Join Curator Katie Hill for an exhibition tour of WASTELANDS, a group show of contemporary Chinese art at OVADA this summer. Katie will provide background to the project and will introduce work by each of the eight exhibitors, which includes renowned artist, Ai Weiwei. Katie Hill is Director of the Office of Contemporary Chinese Art (OCCA) and course leader of Asian Art and its Markets at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London.

This is a FREE event – just turn up!

Venue: OVADA warehouse – 14A Osney Lane – Oxford – OX1 1NJ

For further information visit: www.ovada.org.uk/wastelands-tour

Mass Circulation: Writing about Art in a Daily Newspaper

With Richard Dorment, art critic, and Dr Alexander Sturgis, Director, Ashmolean Museum

A special Ashmolean evening In Conversation event

Wednesday 18 November
6‒7pm
Lecture Theatre

As The Daily Telegraph’s chief art critic from 1986‒2015, Richard Dorment CBE covered exhibition subjects ranging from the Ice Age to the Turner Prize. He talks to Ashmolean Director, Dr Alexander Sturgis, about art history, art criticism, and the popular press.

Tickets £12/£10 concessions. Booking is essential.
https://www.oxfordplayhouse.com/ticketsoxford/#event=20239

Adobe specialists Richard Curtis and Niels Stevens are coming to Film Oxford for a special presentation on the new features of Creative Cloud for photographers, designers and film makers.

Don’t miss this opportunity to see the latest features in the new release of Adobe Creative Cloud 2015, including Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere, After Effects, Speedgrade and more. Learn about what’s new in this 2015 release that will help you do everything you do more efficiently using the latest innovations and modern standards. Get answers to your questions and get inspired by film makers and photographers who are creating amazing work.

Prof. Daniel Wakelin and Anna Sander in conversation with Oxford MSt students about creating, using and sharing images of medieval manuscripts, during a lunchtime break in a hands-on MS handling and photography workshop day. What can’t digital images tell us? What metadata do we need? What can only be learned from the original manuscript? What information is only available from digital images? Do professional and amateur manuscript images have different uses? What practical considerations govern photography of ancient, irreplaceable books under reading room conditions? Lunchtime discussion is open to all.

Adobe’s Richard Curtis will join us in Oxford to provide a guided tour of Photoshop’s 3d tools. He will demonstrate how to work with virtual models to enhance photos, explain 3d printing functions, look at the character posing for stills and more. This “Deep DIve” session is an opportunity to explore in detail this powerful, under used aspect of this classic software package.

A discussion with photographer Alison Baskerville and curator Brigitte Lardinois that will consider women as photographers and photographic subjects, and the effects of social and technological change on portrait photography over the last 100 years.

Join Photograph Collections curatorial staff for a ‘behind the scenes’ tour of the Pitt Rivers Museum’s dedicated research area. A special opportunity to receive a guided tour of the climate-controlled storerooms and to view collections highlights, including albums by Wilfred Thesiger. An Oxford Open Doors event. Free but booking essential. Two tours: 11.00-12.00 & 14.00-15.00

The Tim Hetherington Society and the Oxford PPE Society present: 7 Days in Syria, an evening with Janine di Giovanni.

Join us for free in the Simpkins Lee Theatre at Lady Margaret Hall for a talk by Janine di Giovanni and a film screening of Robert Rippberger’s feature length documentary ‘7 Days in Syria’. After the screening, there will be a free drinks reception in the adjoining Monson Room.

Please join us at 7pm on Thursday of 7th Week (November 24th) for a presentation by Daniel Castro Garcia and Thomas Saxby on their recent publication ‘Foreigner: Migration into Europe 2015–2016’.

