Lecture Programme: 2021-22 season
Unless otherwise stated, all lectures start at 6pm (Spanish time) and are ...
• in the Cultural Centre, calle Granada, Nerja and also
• available on the internet using Zoom.
‡ Nerja Museum, 12noon (no Zoom)
⊕ Cultural Centre only (no Zoom)
◉ YouTube only
Flamenco is song, Flamenco is music, Flamenco is dance, Flamenco is passion and poetry, Flamenco is a way of dressing, Flamenco is a way of life. Flamenco is a memory of a long ago past and the soul of the people of Andalucía. And it is listed as World Heritage.
We would like to share our passion for flamenco with you and show you Flamenco is not just a show you can go to as evening entertainment, it is the heartbeat of the people of the South and part of everyday life.
We will look at the history of Flamenco and the origin of its name.
We will focus on the three essences of Flamenco: Song, Music and Dance while demonstrating examples of the rhythms. There are 50 different song groups and we will demonstrate 7 of them.
Our Flamenco artists are local artists, they have performed abroad, far and near, and their very souls are flamenco.
Song: Rosa Linero
Music (guitar): Ruben Portillo
Dancers: Antonio Guerra and Elsa Guerra
The artists perform and demonstrate and the narrator, Helen Sijsling, explains what they are doing.
This a professionally-recorded video and those at home will be able to stream it from our YouTube channel in full-HD. It is narrated in English by Helen Sijsling and the lyrics are shown in subtitles in both Spanish and English.
To whet your appetite, click here for a few excerpts.
More Spanish than the Alhambra, more passionate than Flamenco, more sunny than a holiday in Marbella, he captured in his paintings all the exuberance of his native country.
So why don’t we know more about him?
This talk will explore the so-called Spanish ‘Master of Light’; from his paintings of sunlit beaches and gardens to scenes of fishermen and rural life, as well as portraits of the love of his life, his wife Clotilde.
This lecture will be delivered by Zoom from the UK and will be available at home and in the Cultural Centre.
About Stella Lyons
Stella Grace Lyons is a freelance Art History lecturer, speaker and writer accredited with The Arts Society. She has lectured across the UK, Ireland, Spain, Norway, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Malaysia and will soon embark on a lecturing tour in Australasia.
Stella gained her BA in the History of Art with a 1st class in her dissertation from the University of Bristol (2007-2011), and her MA in History of Art from the University of Warwick. She spent a year studying Renaissance art in Italy at the British Institute of Florence, and three months studying Venetian art in Venice. In addition, she attended drawing classes at the prestigious Charles H. Cecil studios in Florence, a private atelier that follows a curriculum based on the leading ateliers of nineteenth century Paris.
Stella runs her own Art History lectures both in person and online. She is a regular lecturer in the UK and Europe for The Arts Society, Tour companies, and the National Trust, amongst others. Stella is also a part-time lecturer for the University of South Wales.
She has written about art for several publications and her article on Norwegian art was recently featured on the front cover of The Arts Society magazine.
In addition to her lecturing work, Stella works as an artist’s model for the internationally renowned figurative artist, Harry Holland.
The effervescent, fashionable character of modern Barcelona has its origins in the period around 1900, when music, architecture, painting, sculpture, and literature flourished as never before. Between 1880 and 1910 the city underwent an impressive transformation, with the Eixample, the revolutionary city development expansion by Ildefons Cerda, highly imaginative urban architecture by Antoni Gaudi, Lluis Domenech I Montaner and Josep Puig I Cadafalch, and elegant interiors in the modernista style, Barcelona’s version of Art Nouveau. Its lively artistic climate was concentrated on the Sala Pares, where avant garde artitsts who had been inspired in Paris exhibited in the artists’ refuge in Sitges and in the Els Quatre Gats café, where Picasso, Rusinol and their bohemian friends met. But this blossoming of art and culture went hand in hand with far-reaching industrialization and serious social and political tensions that culminated on 1909’s Tragic Week.
We will be looking into the families who commissioned the daring new architecture as well as the innovative and creative artists of the time.
