Otago Decorative & Fine Arts Society (Otago DFAS)

Established in 2016, Otago Decorative & Fine Arts Society (OtagoDFAS) promotes and advances the cultivation, appreciation and study of decorative and fine arts. The Otago Society provides its membership with eight very interesting and insightful lectures per year.  Lecturers undergo a stringent selection process to qualify as lecturers for The Arts Society (based in the UK), of which OtagoDFAS is a member society.  TAS lecturers have a reputation as being excellent international speakers who deliver well researched and illustrated talks.

Otago DFAS Programme Details

Our venue is the Auditorium, 1st Floor, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, The Octagon, Dunedin. Lectures begin promptly at 7.30pm.  Members and guests have the opportunity to talk with the lecturer, meet other members and chat with friends over a glass of wine and light refreshments following the talk.

our 2026 programme

In 2026 we offer seven accredited The Arts Society lecturers from the UK and one Australian-based lecturer, all delivered in our gallery venue. Six of these will be with us in person and two will come via live broadcast from the UK. Online lectures will be held in the winter months and members will also have access to all online events on offer from our sister societies across the country.

Our arrangements may be subject to change if the need arises.

Membership

To apply for membership, please download the OtagoDFAS Membership Application Form 2026 then complete and send it with your payment according to the directions of the form.

The annual fee for 2026 is $150 per person or $270 for a couple.

Otago – 2026 Lecturer Biographies and Topics

Susannah Fullerton

Otago Date : Wednesday 11 March 2026 – 7.30pm

Susannah Fullerton, OAM FRSN, is Sydney’s best-known lecturer on classic novels. She lectures regularly at the State Library of NSW, at conferences, schools and libraries. She is a registered speaker for ArtsNational (previously the Australian Decorative and Fine Arts Society). She gives talks on famous writers and their novels, poems and plays at a great variety of places around NSW, Australia and overseas. Susannah has been President of the Jane Austen Society of Australia for almost 30 years. She is also Patron of the Kipling Society of Australia, a founding member of the NSW Dickens Society and of the Australian Brontë Association. She is a Lady Patroness of the International Heyer Society.
Susannah loves to share her passion for great works of literature. In addition to being the author of several books on literary figures and topics, she has published articles and reviews, organised literary events and conferences, is a tour leader and literary awards judge, and is often interviewed on TV and radio about literary concerns.

TEN NOVELS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

Literature has always had the power to change – just think of the impact of the King James Bible, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Dr Johnson’s Dictionary, Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, Marx’s The Communist Manifesto and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. And yet fiction too has the power to change – to evoke sympathy, to make us take on different opinions, and even to bring about political and legal change.
This talk examines ten novels which altered our world, when it came to race relations, charity, the shape of literature, and the plight of the poor and the different. Discover which novels have had universal impact and be encouraged to think about which books you would select as having in some way brought about enormous change.

James Butterwick

Otago Date : Wednesday 22 April 2026 – Broadcast Live from The UK – 7.30pm

James Butterwick began collecting and selling Ukrainian and Russian Art in 1985 and has established himself as one of the world’s leading dealers and experts in the field. From 1994, he lived in Moscow, becoming the only foreign member of the Russian Society of Private Collectors, forming collections, contributing to museum exhibitions and reading lectures on the history of Russian Art. In 2013, he visited Kyiv, the first of over fifty visits to Ukraine before the start of the war.
A fluent Russian speaker, James lectures on Soviet Avant Garde painters, including the Ukrainian, Oleksandr Bohomazov (1880-1930) as well as on the issues of authenticity that surround the Ukrainian and Russian Avant Garde. He has spoken at the Tretyakov Gallery and the Museum of Russian Impressionism in Moscow, New York and Cambridge Universities, the Kyiv Centre of International Relations and, in January 2021, at the seminal ‘Original or Fake’ conference, at the Ludwig Museum, Cologne. A regular on radio and television, James had his own slot of Radio Matryoshka in London.