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“The photographs are a protest against those who so
readily attack refugees and migrants entering Europe
without taking into consideration the dangers faced
during the journey.” (Foreigner: Migration into Europe 2015–16 by John Radcliffe Studio www.johnradcliffestudio.com)

For more information please read the press release below:

‘Foreigner: Migration into Europe 2015–2016’, is a photography book that documents the lives of people at various stages of their migration to Europe. The book is divided into three sections, focusing on migration to Italy from North Africa, migration to Greece and through the Balkans from the middle east, and the migrant camp in Calais known as ‘The Jungle’. Alongside the photography, written texts serve both as a context, and a means to share the stories of the people we met during the project.
The book was created in response to the imagery used in
the media to discuss the issue of migration, which we felt was
sensationalist, alarmist and was not giving people the time and
consideration they deserved. We wanted to approach the subject from a calmer perspective, using medium format portrait photography as a means of meeting the people at the centre of the crisis face to face – and of learning something about their lives.

John Radcliffe Studio is the creative partnership of Thomas Saxby and Daniel Castro Garcia. We specialise in photography, film and graphic design and have spent the last year documenting the refugee and migrant crisis in Europe.

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The Moser Theatre is fully accessible, with access to gender netural toilets, and the event will be **FREE** to attend. Oxford for Dunkirk will be collecting donations before and after the event in aid of La Liniere Refugee Camp, Dunkirk, France: please see our page for more details! (www.facebook.com/oxfordfordunkirk)

From Lesotho Rock art to Peruvian orchids, multi-award winning fine art photographer Quintin Lake will share his highlights from visiting over 70 countries.

Quintin will speak on his approach to expedition photography having photographed for expeditions to Greenland, Iran, Peru, Namibia and closer to home on various UK walks. This includes his ongoing project, The Perimeter, to walk the 10,000 km of coast around Britain, through which he has come to understand that exotic locations are not a prerequisite for adventure and discovery.

Professor Clare Harris shares her latest research focussed on the visual anthropology of Tibet, showing stunning images from her recent book.

Photographer Roger Chapman discusses his exhibition and international photography project ‘Camel: A Journey through Fragile Landscapes’, currently being premiered at the Pitt Rivers Museum.

Botanic gardens offer the opportunity to conserve and manage a wide range of plant diversity ex situ, and in situ in the broader landscape. The rationale that botanic gardens have a major role to play in preventing plant species extinctions through integrated plant conservation action is based on the following assumptions: a) There is no technical reason why any plant species should become extinct; given the array of ex situ and in situ conservation techniques employed by the botanic garden community (seed banking, cultivation, tissue culture, assisted migration, species recovery, ecological restoration etc.) we should be able to avoid species extinctions; b) As a professional community, botanic gardens possess a unique set of skills that encompass finding, identifying, collecting, conserving and growing plant diversity across the entire taxonomic spectrum
Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) is a membership organization representing a network of 500 botanic gardens in 100 countries, and around 60,000 scientists, horticulturists and educators – the largest plant conservation network in the world. This network already conserves and manages more than 90% of plant families, 50% of genera and 30% of species in its living collections and seed banks. Following the example of the crop conservation community, BGCI’s botanic garden-centred Global System for the conservation and management of plant diversity aims to collect, characterize and conserve all of the world’s rare and threatened plants as an insurance policy against their extinction in the wild and as a source of plant material for human innovation, adaptation and resilience. Using tree conservation as an example, I will set out the approach, methodologies and milestones being employed by botanic gardens and arboreta to ensure that no rare and threatened species becomes extinct.

Professor Simon Hiscock, Director of the University of Oxford Botanic Garden

Abstract: Cambridge University Botanic Garden has played a significant role in the history of botanical science. Some of the recent research at the Garden has focused on the optical effects of the petal surface. This is a particularly important topic because flowers and the animals that pollinate them interact at the petal surface, so this tissue underpins an interaction that is vital in both crop production and the understanding of patterns of biodiversity. The majority of petal morphologies will act to support certain plant/pollinator interactions but not others, leading to greater reproductive isolation and speciation within the flowering plants. I will present recent work on the nanoscale properties of the petal surface, taking molecular developmental, evolutionary and pollinator behavioural perspectives.