About Helen Sijsling
Drs Helen Sijsling MA (born in Australia, lived in the Netherlands, lives in Spain), MA History of Art (University of Leyden), MA English Literature (Universities of Leyden and Oxford) and MA Educational Management (University of Amsterdam). Helen taught English for the first part of her career to later become management consultant on education, advising secondary schools on educational improvement and training teachers and managers in The Netherlands and the Antilles. Helen is presently Chairman of The Arts Society in Nerja and has lectured to The Arts Societies in Spain and other societies including the Nerja History Group, Probus and Capistrano on many different subjects.
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Charles Dickens has often been proclaimed as “The Man Who Invented Christmas” and indeed on hearing that Dickens had died, a cockney barrow-girl said: “Dickens dead? Then will Father Christmas die too?” Dickens revived the Christmas traditions with his warm portrayal of Christmas in the domestic setting; with plum pudding, piping hot turkey, games, dancing and family cheer by the hearth. Although he celebrated Christmas in numerous works it is his enduring master piece, ‘A Christmas Carol’ published on 19th December 1843 which immortalises the spirit of Christmas Cheer. Dickens was a man of extraordinary energy and talent: literary genius, reformer, public speaker, actor and amateur magician.
In his lecture Bertie Pearce reveals a Dickensian Christmas with readings, biographical details and conjuring tricks.
This lecture will be delivered by Zoom from the UK and will be available at home and in the Cultural Centre.
About Bertie Pearce
Bertie Pearce has a BA (Hons) in Drama from Manchester University, and a Diploma Internationale from the École Internationale du Théatre, Jacques Lecoq. A member of the Inner Magic Circle, with Gold Star. Past experience includes lecturing and performing on cruise ships, and to U3A, historical societies, festivals, schools and colleges. In addition, has toured the world with a magic cabaret show and a one man show entitled All Aboard. Has written articles for newspapers and magazines on entertainment and theatre.
Bertie is no stranger to Nerja, entertaining us in 2010, 2013, 2018; at a lunch in November 2015 he entranced us with his magic.
Member's Talk
venue: at 12:00Heart of Neolithic Orkney
These prehistoric monuments form one of Western Europe’s richest surviving Neolithic landscapes. They have been given World Heritage Site status.
Some 5,000 years ago, the prehistoric people of the Orkney Islands began building extraordinary monuments out of stone. Each of the four Heart of Neolithic Orkney sites is a masterpiece of Neolithic design and construction in itself. But together they represent one of the richest surviving Neolithic landscapes in Western Europe.
The series of important domestic and ritual monuments gives us incredible insights into the society, skills and spiritual beliefs of the people who built the monuments.
Skara Brae is a domestic settlement whose stone walls, passageways and stone furnishings – including beds and ‘dressers’ – survive to the present day.
Maeshowe, a chambered tomb, is an extraordinary example of Neolithic architectural genius. It was designed so that the light of the setting sun at the winter solstice focuses on the narrow passageway, illuminating the chamber inside.
The Stones of Stenness circle and henge is a very early example of this type of monument. The surviving stones are enormous, standing up to 6m tall.
The Ring of Brodgar is a great stone circle 130m across. Surrounded by a rock cut ditch, it is set in a spectacular natural amphitheatre of lochs and hills.
The Heart of Neolithic Orkney lies in a wider archaeological landscape rich with remains from Neolithic times and many later periods of Orcadian history.
(The links are to the Historic Environment Scotland website.)
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Rembrandt is considered by many to be Holland’s greatest artist and the equal of Mozart, Shakespeare and Michelangelo. Unlike van Gogh, the other great Dutch artist, Rembrandt has not left much written material explaining his views on art, but what he has left is a unique visual autobiography in his self-portraits which he did from the age of 20 to 63, the year of his death. This lecture will use the self-portraits as a thread through his life and with his other masterpieces explore the man and what, why, and how he painted. Was he indeed a businessman or bohemian, rebel or romantic?
About Jane Choy-Thurlow
Jane E. Choy-Thurlow is a docent and enjoys giving lectures and tours at the Mauritshuis, Prince William V gallery and Huygens Museum Hofwijck in The Hague, The Netherlands. A few of the many exhibits in the Mauritshuis she has been part of are: the legendary Johannes Vermeer exhibit, Rembrandt by Himself and Holbein, Portraitist of the Renaissance.
An active member of The Arts Society, she is a founding member of DFAS of The Hague and has fulfilled committee positions including chairman and Mainland Europe Area Chairman and presently is Area Trainer and a New Societies committee member. She received her BSc from Salem State University, USA, her Med from Trinity College Dublin and continued art history studies at Leiden University.