THE DARK SIDE OF THE BOOM: THE MASS FAKING OF THE SOVIET AVANT GARDE

The Soviet Avant Garde contained some of the greatest names of art history. Malevich, Chagall, Kandinsky, and countless others, blazed a trail through Art History for an all-too brief period. With their creativity stunted by the advent of Socialist Realism in 1932, their work disappeared only to re-appear after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, when a flood of newly-discovered works appeared on the Western and domestic markets of which the vast majority, up to 98%, were fake, having neither verifiable provenance nor exhibition history, their authenticity supported by documents from unscrupulous Russian and Western art historians and bogus certificates of chemical expertise. This scandal reached a crescendo in January 2018 with an exhibition of 24 dubious works of the period at the Ghent Museum of Fine Arts in Belgium. James Butterwick examines the background behind the mass faking of the Soviet Avant Garde, the history of these paintings, universally rejected by museums and the art market, as well as the methods used to ‘create’ authenticity. James was recently an expert witness exposing Russian fakes, ‘The Zaks Affair. Anatomy of a Fake Collection’, which aired on BBC4 on March 12th 2024 and he also appeared on ‘Fake or Fortune.

Note: With his online speaking circuit, James will be delivering a second topic to the NZ Societies so there is an opportunity to view this from home. Details and links will be sent in advance.

Rosalind Whyte

Otago Date : Wednesday 27 May 2026 – 7.30pm 

Rosalind Whyte holds a BA and MA from Goldsmith’s College, and an MA (distinction) from Birkbeck College. She is an experienced guide at Tate Britain, Tate Modern, the Royal Academy and Greenwich. Rosalind lectures at Tate, to independent art societies and on cruises.

DAME LAURA KNIGHT

Dame Laura Knight was a woman artist who achieved extraordinary things in her career, including becoming the first woman to be elected as a full member of the Royal Academy in London in 1936, 168 years after its establishment. She was the only British woman to be given War Commissions in both the First and Second World Wars and the only British artist to cover the Nuremberg Trials of 1946. In her long and productive career, she painted landscapes, portraits and seascapes, as well as scenes from the circus, the ballet and the theatre. This lecture provides an overview of her fascinating career and some of the remarkable achievements of her long life.

Charles Harris

Otago Date : Wednesday 24 June 2026 – Broadcast Live from the UK – 7.30pm

Charles Harris has had a life-long career in advertising around the world, most of it as a Creative Director in global agencies (J Walter Thompson, Bates, FCB, Publicis, Leo Burnett). Responsible for the quality of the creative ideas and finished production of advertising campaigns, his work for many of the world’s great brands including British Airways, QANTAS, Sony, Nestle, Kraft, BP, Gillette, and more has earned him global awards in New York, Hollywood, Singapore and Sydney. His experience as a creative advertising man gives his poster presentations a unique behind-the-scenes insight as to what works, what doesn’t, and why.

CASSANDRÉ STYLE. ART DECO. PRECISELY

Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron, known as Cassandré, was a style guru in an age full of style – the Art Deco period largely defined from the Paris Exhibition of 1925 and up to WWII. Highly influential, his work was at the polished centre of Modernism. His designs and illustrations were a playground of sweeping curves, bold zigzags, and sumptuous streamlining. Cassandré will always be loved for his stunning high-fashion posters promoting liners, luxury rail travel, avant-garde bars, and sultry cigarettes in the days leading up to the austerities of WWII.

Note: With his online speaking circuit, Charles will be delivering eight unique talks to all the NZ Societies so there is an opportunity to view additional topics from home. Details and links will be sent in advance.

Mark Cottle

Otago Date : Wednesday 29 July 2026 – 7.30pm

Mark Cottle was born on the Isles of Scilly and educated at Truro School, Cornwall and Birmingham University where he graduated with an MA in late medieval society and culture.  His career has been spent in teaching, training and lecturing at home and abroad. He has been with The Arts Society since 2007 and has lectured widely in England, Wales and Scotland.  He has also lectured in the Isle of Man, Berlin (Arts Society) and in 2023 for a month in Australia for ADFAS.