CARU | Arts re Search Annual Conference 2017

“What does it mean to research art / to research through art?”

CARU brings together artists and researchers for yet another day of cross-disciplinary exploration into arts research! The event will consist of an exciting mixture of talks and performances from a variety of creative and academic disciplines, including Fine Art, Live Art, Social Practice, Art History, Anthropology, Education, Science and Technology, to question and debate various areas of arts research, such as themes, material/form, documentation and practice methodology.

Keynote talk: ‘Resonances and Discords’
Speaker: Prof. Kerstin Mey
PVC and Dean, Westminster School of Media, Arts and Design, University of Westminster
“The presentation will explore research in art at the interface to other epistemological systems and approaches. Drawing on case studies, it will explore key strategies and tactical manoeuvres of knowledge making in order to explore the hermeneutics of practice led inquiry in the space of art.”

Presentations include:

“The artist in the boardroom: Action research within decision-making spaces”

“Exploring the Art space as fluid cultural site through the immediacy of the performance and its inherent collaborative ethos”

“Chapter 1 (draft): Using text in performance: a range of strategies”

“Memory and identity within Bosnia’s Mass Graves”

“Fermenting conversations”

“Arcade Interface Art Research”

“Making sounds happen is more important than careful listening (with cups)”

“Shadow:Other:myself / photographic research from 2010”

“Un-knowing unknowing in painting as research”

“Developing an artistic epistemology”

Register at: www.ars2017.eventbrite.co.uk

This fifteen-year project has studied the fates and fortunes of 400 or so of the rarest plants in the county. The rate of loss of species has risen sharply from about one per decade to over ten per decade in the 1970s to 90s. Some of the loss has been due to habitats becoming unsuitable – as arable fields are now too clean for wild-flowers. Too much nutrient enrichment also makes habitats unsuitable, particularly water courses. Management is often important – small acid-loving plants have been shaded out on the Chiltern Commons when grazing has ceased. Active measures may be stemming the tide, and species are even returning – last year the Loddon pondweed returned to the Thames, and dioecious sedge was refound at the Lye Valley in Oxford.

As a graphic designer, publisher and wildlife expert, Peter Creed brings a keen eye for detail and a passion for wildlife into all of his design projects. He provides a wealth of experience of printed and online wildlife media to NatureBureau and hosts an image library of thousands of flora and fauna. He is also much in demand for leading wildlife walks and giving lectures.

Dr Lambrick studied botany at Cambridge and in New Guinea before she came to Oxford in 1978. Here she worked briefly for BBOWT as an orchid warden, and was involved in starting the Oxford Conservation Volunteers. In 1993 she set up ANHSO’s Rare Plants Group, now the Oxfordshire Flora Group, which works in partnerships with many bodies to carry out monitoring, experiments and introductions to protect endangered plants in the county. From 2000-07 she was employed to carry out biological surveys on the Local Wildlife Sites by the Thames Valley Environmental Records Centre.

Old Images of Abingdon – various images and what they show.

Speakers AAAHS members: Anne Smithson, Judy White, Jackie Smith, Jessica Brod, Manfred Brod and John Foreman.

The meeting will consist of a number of shorter presentations about different paintings, pictures or photographs that are of interest to the speakers based around an image of Abingdon or images that has local connections.

For more information please visit www.aaahs.org.uk
Visitors are very welcome to attend meetings at a cost of £3.
If you want to join the Abingdon Area Archaeological & Historical Society, there’s a membership form on this website, or you can contact any of the committee members.

In celebration of the Oxford Festival of Nature, Blackwell’s Broad Street will be hosting a day of free Nature talks and activities.

At 1pm we will be joined by Jeremy Mynott who will be discussing his book ‘Birds in the Ancient World’. Then at 3pm Leif Bersweden will be exploring his search for 52 species of Orchid in ‘The Orchid Hunter’.

In the Children’s Department there will be nature themed storytime and craft activities.

