Noosa
ArtsNational Noosa welcomes you.
ArtsNational Noosa has been bringing world class art related talks to the local cultural scene for over 10 years. Join us in 2024 and come and discover the arts with likeminded people in a friendly and welcoming environment. Enjoy new friendships over a glass of wine and finger food. Meet and chat with the speakers. Join our day tours to places of artistic and cultural interest. Contribute to our local young arts development projects. We look forward to welcoming you.
Lectures:
Venue:
Lectures are held at St Mary’s Church, 17 William Street, Tewantin. Additional parking in adjacent Butler Street
Time:
Lectures are on a Saturday, please arrive at 3.45pm for a 4.00pm start
Membership:
Annual membership:
$160 Single $275 Couple
Click here to join or email: membershipnoosaadfas@gmail.com
Guests welcome:
Guest / visitor fee per lecture: $30
ArtsNational visitor from another society fee per lecture: $20
Bookings are essential, contact: Jenny Reeve membershipnoosaadfas@gmail.com
Contact:
For all enquiries please email: membershipnoosaadfas@gmail.com
Postal Address: PO Box 481 Noosa Heads QLD. 4567
ABN: 88 077 121 951
Committee
Chair: Gail Thoms
Treasurer: Robert Brooks
Membership: Jenny Reeve
2024 PROGRAM
Saturday 9 March 2024
THAT WOMAN OR THE DUCHESS OF STYLE – TIME TO REASSESS WALLIS SIMPSON
Presented by Anne Sebba
Venue & time: St. Mary’s Church,17 William Street, Tewantin. 3.45pm for a 4.00pm start
This lecture, illustrated with pictures of Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, and her clothes, jewellery and homes she lived in will explore the power she had over a King. Accused of being a spy, a prostitute and a Nazi sympathiser, yet she turned her exile into a platform from which to become regarded as the world’s best dressed woman. Was she simply a clothes horse, or did she have a heart that was misunderstood? Why was she unacceptable as Queen? After three years of research and eighty years since the 1936 Abdication, it is time to reassess ‘That Woman’.
Biographer, historian, and author of eleven books Anne Sebba lectures in the US and UK, and to the National Trust, British Library, and Imperial War Museum. Formerly a Reuters foreign correspondent, Anne presents on BBC Radio and television talking about her books, including biographies on Jennie Churchill, Laura Ashley, Wallis Simpson and her latest book Ethel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy published in 2021.
Saturday 20 April 2024
WONDERS OF THE ALHAMBRA – SYMMETRY AND PATTERNS IN ISLAMIC ART
Presented by David Banney
Venue & time: St. Mary’s Church,17 William Street, Tewantin. 3.45pm for a 4.00pm start
For more than 700 years the Alhambra Palace in Granada has delighted and inspired. A treasure trove of art and design, the Alhambra is a virtual encyclopedia of symmetry and patterns, even more remarkable given the simplicity of the tools available to the artists and craftsmen. This lecture introduces the extraordinary techniques of design and construction that lie behind the tessellations of the Alhambra.
Described by pianist Roger Woodward as ‘quite simply one of the best conductors in the country’, David is one of Australia’s most highly regarded musicians, with success as a conductor, composer, string player and educator. During studies for a PhD in music David discovered the fascinating world of symmetry and symmetry breaking. His interest in this subject has lead to numerous papers about symmetry in music, as well as interdisciplinary research with Italian physicist Giuseppe Caglioti and reproductive endocrinologist Roger Smith.
Saturday 25 May 2024
EVERYTHING STOPS FOR TEA! A social history of drinking tea.
Presented by Dr Anne Anderson FSA
Venue & time: St Mary’s Church ,17 William Street, Tewantin. 3.45pm for a 4.00pm start
It was during the 18th century that rituals of tea drinking were established. Tea drinking was both a private and public affair. The painter William Hogarth, famous for recording middle class life shows us exactly how tea was drunk at the time. In the 19th century, paraphernalia associated with tea drinking mushroomed from infusers to strainers and drip-catchers. The café boom resulted in teashops, and all the large department stores had tearooms. After a hard day shopping, nothing was nicer than the relaxing atmosphere of a cup of tea at one of the tearooms. This lecture combines social history with fashion and interior decorating. A wonderful selection of images will demonstrate the elegance of taking tea from the 18th Century to the 1950s.