In 2018 she was given the honor of Knight in the Order of Oranje Nassau by the Dutch King Willem Alexander of Orange for her knowledge and work in the field of the Arts esp. 15th to 17th century Dutch and Flemish art.
Cleopatra, the woman for whose love’s sake Antony is imagined to have given up the chance to rule the Roman world, has been inspiring painters, poets and (more recently) film-makers for over two millennia. Their gorgeously voluptuous depictions of her offer insights into changing concepts of beauty, and into the racial and sexual assumptions underlying them. Showing images ranging from Roman portrait busts, through medieval illuminations, the glorious works of Renaissance masters like Michelangelo, the splendour of Tiepolo and the exoticism of Gustave Moreau to 20th century film stars (Theda Bara, Claudette Colbert, Vivien Leigh, Elizabeth Taylor and the Carry On team’s Amanda Barry), I will show how Cleopatra became a screen onto which artists have projected their wildly differing fantasies about exotic danger and erotic bliss.
About Lucy Hughes-Hallet
Lucy Hughes-Hallett is a cultural historian and biographer. Her book on Gabriele d’Annunzio, The Pike, was described in The Sunday Times as ‘the biography of the decade’. It won all three of the UK’s most prestigious prizes for non-fiction - the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize and the Costa Biography Award. Her other non-fiction books include Cleopatra and Heroes.
She also writes fiction. Her novel, Peculiar Ground, is largely set in the 17th century, and narrated by a landscape designer loosely based on the great diarist John Evelyn. It was described as 'almost Tolstoyan in its sly wit and descriptive brilliance' (The Guardian) and 'full of drama, vivid characters, wit, gorgeous writing and fascinating detail’. (New York Times). In her short story collection, Fabulous, she retells fables from classical mythology, relocating them to modern Britain.
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Historical Association, she has written on books, theatre and the visual arts for a number of publications, including The Sunday Times, The Observer, The New Statesman and the TLS, and for Radio 3’s Night Waves. She is Chair of the Judges for the 2021 International Booker Prize.
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There have been pictorial representations of The Magi from as early as at least the 6th century, such as depictions in Byzantine ivories with origins in places such as Constantinople. Indeed, a vast array of artists, such as Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450-1516), Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), Pieter Bruegel the Elder (active 1550/1; died 1569), Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Masaccio (1401-1428/9?), and Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) to name but a few, have been clearly fascinated by the story and its possibilities when it comes to visual depictions. However, these depictions over this vast period of time have been anything but consistent. All the aforementioned artists will be mentioned in this lecture, as I seek to will unravel the myth and the iconography behind the proliferation of the story of the adoration of the magi from its Eastern and pagan roots to its current Christian interpretation. To aid my examination of this story, and to trace the changes in iconography and depictions of the kings themselves, I will be illustrating it with a variety of beautiful works of art, images made across many centuries that will illuminate this fascination as never before. The lecture will begin by looking at the etymology behind the term ‘magi’ and how it has come down to us and what it now means in contemporary society.
This lecture will then look at the changing iconography behind the depictions of the story and the various meanings behind these changes in its iconography, not to mention the changes in the story of the adoration of the magi itself. Moving on the lecture will then look at the origin of the names of the magi and the significance of their gifts to the Christ Child. Following this exploration of the fundamental roots of the story I will then come to the issue of the inclusion of the black king, where he came from, why he would be included, how significant was he and how European artists tackled the problem of depicting this magus when they themselves had little or no knowledge of such people of colour.
Finally, I will examining the actual origins of the story and how much of a bearing does that story, as we understand it, have on the actual story written in the Bible. To examine this final question, I will contrast the relevant passages the biblical with images from many sources to help clarify the difference between those and the example images. This final part of my lecture will set out to ask what it is we want this story to mean and why do we hold on to the legendary story rather than biblical tale in our mostly Western secular society.
