A thoroughly entertaining lecture that made our members laugh!

This thought-provoking presentation is well illustrated with carefully chosen examples taken from both popular culture and the fine arts. 

The first half of the lecture explores what illusions are, before explaining why and how they deceive us. 

In the second part of the lecture we examine how illusions have been used both ‘in art’ and ‘as art’. 

We will look at examples from artists as diverse William Hogarth, René Magritte and the extraordinary sculptures of Bruno Catalano.

Formerly a lecturer at the University of Bath where he was Director of Studies in the School of Education with responsibility for the professional development of teachers. He has worked extensively overseas as an educational consultant and this has given him the opportunity to give lectures and presentations at conferences all over the world. Over the last decade he has been a popular speaker on the Arts Society circuit in the UK and Europe as well as a frequent visitor to the societies in Australia and New Zealand. 

In his professional life he has developed a particular interest in presentation skills including the role of pictures in learning and the appropriate use of PowerPoint. This coupled with his ability to relate well to people of all ages and backgrounds makes him an impressive and confident public speaker. 

As well as the talks he has developed from his professional background, he offers presentations on an eclectic range of topics that are derived from his diverse interests and enthusiasms such as, Art Inspired by Wine, Visual Illusions in Art and The Shakers of North America. All his talks are entertaining, highly informative, very well illustrated and presented with warmth and humour.

In this amusing lecture I will talk about the seemingly happy world of professional, family pantomime - and what it’s really like. I’ll recount the bouquets and the brickbats. I’ll look at the famous names, the greatest Dames and the old routines that we all remember – and I’ll look at when it all works – and when it doesn’t.  And I’ll talk about why this most precious of British traditions will always endure, and why, surprisingly, every actor wants to do it. This is a revealing look at professional panto, from someone who was born into it. 

Tyler Butterworth grew up in a theatrical family and spent twenty five years as an actor working extensively in film, television, theatre and radio. He then worked as a development producer in television documentaries. Now, he produces walking audio guides to cities across Europe for private clients. He lives in Sussex where he walks on the South Downs and the South Coast.

The Life and work of Britain's most renowned female Sculptor.

This lecture celebrates the remarkable life and career of British sculptor Barbara Hepworth, tracing her journey from rural Yorkshire to international acclaim. It begins with her early friendship with fellow sculptor Henry Moore and follows her travels across Europe in the 1930s, when she met Picasso and learned to carve marble in Florence.

The lecture explores Hepworth’s artistic influences and her commitment to abstraction, showing how landscape, family life and place profoundly shaped her sculpture. It examines key works in stone, plaster and bronze, situating them within the contexts of modernism and post-war Britain.

Biography: 

Ian Giles studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and is a practising artist. His artworks and films have been shown internationally, including at MoMA PS1 (New York), the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), and the Whitechapel Gallery (London).

He has been a visiting lecturer at Chelsea College of Arts, Cambridge School of Art, Camberwell College of Arts, Birmingham School of Art and the University of Cambridge, Department of Architecture.

His work has been supported by Arts Council England, Art Fund, The Jerwood Foundation, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Recent press coverage includes features and reviews in The Guardian, Frieze, Artforum, and on BBC radio and television.

In 2026 he will present exhibitions and projects at Queer Britain, Southampton City Art Gallery and Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery.

Awards, Qualifications & Memberships: 

- Masters in Fine Art from Slade School of Fine Art, UCL
- BA (Hons) Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts, UAL
- Foundation at Camberwell College of Arts, UAL

When Japan's borders were opened to the West in 1868 there was a huge surge of interest in all things Japanese in the West, particularly in Paris. Ukiyo-e prints were collected avidly by the leading Impressionist painters of the day who 'borrowed' wholesale from their asymmetric compositions, flowing lines, bright colours and subject matter. In this lecture I explore how the Japanese aesthetic revolutionised Western art in the late 19th century, and how a new wave of  artists today have brought a deeper understanding of the mokuhanga technique into Contemporary Art.

Carol Wilhide Justin is an artist-printmaker who specialises in Japanese woodcut. In 2014 Carol was awarded a residency at the MI-LAB studio, Fujikawaguchiko, Japan, where she was taught the mokuhanga technique by Japanese sensei. She graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2017 with an MA in Print. She has exhibited in a number of independent shows and larger mixed exhibitions such as the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair and Bankside Gallery. Her work is held in private and public collections including Clifford Chance, The Ashmolean and The V&A. She also teaches Japanese Woodcut at The Slade, Morley College, The City Literary Institute and The Art Academy.

In 2022 she was commissioned by the Crowood Press to write a book on Japanese Woodcut. It is titled "Japanese Woodcut- Traditional Techniques and Contemporary Practice" and was published in January 2024.

2027 will be the 300th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Gainsborough. Gainsborough was unquestionably one of the greatest portrait painters that Britain has ever produced. His ability to capture the inner lives of his sitters, his dramatic use of paint and his remarkable approach to colour set him apart from almost all of his contemporaries. Yet, although he was regarded in his lifetime as one of the preeminent portrait painters of his day, the genre that he truly loved was landscape. In this lecture we will look at the life and work of this unique artist, his experimental technique and his fraught relationship to portraiture, the genre in which he excelled. 

Biography:

I am an independent art historian, educator, and museum professional with a passion for sharing the joy of art. Over the years, I have spoken on subjects ranging from Caravaggio to Kehinde Wiley, though my first love remains the work of J.M.W. Turner and my primary focus is European painting of the 18th and 19th centuries.

