At 78 years of age, Abramović can truly be seen as the grandmother of Performance Art. The most prominent figure in performance and body art since the 1970s, she never gave up her quest to confront fear and vulnerability in the pursuit of artistic expression.

Best known for her work where she tested the limits of her own physical and mental endurance, she manages to transform her audiences who feel they become part of the art itself.

The first female artist ever to exhibit solo in the imposing Main Galleries of the Royal Academy in London, she has been honoured in a now career changing show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York: the Artist is Present, and returned to show at the city where some of her most iconic works started: Amsterdam.

Time to dive into the who and more importantly: why?!

Mariska Beekenkamp-Wladimiroff

Mariska read Social Psychology at the University of Amsterdam and was tempted to do a PhD in Decision Making Behaviour. In the end she turned to her true love - the Arts.

​Whilst having her three children, she completed her BA and MA in Art History, majoring in The Dutch Baroque Arts from the 17th century at the Courtauld Institute of Arts. She started as a College Lecturer, but soon after started her own company - Art Historical London offering art historical lectures, museum visits, courses, tours, travel and events from Amsterdam, London and New York, and since 2020 online. 

A fully accredited PTLLS lecturer, she also teaches on the public program of the Dulwich Picture Gallery, for Roundtable, the Timken Museum and the New York Adventure Club in the States, for Academy Travel and the Art Academy in Sydney, and for a number of institutions in the Netherlands. Mariska can provide live, online and recorded lectures for groups or individuals.

This lecture compares and contrasts the lives and work of two great artists, Hokusai and Turner. They were contemporaries and there are many parallels to be drawn between their respective lives. Both shared humble beginnings and both displayed great confidence in their maverick talents. Yet while Turner was eventually welcomed by the art establishment of his day, Hokusai was never accepted by his peers. In this lecture, through comparing the two artists, a greater understanding can be gained of the differing roles art played in the societies where they emerged. The lecture will investigate the artists' world of Edo and London, examining their prodigious artistic output and reassessing their importance to the art of today.

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.

William Moorcroft 1872 – 1945 was brought up in the back streets of Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. He knew tragedy from an early age losing his sister when he was 8, his mother a year later and his father when he was just 12. Perhaps it was this tragic upbringing that helped develop his strength of character and resilience that saw him establish himself as the most accomplished studio potter of recent times. 

William trained at what was to become the Royal College of Art and could have pursued a career as an art teacher but instead chose to employ his artistic talents in the medium of pottery. He stuck faithfully to the principles of the great William Morris who stated that “nothing was worth producing if it hadn’t come from the artist’s own hands”. Whilst not unique, his skill in producing tube lined pieces with designs inspired by nature are at the very pinnacle of the potter’s art. International gold medal awards, a supplier to renowned retailers Liberty and Tiffany, a successful global export business and a Royal Appointment to Her Majesty Queen Mary in 1928 are just some of his many achievements. 

James Smallwood:  James has an established and successful lecturing career speaking to gardening and horticultural groups and at Royal Horticultural Society shows and events on a number of gardening topics. He has been a keen collector of Moorcroft pottery for over 30 years and has an extensive collection. These are primarily examples of William Moorcroft’s early work dating back to 1897 and he takes some of these pieces with him to illustrate his talks. He has been a member of the Moorcroft Collectors’ Club for a number of years and is fortunate to have two former employees of the pottery amongst his friends. He has visited the pottery on a number of occasions and has an in depth knowledge of past and present processes of manufacture. He is in regular contact with Moorcroft and has generously been given access to their archive material. Wherever possible he takes a selection of Moorcroft pieces to display. A recent lecture was attended by a former member of the board of directors who told James that even they had learned some new information about William Moorcroft. 

Marking the 150th anniversary of her birth in 1876, this lecture considers the refined beauty of Gwen John’s paintings and examines the enigmatic life that she led.  She is best known for her small, low-toned canvases, typically of lone female sitters, cats and corners of empty rooms.  But her reclusive reputation belies a passionate and unorthodox life and her standing today confirms the prediction made by her fabulously successful brother Augustus: ‘In fifty years’ time I will be known as the brother of Gwen John”.

Alan Read

Alan has a masters and first-class honours degree in History of Art from Birkbeck College, University of London. He is a gallery guide at Tate Britain and regularly lectures at both London Tates. For twenty years he was a gallery guide and lecturer at the National Portrait Gallery and the Dulwich Picture Gallery. He also works as a London Blue Badge Guide.

Lucrezia Walker Is a regular lecturer at the National Gallery. She is adjunct professor of art history for the University of North Carolina's Study Abroad semesters in London. She was Lay Canon for the Visual Arts at St Paul's Cathedral 2010-2014.

Living and working in Montmartre and Montparnasse in turn of the century Paris, Modigliani embodies the quintessential image of the bohemian artist: handsome, impoverished, living hard, engrossed in his own distinctive mode of expression, dying young only to be celebrated after his short life ended.