Jeremy Mynott – ‘Birds in the Ancient World’

‘Birds in the Ancient World’ offers a fresh account of Ancient Greek and Roman civilisation illustrated through the relationship between humankind and birds.
It explores the numerous and varied roles birds played in daily life: as portents of weather, markers of time, their use in medicine, hunting, and farming, and also as messengers of the gods.

We learn how birds were perceived – through quotations from well over a hundred classical Greek and Roman authors, all of them translated freshly into English, through nearly 100 illustrations from ancient wall-paintings, pottery and mosaics, and through selections from early scientific writings, and many anecdotes and descriptions from works of history, geography and travel.

Jeremy will be discussing this rich and fascinating material, using birds as a prism through which to explore both the similarities and the often surprising differences between ancient conceptions of the natural world and our own. His book is an original contribution to the flourishing interest in the cultural history of birds and to our understanding of the ancient cultures in which birds played such a prominent part.

Jeremy Mynott is the author of ‘Birdscapes: Birds in Our Imagination and Experience’ (2009), a book exploring the variety of human responses to birds, described by reviewers as ‘the finest book ever written about why we watch birds’ (Guardian) and ‘a wonderful rumination on birds and birders through space and time for anyone interested in our relationship with nature’ (THES). He has also published an edition and translation of Thucydides in the series, ‘Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought’ and, more recently, ‘Knowing your Place’, an account of the wildlife in a tiny Suffolk hamlet. He has broadcast on radio and television, is a regular reviewer for the TLS and wildlife magazines, a founder member of ‘New Networks for Nature’, and is the former Chief Executive of Cambridge University Press and an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge.

This talk is free to attend, please register your interest in advance. For all enquiries please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk or call 01865 333623.

In celebration of the Oxford Festival of Nature, Blackwell’s Broad Street will be hosting a day of free Nature talks and activities.

At 1pm we will be joined by Jeremy Mynott who will be discussing his book ‘Birds in the Ancient World’. Then at 3pm Leif Bersweden will be exploring his search for 52 species of Orchid in ‘The Orchid Hunter’.

In the Children’s Department there will be nature themed storytime and craft activities.

Leif Bersweden – ‘The Orchid Hunter’

In the summer after leaving school, a young botanist sets out to fulfil a childhood dream –­ to find every species of orchid native to the British Isles.

Battling the vagaries of the British climate in his clapped-out car, Leif Bersweden had just a few months to do what no one has ever done before: to complete this quest within one growing season.

‘The Orchid Hunter’ is a study of the 52 native species, it is a fantastic gateway into the compendious world of orchids, and one that will open your eyes to the rare hidden delights to be found on the doorstep. Join as as Leif discusses his fascinating journey.

Leif Bersweden graduated with a degree in Biology from Oxford and is currently a PhD student at Kew Gardens. He has loved orchids longer than he can remember. He is also the author of Winter Trees: A Photographic Guide to Common Trees and Shrubs, published by the Field Studies Council in 2013.

This talk is free to attend, please register your interest in attending. For all enquiries please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk or call 01865 333623.

During the peak of the periods of Victorian post-Darwin enlightenment, ingenuity and discovery, Clarence Bicknell (1842-1918) started life as a curate in a London slum before moving to the Italian Riviera and the Maritime Alps where he wrote and illustrated highly-respected botanical books. Then his exploration uncovered in the high mountains some of the most important archaeological finds of the 19th century, the rock engravings of the Mont Bégo area. He captured the ideals of an early Europe – even including the development of Esperanto as a language – and he is remembered today at Bordighera’s Museo Bicknell and the Musée des Merveilles in Tende, France.

Marcus Bicknell (great-great-nephew of Clarence Bicknell, and chairman of the Clarence Bicknell Association) will introduce the documentary film ‘The Marvels of Clarence Bicknell’ of which he was the producer.

