Armidale Events

Art Deco in Sydney - A persistent presence (Claudia Chan) Claudia Chan Shaw, well known Australian designer and presenter will provide an exploration of Art Deco Sydney, a visual culture defined not only through architecture, but also through graphic and interior design, the decorative arts and photography.

Petra and the Nabateans: The Arabs Before Islam - Sue Rollin (UK) United Kingdom archaeologist and tour guide, Sue Rollin will 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.

To Paint A War - Richard Travers The Australian artists of World War 1 approached their subject personally in ways that reflected their experience of the war.  Australian historian Richard Travers will follow them as they leave Australia in search of inspiration and fame in London and Paris and respond to the international crisis.  

About Face: How to Read Portraits - Alice Foster (Oxford University, UK) Portraits are complex to produce and quite distinct from other categories in art in the way they are made, the nature of what they represent and how they work in terms of display.  Oxford (UK) university lecturer and historian Alice Foster will discuss portraits from the symbolic to images where concern with identity opens the areas of character, personality, mood, status, costume, occupation, gender and age.

Decorating Domestic Spaces in Medieval Europe - Kathleen Olive (Italy) Well-to-do merchants, bankers and even artisans signalled their wealth and sophistication through conspicuous consumption, much of it destined for the interior decoration of their comfortable domestic spaces. Historian, tour guide and Italian expert Kathleen Olive will explore the decorative style of the 14th and 15th centuries in Italy and France.    

A Carpet Ride to Khiva: A Personal Story of Reviving Ancient Silk Carpet Designs - Chris Asian (Cambridge, UK) The work of Cambridge-based author, lecturer and travel guide Chris Aslan took him to the bazaars of Afghanistan and to the great libraries and museums of Europe to track down 15th century manuscripts to revive carpet designs from their illuminations. He tells his own story of working with UNESCO to establish a silk carpet workshop in the desert oasis of Khiva, […]

Faber and Faber - 90 Years of Excellence in Cover Design - Tony Faber (UK) Faber and Faber has been one of London’s most important literary publishing houses since 1925 and Toby Faber, grandson of the founder will trace the firm’s history through its illustrations, covers and designs. The firm’s insistence on good design has seen some of Britain’s most celebrated artists as cover illustrators.    

Painting the Modern Garden - From Monet to Matisse - Lydia Bauman (UK) 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.   United Kingdom art historian and artist Lydia Bauman will trace the garden as a modern phenomenon and the development of new art movements adopting it as their subject.

The Real Pirates of the Caribbean - Georgina Bexon (UK) For centuries pirates roamed the oceans creating havoc and violence for unsuspecting sailors reaching its zenith in the early eighteenth century when notorious marine outlaws like Captain Kidd and Bluebeard led crews of murderous pirates intent on plundering the high seas. Join UK historian Georgina Bexon to find out the evidence that supports the tales of terror.

Goddess of the Sky: The Art of Everest and the Himalayas - John Williamson Historian and tour guide John Williamson examines the development of the British Great Trigonometrical Survey of India and the art of both the early efforts to ascend Mt. Everest as well as the art of modern climbing on the world’s highest mountain.