My career has been dedicated to helping people connect with art in meaningful and enjoyable ways, whether through lectures, exhibitions, or creative learning programs.

I have lectured widely across Britain and Europe, in settings as diverse as universities, festivals and cathedrals as well as Galleries such as the National Gallery, the Royal Collection, the Wallace Collection, the Courtauld Institute and the Victoria and Albert Museum. My degree is from Cambridge, I studied at the Courtauld for my MA and my PhD is from Birkbeck, University of London. 

As Museum Director, I had the privilege of running Turner’s House in Twickenham, dedicated to the great landscape painter. Bringing Turner’s art to new audiences was one of the most rewarding experiences of my career.

I have taught for more than eight years at Birkbeck, University of London, and served as Head of the London Learning Team at the Royal Collection. At the National Gallery, I devised and delivered a wide range of learning events, and earlier in my career I worked as a Director in the Valuations Department at Christie’s.

Beyond museums, I have contributed to TV documentaries, podcasts, and radio programs, and created a series of short films about paintings available on YouTube.

When I’m not immersed in art, you’ll find me enjoying my extensive jazz record collection—usually with a glass of red wine in hand.

Awards, Qualifications & Memberships: 

PhD - University of London
MA - The Courtauld Institute
MA - The University of Cambridge

The Royal Ballet was the first company to perform Tchaikovsky's ballets outside Russia.  See and hear how and why these works are so important to the company today.

Biography: 

Sarah Lenton has spent her working life in the theatre: her principal employers are the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera and Garsington Opera. She writes programme articles, radio scripts, gives lectures on the operas and ballets in the rep. and broadcasts regularly for BBC Radios 3 and 4. She is also a cartoonist. 

Charles Dickens was one of the very first people to whom the word “celebrity” was applied. He lived in an extraordinary century, full of innovators and pioneers, and he was friends with many of the most interesting people of his day. This talk accompanies Lucinda’s book Charles Dickens and his Circle, which was written for the National Portrait Gallery in London. Discover the fascinating circle of Dickens’s friends and acquaintances including artists, actors, musicians, radical thinkers, philanthropists and politicians, as well as many of his fellow writers. 

Biography: 

Lucinda Hawksley is an author, broadcaster, lecturer and award-winning travel writer, who has worked as an interviewee, consultant and presenter on TV and radio shows worldwide. She has written three biographies of female artists: Kate Perugini (née Dickens), Princess Louise and Lizzie Siddal. Her other books include, Victorian Christmas, Dickens and Travel, Letters of Great Women, Elizabeth Revealed, Dickens and Christmas, The Writer Abroad, Bitten by Witch Fever: Wallpaper and Arsenic in the Victorian Home, Charles Dickens and his Circle, Moustaches, Whiskers & Beards (Facial Hair in Art), and March, Women, March: Voices of the Women’s Movement.

Lucinda’s many TV credits include Miriam’s Dickensian Christmas, a show she created with the Dickens-loving actress Miriam Margolyes, Charles Dickens with Gyles Brandreth, World’s Greatest Paintings, A Very Country Christmas, Paul O’Grady’s Great British Escape, The Project, Landscape Artist of the Year, Queen Victoria and her Tragic Family, Cathedrals of Steam – Europe’s Most Famous Train Stations, Missing Masterpieces, Queen Victoria’s Children, Mrs Dickens’s Family Christmas, Dickens and Health, Find My Past: The Staplehurst Rail Crash, Charles Dickens’s Secret Lover and Charles Dickens and the Invention of Christmas.

Lucinda co-wrote and narrated The Real Sherlock, a six-part podcast series about Arthur Conan-Doyle, for Audible. She has also written and narrated, for Audible, the introductions for Our Mutual Friend and The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Her other voice-over work includes art gallery audio guides and a children’s audio guide to Stonehenge. She is a great great great granddaughter of Charles and Catherine Dickens, and a Patron of the Charles Dickens Museum in London; she is also a Patron of the De Morgan Foundation. In 2024 she became the President of the International Dickens Fellowship.

In 1948, the Venice Biennale reopened after six years of closure from World War II. The star pavilion was organised by Peggy Guggenheim. Her personal collection of modern art dazzled and dismayed visitors, stealing attention from all other exhibitions. Guggenheim had saved art and artists from the fascists who labelled them degenerate, bringing them to inspire a generation of artists in New York. This lecture introduces the collecting practices of Peggy Guggenheim, how she, in no small part, saved the history of European modernism from Nazi hands and how her landmark curatorial practice laid foundation for contemporary art galleries and the Venice Biennale.

Biography: 

Sarah is an art historian, educator, curator and writer based in London. 

Before her current position as head of art history at City Lit, London's largest adult education college, Sarah was a curator in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. For six years, she was the lead educator for the Bridget Riley Art Foundation and has also worked at Wellcome Collection exploring the connections of art, medicine and human experience. Prior to relocating to London for family, she was as a tenured professor of Art History based in Los Angeles. Sarah has been an art history lecturer since 2003.

Her first MA in Art History focused on the links between poetry and painting in late 19th century France while her second MA in Cultural Studies focused on photography and political protest. 

Sarah lectures on a variety of topics and prefers to place artworks and objects in their wider social and cultural contexts, from the European Renaissance to the contemporary, emphasising new narratives and approaches to Western Art History. Her art historical research emphasises modern art, the politics and philosophies of the 19th and 20th centuries and how they are related to artistic process: drawing, printmaking, painting and photography.