures.
Monday 16 August
James TAYLOR*
Charles Darwin and the voyage of HMS Beagle.
This lecture looks at Charles Darwin and Robert Fitzroy and the voyage of HMS Beagle 1831-36. Fitzroy paid for two artists, Augustus Earle and Conrad Martens, to paint the people and places they encountered, and these images underpin a series of sensational stories. In the 19th century art and science were intertwined in many fields in ways that had an important bearing on the development of the Australian Colonies. 2009 marked the bi-centenary of Darwin 's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, the book that shocked and revolutionized Victorian society.
Monday 19 September
Sarah LENTON *
The Lord of the Rings
Wagner's Ring Cycle (four operas in 16 hours) is based squarely on Northern myth. However the story is Wagner's own. Using extensive material from Royal Opera House and English National Opera productions of the Ring, Sarah will unpack Wagner's epic to show how brilliantly it is put together from Viking saga, Norse myth and the odd German fairy tale.
Tuesday 20 September
A MORNING WITH ….
Sarah LENTON*
Coffee with the Wittgensteins
Sarah's colleague Margaret Stonborough is a Wittgenstein - the great-niece of Ludwig Wittgenstein - and together they have put together a lecture about that wealthy and talented family. Margaret remembers her alarming family vividly and she contributes her own recollections in the last segment of the morning. The lecture includes descriptions of Ludwig the philosopher, Paul the concert pianist and Margaret's grandmother who was painted by Klimt. The talk covers the family palaces, silver, paintings and patronage of significant artists of fin du siecle Vienna . Currently on Radio 4 in UK.
Sunday 17 October
AN AFTERNOON WITH ……
Andrew DAVIES *
The changing face of London
Ever since the arrival of the Romans 2000 years ago, London has been at the heart of British, and often world, affairs. Its great men and women (Shakespeare, Elizabeth I, Wren, and Dickens) have shaped the city's history and are internationally honoured. To find out what has made this exciting, vibrant and sometimes infuriating city 'tick', the major influences on London's history - the Norman invasion, the role of the River Thames, the Great Fire of 1666, the Great Exhibition of 1851, the impact of the railway, the Blitz, the recent transformation of the Docklands - will all be explored.
Monday 20 October
Andrew DAVIES *
Samuel Pepys- his life, times and diary.
Composer, MP, civil servant, diarist, historian, Fellow of the Royal Society, ‘man about town’, friend of the high and mighty, a prisoner inside the Tower of London - Samuel Pepys brought an enormous zest for life to every aspect of his existence. We will explore the man himself, his friends, including Sir Christopher Wren and John Evelyn, and his times, revelling in the world of seventeenth century England. Evelyn called Pepys “universally loved”. Could anyone have a finer memorial?
*NADFAS lecturer
**Australian lecturer
Venue and Time of Lectures
Morning lectures start at 10.30 am, evening lectures at 6.00 pm and both are held at CSIRO DISCOVERY CENTRE, Clunies Ross Drive, Black Mountain. They last an hour and refreshments are served afterwards.
The cost of attending 9 lectures is included in the membership subscription and admission is by name badge.
In addition to the 9 lectures, there are two Special Interest Sessions on Tuesday 21 September and Sunday 17 October in 2009. The venue is to be advised. Each of these interactive sessions is limited to 50 participants and runs for about 2 and a half hours with a break for morning or afternoon tea midway. The fee for attending each is $35 for members and $40 for guests but if you book for both, the fee is reduced to $30.
Guests
Guest fees are $25 per person and guests may attend three times in any one year with prior notice to the Membership Secretary. The fee for members of other ADFAS Societies is $10.