Graham Avery (St. Antony’s College, Oxford) will speak on Clarence Bicknell’s work as a botanist, his exchange of herbarium specimens (some of which are in the Oxford Herbaria), and his role in a European network of like-minded botanists.

A presentation on natural history covering kingfishers, butterflies, insects, and many mammals.

The Preeces have been photographing wildlife for about 18 years after taking early retirement and have had their work published in many magazines.

Sunday, 25th November 2018
11am – 6.15pm (Registration starts at 10.30am)
Chakrabarti Lecture Theatre & JHB207,
John Henry Brookes Building, Headington Campus, Oxford Brookes University, Headington Road, Oxford OX3 0BP

“What does it mean to research through creative practice?”

Keynote Speaker: Dr Geof Hill (Birmingham City University)
www.bcu.ac.uk/research/-centres-of-excellence/centre-for-research-in-education/people/geof-hill

To have a look at the schedule and book your ticket, please visit: ars2018.eventbrite.co.uk

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Delegate/Attendance fee: £30 / Early Bird Tickets (£20) are available until 18th November – includes lunch & refreshments

We’ll be posting speaker information leading up to the event so keep an eye out for our Facebook event page: www.facebook.com/events/455606768180452

This event is supported by the School of Arts at Oxford Brookes University and the Oxford City Council.

For a digital copy of the event booklet and more information please contact: info@ca-ru.org

We look forward to seeing you there!

CARU Conference Team
Follow us on social media: @CARUpage

For 30 years, Professor John Runions has used microscopes to explore myriad miniature realms. His research into how cells function reveals the hidden beauty of the natural world in striking detail.

Now we are faced with the problem of feeding an ever-growing world population. John’s research is shedding light on how plants perceive pathogen threats so that we are better able to ensure a food supply for future generations.

John is Professor in the Department of Biological and Medical Sciences at Oxford Brookes University.

This is a joint event with the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food

Dr Mike Hamm will explore the opportunity for regional food systems in-and-around cities for mutual benefit. He will approach a number of issues – including vertical farming, bio-geochemical cycles, water use, new entry farmers, and healthy food provisioning – embedded in the notion of city region food systems with reference to supply/demand dynamics.

This talk will be followed by a drinks reception, all welcome

For this event, 12 artists from all over the country will be presenting work that they have been making as part of the Sound Diaries open call.

The presenting artists are:

Richard Bentley, Hannah Dargavel-Leafe, Aisling Davis, Atilio Doreste, Marlo De Lara, Beth Shearsby, Kathryn Tovey, Jacek Smolicki, James Green, Lucia Hinojosa, Sena Karahan, Fi.Ona

Sound Diaries expands awareness of the roles of sound and listening in daily life. The project explores the cultural and communal significance of sounds and forms a research base for projects executed both locally and Internationally, in Beijing, Brussels, Tallinn, Cumbria and rural Oxfordshire.

What happens when you excavate the image archives of the Institute of Archaeology and other departments of the University of Oxford? The answer: you find amazing pictures that tell unexpected stories. Most of the pictures are black and white and 70 or more years old. Discover Oxford through a new lens with Janice Kinory to explore the Historic Environment Image Resource Project digital image archive where the images are stored and how you can access them.

Plants and photosynthetic microbes have the extraordinary ability to convert light energy to chemical energy and as a consequence, they are the foundation of virtually all ecosystems and all agricultural systems on the planet.

The characteristics that make plants successful in natural ecosystems are often antithetical to agriculture and over 1000s of years we have domesticated plants to make better crops. The molecular genetics revolution of the 20th century has simultaneously provided a means to understand the relationship between plant genes and plant characteristics, and the ability to target and/or select specific genetic changes in plant genomes.

This combination of knowledge and technology opens the possibility for designer crops, and raises interesting questions about the governance of our food system.

Please register via the link provided. Followed by a drinks reception, all welcome.

Talk, followed by walking tour of the park. Jane Kilsby, local historian shares her
recent research into this well-loved 19th century public park. Maximum 20