Ainsworth, Maryan, W. Ed, Man, Myth and Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart’s Renaissance, (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010)
Campbell, Lorne, The Sixteenth Century Netherlandish Paintings with French Paintings Before 1600, (National Gallery Company Limited, 2014)
Devisse, Jean, The Image of the Black in Western Art – Vol.2 (William Morrow and Company, 1979)
Kaplan, Paul, H. D., The Rise of the Black Magus in Western Art, (Bowker Publishing Co, 1983, 1985)
Schiller, Gertrud – translated by Janet Seligman, Iconography of Christian Art, Vol.1 (Lund Humphries, 1971)
Seznec, Jean, The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art, (Princeton University Press, Mythos series, New Jersey, 1995)
About Leslie Primo
Leslie Primo holds a BA in Art History and an MA in Renaissance Studies from Birkbeck College, University of London. Was Visiting Lecturer in Art History at the University of Reading in 2005 and 2007, and gives lectures and guided tours, plus special talks, at both the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. Also lectures at the City Literary Institute, and has presented a series of talks at the National Maritime Museum and the Courtauld Institute.
Leslie entertained us with The Cult of the South Pacific: from Cook to Gauguin in 2011, The Divine Michelangelo in 2014 and Foreigners in London 1520-1677: the artists that changed the course of British art in 2019.
Flamenco was born in Cádiz, however Málaga and its surrounding villages on the coast and in the mountains were a hotspot of Flamenco. Here unique Flamenco music developed, like the Malagueña, the Abandolao, influenced by the bandeloros, the smugglers, or the Verdiales that only exist in the mountains of Málaga. Famous singers emerged from Vélez Málaga, like Juan Breva.
The echoes of the past will fill the air, Arabs, gypsies, smugglers. We will hear instruments unique for Málaga like the lute or the banderillo or castanets. Come and join us for a wonderful evening of authentic local Flamenco! Sung, danced and played by the wonderful Dance company of Antonio Guerra who treated us to a stunning performance last season.
About Antonio Guerra
Antonio Guerra has had a Flamenco dancing Academy in Vélez Málaga for more than 30 years. He has performed internationally and nationally on many stages. Last year he participated in our lecture The Heartbeat of the South, the history of Flamenco.
Ruben Portillo is a great guitar player from Vélez Málaga, performing abroad as well as locally. he loves looking for contacts with all kinds of musicians. He had concerts with Indian musicians which they called Bombay. He also organizes Flamenco performances in Velez Málaga and Torre del Mar under the name of Flamenco Abierto, mostly in the Peña Niño de Vélez. He performs nearly every Friday evening in the Peña in Vélez. He too participated in the lecture last year: The Heartbeat of the South.
Mamen Ruiz is also a local singer, a teacher of art as well, she has a lovely elegant voice, easy to understand. Together with Ruben she forms the group SAMARUCO.
About Helen Sijsling
Helen Sijsling is a great lover of Flamenco and has been a student of Antonio Guerra for more than 15 years. As they do not speak English she loves to help them to get their love for flamenco across and to explain in English what the music and dance is about.
Together they would love to share their love for the flamenco that came into existence in Vélez and in Málaga with you.
Ernst Barlach is one of the most important German artists of the 20th c. Bertolt Brecht said he was one of the greatest sculptors Germany had ever had.
Barlach is a very poetic sculptor. His sculptures are Timeless and transcend the harsh reality of everyday life. They are monumental, beautiful, and touching.
A part of his oeuvre is dedicated to Remembering WW1 and reflecting on the war, not glorifying war and soldiers. He made memorials for Sorrow. Barlach is the Siegfried Sassoon or Wilfred Owen of Germany. They were called, together with 7 other young poets, The War Poets of England, young men, who fought in WWI and wrote the most impressive and haunting poetry about the war. We will have a look at 3 famous poems by the War Poets and the War Memorials of Barlach plus other of his poetic masterpieces.
While Sassoon and the others became famous after the war as the War Poets in the UK, Barlach and his fellow artists, all pacifists, entered the Nazi era in Germany, and Barlach´s work was considered Degenerate and more than 400 of his works were confiscated and many were destroyed, ironically, melted down for ammunition.
How lucky are we today, nothing less than a miracle, to see those works which have been saved from oblivion. Each has its story, its story of what the sculpture is about, the significance of what it has to say, plus its fascinating life history, what happened to it after 1937. These life stories are like detective stories and I will tell some of them, like the one of the Angel. And the amazing story of those very unlikely 'angels' who saved his work.
