Tamworth

Wednesday​ 12 March 2025
PETRA AND THE NABATEANS: THE ARABS BEFORE ISLAM
Presented by Sue Rollin
Venue & Time: Heritage Room, Tamworth Community Centre, Darling Street, 5.45 pm for 6.00 pm

In this lecture we trace the history of the enigmatic Nabateans, desert dwellers of Arabian origin, who grew fabulously rich on trade in incense and aromatics from South Arabia and established their capital city at Petra, hidden away in the mountains south of the Dead Sea. There, from the multi-coloured sandstone of their remote desert stronghold, the Nabateans carved impressive tombs, cultic dining halls and a grand theatre. They worshipped their gods from remote and beautiful ‘high places’ in the mountains, built palaces, elegant villas and temples in the valleys and embellished their city with water courses and gardens.

Sue Rollin lives in London and holds degrees in Near Eastern archaeology, South Asian studies and conference interpreting. She has tutored and lectured at London and Cambridge Universities, been a staff interpreter at the European Commission, and currently works as a freelance interpreter, lecturer and tour guide. Sue has travelled widely for work and pleasure and has led cultural tours in Spain, Sicily, Morocco, the Middle East, Central Asia and India. She has co-authored travel guides on Jordan and on Istanbul. In the UK, Sue lectures for the Arts Society and the V&A and she has done four previous ArtsNational lecture tours.

Wednesday​ 2 April 2025
TO PAINT A WAR: THE LIVES OF THE AUSTRALIAN ARTISTS WHO PAINTED THE GREAT WAR
Presented by Richard Travers
Venue & Time: Heritage Room, Tamworth Community Centre, Darling Street, 5.45 pm for 6.00 pm

Among all forms of national memory and commemoration, it falls to the artists to paint a war. The Australian artists who painted World War 1 approached their subject personally, in ways that reflected their experience of the war. Some contributed as members of the official war artists’ scheme. Other painted as eyewitnesses of the unfolding tragedy. Yet others painted from their hearts. Their work, in all its richness and variety is a sweeping painterly chronicle of the war, and a vital part of Australia’s heritage.

Richard Travers practised as a trial lawyer for more than 40 years. He was a member of the NSW bar and partner in a national law firm and taught administrative law at UNSW. He has written four books including To Paint a War: the lives of the Australian Artists who painted the Great War.

Wednesday​ 7 May 2025
DE-CODING DA VINCI
Presented by Alice Foster
Venue & Time: Heritage Room, Tamworth Community Centre, Darling Street, 5.45 pm for 6.00 pm

Leonardo da Vinci epitomised Renaissance Humanism, creating some of the most influential paintings in western art. He died over 500 years ago, yet his work remains enigmatic, potent and mystifying. A gifted engineer, inventor and scientist, painting fell at the end of his line of curiosity, yet ironically it’s this for which he is remembered best. Much is unfinished; his Last Supper was the target of jokes and vandalism by French forces in Milan, while he was among the first to celebrate human imperfection in his caricatures. And just what is the draw of his Mona Lisa? This lecture revises the familiar and explores some less well-known da Vinci works.

Alice has lectured for Oxford University Department of Continuing Education since 1998. She lectures regularly at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and at the Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock. Her busy freelance career includes organising History of Art study days with colleagues, and regular weekly classes in Oxfordshire and Worcestershire. In 2004 Alice joined The Arts Society and has lectured in Britain and in Europe. 

Wednesday​ 11 June 2025
THE ART OF THE JAPANSES GARDEN
Presented by Kathleen Olive
Venue & Time: Heritage Room, Tamworth Community Centre, Darling Street, 5.45 pm for 6.00 pm

Expanses of raked white gravel. Iconic trees – pines, maples, gingko – carefully twisted and pruned into dynamic and sometimes torturous shapes. The soothing drip of water onto stone. The autumn light shining through richly coloured leaves. When you deconstruct them, the elements of a Japanese garden seem so simple that they’re almost banal, yet their combined effect is undeniably engaging and soothing. In this talk, I investigate the historic roots of Japanese garden design that, like much of the country’s art tradition, developed in isolation from European influence and thus preserves something quintessentially “Japanese”.

Kathleen’s PhD was a study of artisanal culture in Renaissance Florence, through the lens of a goldsmith’s commonplace book known as the Codex Rustici. She lived and studied in Italy for a number of years, and then taught Italian language, literature and history at the University of Sydney. Kathleen now works with Academy Travel, leading tours to Europe and, particularly, Italy.

Wednesday​ 9 July 2025
HOW TO GET DOWN FROM A YAK: Adventures in Central Asian Nomadic Textiles
Presented by Chris Aslan
Venue & Time: Heritage Room, Tamworth Community Centre, Darling Street, 5.45 pm for 6.00 pm

Houses made from wool that warm in the depths of winter, carpets that tell stories, woven bands that appease ancestors, embroideries that ward off evil, and kilims that store kitchenware, with everything ready to be packed and carried on a yak or camel at a moment’s notice. The little-known nomadic textile cultures of the Kyrgyz, Turkoman and Karakalpak are explored in this lecture, along with the rise and fall of nomadism and where it fits within the modern world. Chris also shares his own experience of working with nomadic yak herders in the High Pamirs for 3 years.