With a first degree in archaeology and a PhD in English, Hon Associate Professor Anne Anderson was a senior lecturer in Art and Design History at Southampton Solent University for 14 years. She has curated four national exhibitions, published over a hundred academic papers and her book on The Perseus Series accompanied the Edward Burn-Jones exhibition at the Tate Britain in 2018. Currently a guide and lecturer, Anne specialises in Arts and Crafts art tours. Her career as an international speaker has taken her all over the world.
Saturday 29 June 2024
FROM MIAMI TO MERRICKS – THE RISE AND TOLE OF THE MODERN SCULPTURE PARK
Presented by Geoffrey Edwards – ArtsNational President
Venue & time: St. Mary’s Church,17 William Street, Tewantin. 3.45pm for a 4.00pm start
As one of the oldest art forms, monumental sculpture has been presented in spectacular outdoor settings since antiquity. The princely estates of Renaissance and Baroque Europe were populated with marble nymphs and classical deities. Major art museums throughout the world feature large-scale sculpture in their gardens and courtyards. But the idea of a park or garden conceived expressly for the display of sculpture is essentially a modern
phenomenon. From Minneapolis to Merricks is an account of the creation from the mid-twentieth century onwards of public and private sculpture parks in Europe, the US and Japan including more recent and remarkable examples in New Zealand and Australia.
Geoffrey Edwards was Director of the Geelong Art Gallery, one of Australia’s oldest and largest regional galleries. Prior to this appointment, he held Senior Curatorial positions at the National Gallery of Victoria where he was in charge of the collections of International and Australian sculpture and Melbourne’s celebrated holdings of ancient, antique and modern glass. He is the author of various monographs, numerous exhibition catalogues and contributes to journals in Australia, Japan, Britain and the US.
Saturday 20 July 2024
CARAVAGGIO: THE BAD BOY OF BAROQUE
Presented by Daniel Evans
Venue & time: St. Mary’s Church, 17 William Street, Tewantin. 3.45pm for a 4.00pm start
Caravaggio was a violent bully with a massive ego, yet the most gifted painter of his generation. He offended as easily as he wowed with his works. Scandal followed him everywhere he went or fled to. His paintings have cinematic compositions with intensely visceral details, as he developed a pioneering style that would inspire a European stylistic following, and change Baroque painting forever. His tragic end and eventual downfall is the stuff of a great film not yet made and this lecture aims to bring his colourful character to life.
Dan Evans, an educationalist with a passion for European art and architecture. He teaches History and A Level History of Art at Cheltenham College, a full boarding independent school established in 1841. Dan has been lecturing since 2001, and spent 9 years working as a senior lecturer and tour guide for Art History Abroad and he was once voted the British winner of the World Guide of the Year Awards.
Saturday 17 August 2024
SPECIAL EVENT – DOUBLE LECTURE STARTING AT 2:30PM
Presented by Lynne Gibson
Venue & time: St Mary’s Church,17 William Street,Tewantin. 2:30pm
Lecture 1 – Alchemy & Adventure: A History of Exotic Colours and Pigments
It easy to take colour for granted in our manufactured world. But before organic chemistry the most desirable pigments were often rare, exotic, or poisonous. Merchants supplied cochineal ‘grana’ from the holds of Spanish galleons, pungent golden nuggets from India and lapis rock carried by camel train from the mountains of Badakhshan. Alchemists prepared deadly King’s Yellow, mysterious Vitriol of Venus and Moorish Gold concocted from basilisk powder and human blood. Small wonder artists kept their paint recipes closely guarded in ‘Books of Secrets.’ This lecture tells the stories of alchemy and adventure behind some our beautiful and colourful paintings.