About Helen Sijsling
Drs Helen Sijsling MA (born in Australia, lived in the Netherlands, lives in Spain), MA History of Art (University of Leyden), MA English Literature (Universities of Leyden and Oxford) and MA Educational Management (University of Amsterdam). Helen taught English for the first part of her career to later become management consultant on education, advising secondary schools on educational improvement and training teachers and managers in The Netherlands and the Antilles. Helen is presently Chairman of The Arts Society in Nerja and has lectured to The Arts Societies in Spain and other societies including the Nerja History Group, Probus and Capistrano on many different subjects.
On 25 January we recorded the LIVE performance of the lecture: From Folklore to Flamenco in the Centro Cultural.
We are very happy with the result, the close ups are wonderful and make the whole experience very intimate.
We think it will be a feast for those who were not there but also for those who have already seen it.
The video will be available for streaming from our YouTube channel on Thursday 17 February at 18.00 and will be available for 24 hours.
As usual, we will send the link to those people on the mailing list. If you're not on the mailing list you can still book a ticket by using the link on the HOME page.
Enjoy!
Doctor Zhivago is a 1965 epic historical and romantic drama film directed by David Lean with a screenplay by Robert Bolt, set in Russia during World War I and the Russian Civil War. It stars Omar Sharif in the title role as Yuri Zhivago, a married physician and poet whose life is altered by the Russian Revolution and subsequent civil War, and Julie Christie as his love interest Lara Antipova. Geraldine Chaplin, Tom Courtenay, Rod Steiger, Alec Guinness, Ralph Richardson, Siobhán McKenna, and Rita Tushingham play supporting roles.
The film is based on Boris Pasternak's 1957 novel of the same name. While immensely popular in the West, the book was banned in the Soviet Union for decades. For this reason, the film could not be made in the Soviet Union and was instead filmed mostly in Spain. It was an international co-production between Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Italian producer Carlo Ponti.
It won five Oscars and was nominated for five others.
We cannot show this film over the internet. It will be available only in the Cultural Centre.
Please note. The film starts at 17:00.
In the 10th Century A.D. the Normans, the men of the North, reached the coasts of Spain, by then called Al Andalus by the muslims.
By the middle of the 10th century they sacked several coastal cities in the Iberian Peninsula, ruled in those days by the Umayyad emirate of Córdoba.
Those minor attacks, those first looting expeditions, were followed by two major attempts to conquer the lands South of the Guadalquivir River.
The first attempt took place in 844 A.D. The second attempt occurred in 859 A.D. Both by the Guadalquivir river. Both failed. The Umayyad emirs of Córdoba rejected the attacks of the Vikings and fortified the coasts of Al Andalus with "ribats", castles and towers.
But the Viking failures in Al Andalus would have an unexpected consequence: the Norman conquest of the island of Sicily. The Normans continued trying to establish themselves in the South and after their failure in Andalusia they focused their interest on Italy, finally conquering the island of Sicily and part of Southern Italy during the Xth Century A.D.
We shall try to get closer to this little known History of the Normans in their search for the South more than one thousand years ago.
About Manuel Parodi
Manuel Parodi, historian and archaeologist, has been working on the History of Archaeology in Northern Morocco and Southern Spain since 2005, and has published several books and articles regarding this particular matter. He has also been working in several Archaeological and Historical Research Projects in Morocco since 2005, including the Archaeological Museum of Tetouan, its Archives and historical documents and records.
Manuel has talked to us several times: in November 2016 about The Spanish Indiana Jones in North Africa 1900-1948, in October 2019 about Gadir/Cádiz and in November 2020 about the Magellan-Elcano circumnavigation of the world.
Barbara Krulik will talk about how she became involved in Latin American Art. It will be an autobiographic journey, and will include her meetings with many fascinating people of the art world and other incredible characters.
Barbara will also speak about her about her latest exhibition ARTifacts to give an insight into the inspiration, conception and organisation of an exhibition. The exhibition was in September and October 2021 at Casa Hoffmann in Bogota, Columbia. (https://casa-hoffmann.com).