Chris spent his childhood in Turkey and in war-torn Beirut and is currently based in Cambridge. His career extended from the sea, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Oxford. He established a UNESCO workshop reviving fifteenth century carpet designs and embroideries which became the largest nongovernment employer in town. He was kicked out as part of an anti-Western purge and recorded his experiences in his book “A Carpet Ride to Khiva”.

Wednesday​ 6 August 2025
INDIANS BUFFALOS AND STORMS: THE AMERICAN WEST IN 19th CENTURY ART
Presented by Toby Faber
Venue & Time: Heritage Room, Tamworth Community Centre, Darling Street, 5.45 pm for 6.00 pm

Artists were never far behind the explorers opening up America’s west in the 19th century. Sometimes they painted what they saw, sometimes what they wished they saw. Either way, painters like Alfred Miller, Frederick Church and Albert Bierstadt left a powerful, if romanticised, record of the country and people they found. Their pictures also chart the arrival of the railroad, the confinement of native Americans into reservations, and the extermination of the buffalo. After a period of deep neglect, their works are very much back in vogue. Whatever their artistic merits, they tell a strong, if tragic, story.

An experienced lecturer, Toby Faber began his career with Natural Sciences at Cambridge, followed by investment banking, management consulting and five years as managing director of the publishing company founded by his grandfather, Faber and Faber. Toby is also non-executive Chairman of its sister company, Faber Music.

Wednesday​ 3 September 2025
PAINTING THE MODERN GARDEN – FROM MONET TO MATISSE
Presented by Lydia Bauman
Venue & Time: Heritage Room, Tamworth Community Centre, Darling Street, 5.45 pm for 6.00 pm

Monet, perhaps the most important painter of gardens, once said he owed his painting “to flowers”. But so many other artists not only created gardens but made them the subject of their work – such as Pissarro, Sargent, Tissot, Kandinsky, Klee, Van Gogh, Klimt and Matisse. The modern garden, transformed by 19th century innovations such as hybridisation, glasshouses and foreign exploration, was part of a great social change to which artists responded from the 1860s onwards. This talk traces the appearance of the garden as a modern phenomenon and the development of new art movements adopting it as their subject.

Lydia was born in Poland and studied for her BA in Fine Art at University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (John Christie Scholarship and the Hatton Award), and an MA in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. She has since divided her time between painting and exhibiting as well as lecturing widely to adult audiences. She has taught at London’s National Gallery for more than 35 years, and intermittently at London’s Tate Gallery and National Portrait Gallery, as well as collections such as Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Hermitage and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Wednesday​ 15 October 2025
THE TRUE STORY BEHIND THE WORLD’S BIGGEST ART HEIST
Presented by Georgina Bexon
Venue & Time: Heritage Room, Tamworth Community Centre, Darling Street, 5.45 pm for 6.00 pm

On 18 March 1990, the ‘impossible’ happened – thirteen works of art, valued at a total of $500 million, were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Museum officials, police and security experts were completely baffled as to how this had happened. These great masterpieces have never been recovered; a devastating loss to the museum and its public. This talk relates the story of the fascinating police investigation into the missing paintings by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Degas and Manet; resulting in knowledge of how, why and by whom the robbery was committed but leaving the crime officially ‘unsolved’.

Georgina Bexon is an international art historian, a Consultant Art Historian at the Oriental Club in London and a tour guide at Tate Modern. Georgina holds an MA in Arts Management and Policy from City, University of London and an MA in Art History from SOAS, University of London. Georgina is a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Arts Scholars and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Asiatic Society.

Wednesday​ 12 November 2025
THE ART OF MAPS: ANCIENT MEDIEVAL AND MODERN
Presented by John Williamson
Venue & Time: Heritage Room, Tamworth Community Centre, Darling Street, 5.45 pm for 6.00 pm

This lecture discusses the development of maps of the world from the earliest civilisations to the most recent digital creations. They show gradual improvement for purposes of shipping, trade and national sovereignty. This evolution of maps includes more accurate coastlines, the addition of longitude and latitude and the placement of a consistent North; however, maps have always shown what their creators desired or hoped for. Most of all Maps ancient, medieval or modern are frequently pieces of great artistic skill and beauty.

John is currently the Coordinator of Humanities and Senior Teacher, Fahan School. Until 2019 John was also Associate Lecturer Bachelor of Antarctic Studies Programme, IASOS, at the University of Tasmania. He has operated as a Historian / Guide for the Quark Expeditions, “The Wonders of the Ross Sea” Antarctic Voyage and Researcher and Tour Guide for “Hobart’s Waterways Tours”, Hobart City Council. John has also been an Antarctic History Researcher, ‘Antarctic Tasmania’, Department of Premier and Cabinet, Tasmanian Government. John has written numerous published articles on his areas of interest.