Lecture 2 – The Art of Seduction
Seduction had been one of the enduring themes of art since Eve offered Adam an apple. Courtly love blossomed in manuscripts and miniatures of the Middle Ages and the Italian Renaissance offered painters an Olympian cast of amorous gods and goddesses. Puritanical Dutch and Prudish Victorians tutted over the loose morals of fallen women. Rococo artists revelled in the flirtatious fun of Fetes Galantes and Belle Epoque ‘Gay Paree’ flaunted the Femme Fatale. But in our permissive society has the ‘Battle of Sexes’ killed the spirit of romance? This lecture celebrates the theme of love and courtship through painting from the Age of Chivalry to the Modern Age.
Lynne Gibson is a freelance lecturer in History of Art, and in Drawing, Painting and Printmaking. She has worked at the Universities of Sussex and Bristol and has conducted lectures, courses and guided tours for organisations including Art Galleries and Museums, The Art Fund, The National Trust and The Arts Society. She is a professional artist specializing in oil painting and etching, has been exhibited widely and her work used in a range of publications.
Saturday 14 September 2024
THE HEALING POWER OF PLANTS – WHY PLANT DERIVED TREATMENTS ARE NOT AN ALTERNATIVE INSTEAD THEY ARE THE REAL THING
Presented by Timothy Walker
Venue & time: St Mary’s Church,17 William Street, Tewantin. 3.45pm for a 4.00pm start
Mankind has exploited the medicinal properties of plants for thousands of years, yet the role of plants in modern medicine is still considered to be peripheral by many people. This talk attempts to put the record straight and to show that plant products are used every day by all of us to relieve pain and suffering, to heal wounds and cure diseases. This is a talk with a very wide appeal and relevance.
From 1988 to 2014 Timothy Walker was the Director of the University of Oxford Botanic Garden. Botanic gardens are often described as living museums, and garden curators talk about them in the same way as museum curators do. Gardens are often thought of a place where science and art meet on equal terms and Timothy’s lectures investigate this relationship. Since 2014, he has taught Plant Biology at Somerville College Oxford.
Saturday 12 October 2024
PICTURING THE BARBARIAN IN ANTIQUITY
Presented by Andrew Gillett
Venue & time: St Mary’s Church,17 William Street, Tewantin. 3.45pm for a 4.00pm start
The Barbarian was central to classical antiquity. Portrayals of barbarians appeared in every type of decorative medium, and became more pervasive as time progressed, supporting claims of imperial rule. But the classical Barbarian was very different from our modern concept, in sometime shocking ways which will be explore in this talk.
Professor Andrew Gillett completed his doctoral studies at the University of Toronto and has had a career as a university lecturer and researcher in History specialising in Late Antiquity. He has published widely and has held visiting fellowships at Oxford and Yale Universities. His current research interests include the cultural history of sheepdogs and the literature of shepherds’ memoirs. He lives on the Sunshine Coast.
Saturday 2 November 2024
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE’S GROUND-BREAKING VISION
Presented by Deborah Jenner
Venue & time: St Mary’s Church,17 William Street, Tewantin. 3.45pm for a 4.00pm start
O’Keeffe’s inspiration comes from hiking along canyons of America’s Southwest to portray vistas from within gorges or where there are exposed cross sections of the Earth. Her compositions may be captured from below or above, or, by telescoping distances with her ‘Far Away Nearby‘. Her ground-breaking vision often creates metaphorical openings onto the Infinite. Such a sublime approach to both landscape and abstract painting demonstrates how unique O’Keeffe’s perspective is. Her New World images disregard the European landscape genre. If anything, they recall Chinese scroll painting. (I think Australians could find parallels with their own topography and her frontier approach).
Deborah Jenner, American-born art historian; member of College Arts Association has resided in Paris since 1990. She has worked at the Ecole du Louvre, the Sorbonne, the Catholic Institute, and the British Council. Her Doctorate thesis proved non-western influences in Georgia O’Keeffe’s art. Deborah’s publications include catalogue essays for Musée d’Orsay and Centre Pompidou, many scholarly papers and Gallery critiques. She gives public talks, guided walks and museum tours for ex-pat organisations and study-abroad programs.