About Barbara Krulik
Independent curator, cultural manager, writer and editor. Barbara Krulik is an art historian and holds a master‘s in museology. Her recent focus is in social practice and site-specific and performance in the fine arts. She is a producer of exhibitions, performance and manager for experimental dance and theatre companies. She was associate curator and curator of performance for the #1: Biennial of Contemporary Art Of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia; co-curator of Lorraine O'Grady: Initial Recognition at the CAAC, Seville, Spain and is curator of Artifacts. In the last four decades, she has curated and managed hundreds of exhibition projects in various institutions in New York and since living in the Netherlands she has added production of performance to her expertise. Additionally, she is an occasional lecturer, writer and editor of art exhibition catalogues and essays. Her most recent publication is in the Joumal for Theater and Performance Design. She lives and works in Amsterdam. She holds professional memberships in the American Association of Museums, Intemational Biennial Association and is on the Editorial Advisory Board for the ASAP Joumal (The Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present).
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This talk follows the AGM.
Occupying a pair of early Georgian townhouses nestled in historic Greenwich, London, the story of how The Fan Museum came to fruition dovetails into the multifaceted history and culture of the handheld fan. From rare Elizabethan-period folding fans to others decorated by street artists, discover some of the key objects within the Museum’s extraordinary collections which encompass more than 5,000 fans dating from the eleventh century to the present day and gathered from most parts of the world.
Jacob will imbue his presentation with a ‘Spanish flavour’, highlighting 18/19th century fans made in England for the Spanish market, others decorated with views of Cádiz and Valencia and a treasured fan decorated by Spanish-born surrealist, Salvador Dalí.
The museum's website.
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Photos courtesy of The Fan Museum, London
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About Jacob Moss
Having successfully completed a BA (hons) in Fashion at Reading School of Art, Jacob took up a position as an assistant for womenswear designer Donald Campbell. In 2010 he returned to education and obtained a postgraduate degree (Distinction) in Fashion Curation from London College of Fashion. Shortly thereafter Jacob joined The Fan Museum, the UK’s only museum dedicated to the history of fans and craft of fan making.
As the museum’s curator, he is responsible for co-organising its temporary exhibition programme and overseeing loans from the museum’s extraordinary collections to organisations such as the Palace of Versailles and Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2017 he curated ‘Street Fans’, a pioneering project linking street art and fan making which drew record audiences to The Fan Museum.
Looking forward to 2021, the year in which The Fan Museum celebrates its thirtieth anniversary, Jacob will curate a special exhibition of fans at SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion and Film, Atlanta, Georgia.
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Following in the footsteps of the world’s most famous dreamer and knight-errant, this lecture traces his parallel life in the visual arts, where he was variously ridiculed, pitied and revered.
The journey will take in the sumptuous tapestry designs of French Academy director Charles Coypel, and their parodies of classical masterpieces. It will examine how Don Quixote helped to fuel a new school of English painting in the work of Hogarth and his circle; and how he became a hero to Daumier and Doré in the Romantic era.
The final episode will show Cervantes’ fantasist hero inspiring the imagery of Picasso‘s Guernica – and shaping the “Quixotic” character of the archetypal modern artist.
About Richard Whincop
Richard is a professional artist who graduated in English and Art History from York University in 1986. From 1988-1994 he lectured at the adult education departments of Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities, and then went on to become a full-time figurative artist, executing large-scale public commissions, and exhibiting widely throughout the UK. He now lives and works in Chichester, West Sussex.
An event celebrating Ukrainian culture. The film ”Ukrainian Rhapsody” will be shown, presenting classical Ukrainian composers interwoven with clips on Russian oppression.
After the film, our member Andreas Ekman will speak about Ukrainian history, the society and the culture.
Free for members and guests.
Please note we will be starting at 5pm
Widely known for his outlandish appearances dressed as his feminine alter ego, Claire, Grayson Perry is now a core part of the art establishment. A Turner Prize winner, Royal Academician, popular broadcaster and colourful character. He’s possibly one of the world’s best known contemporary artists. His works of ceramics, textiles, tapestries and prints are highly sought after. Often controversial, he tackles difficult subjects in a poignant yet witty way and holds a mirror up to society. This talk will examine Grayson Perry’s work, his exciting and thought-provoking exhibitions, and the unique character inside the flamboyant frocks.
About Ian Swankie
Ian Swankie is a Londoner with a passion for art and architecture. He is an official guide at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Guildhall Art Gallery and St Paul’s Cathedral, and gives tours at each venue. He is also a qualified and active freelance London guide and leads regular tours for various corporations and organisations. Six years ago, he established a weekly independent art lecture group in his home town of Richmond in West London, and he gives talks on a variety of subjects. He is an accredited lecturer for The Arts Society, and a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars.