PORTRAITS IN STONE: THE GREAT CATHEDRALS OF MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

Over a timespan of some five hundred years, the great medieval cathedrals of England were built. In terms of resources called upon, space covered, design and craftsmanship employed, this period marks the greatest single architectural achievement in English history. From Durham to Gloucester the lecture follows the evolution of cathedral building with reference to structural and aesthetic details together with some of the fascinating figures and events behind them.

Charlie Hall

Otago Date : Wednesday 2 September 2026 – 7.30pm

A passionate arts educator, lecturer, and guide, Charlie Hall is based in London and Italy. Director of the highly regarded John Hall Venice Course, (est. 1965) Tour lecturer and leader for Kirker Holidays since 2013, and of independent tours in Italy. Designer and host of a series of art talks and events for the Soho House group of private member’s clubs. Designed and led courses for Christie’s Education and The Serpentine Gallery ‘Collector’s Circle’. Arts Society lecturer specializing in all things Italy.

MARINE CITY; HOW GEOGRAPHY, CLIMATE, AND HISTORY CONSPIRED TO CREATE THE SINGULAR CITY OF VENICE, AND A REVOLUTION IN ART AND TECHNOLOGY

Founded in the seventh century by refugees trying to escape invaders from the North and East, the city was established on an archipelago of muddy islands in the middle of a salty, tide-swept lagoon with no fresh water and scarcely any vegetation. In seven hundred years Venice became the richest and most powerful state in Italy and produced the most extraordinary revolution in the production of art as well as creating an environment for technological production, from book printing to glass making that still resonates to this day.

Ashley Gray

Otago Date : Wednesday 14 October 2026 – 7.30pm

Ashley Gray is Director of fashion and textile gallery Gray M.C.A and a recognised textile expert specialising in Modern Artist Textiles, their design and history. As a leading authority on the subject, he has published many articles and essays and is regularly invited to lecture and sit on committees of the leading International Art Fairs. As a curator, he has worked on an extensive array of exhibitions including Material Textile: Modern British Female Designers and Material Textile: Creativity, History & Process at Messums Gallery, Common Thread at New Art Centre and From Bauhaus to our House at Cromwell Place, London. He also curates the highly acclaimed Styled by Design exhibition that celebrates the innovation of modernist textile design. Ashley explores the textile innovators of the early to mid-20th century and the fusion between the applied, decorative and fine arts. From Cryséde to Cresta, Ascher to Edinburgh Weavers, Sanderson and David Whitehead. The evolution of textile design was a critical catalyst in the democratising of Modern Art. Sutherland, Hepworth, Moore, Picasso, Leger and many Modernist masters were commissioned for visionary artist textiles that brought Modernism into the home and onto the street in a blaze of colour that revitalised the post war world.

THE POST WAR TEXTILE VISIONARIES OF MODERN ART: AN INTRODUCTION

This lecture looks in brief at the leading makers, designers and artists covered in the four Post War Textile Visionaries of Modern Art Lectures below. A broader horizon that covers 50 years of textile design and its fusion with modern art. An ideal introduction to the subject.

Amanda Herries

Otago Date : Wednesday 25 November 2026 – 7.30pm

Amanda Herries read Archaeology & Anthropology at Cambridge University. From 1978-1988 she was Curator at Museum of London specialising in the decorative arts 1714 to present day, exhibitions, lectures, booklets, broadcasts. In 1988-1995 she  moved with family to Japan, lecturing and writing on Oriental / Western cross-cultural and artistic influences. In 1995 she returned to UK, fundraising for arts companies, writing, lecturing and guiding tours to Japan and of gardens and general history in Scotland. Amanda has curated an exhibition on Japanese plants and gardens in London and Edinburgh as part of Japan/British celebrations in 2001 and is currently preparing an exhibition for 2026 on the Scottish Colourist S.J. Peploe. Amanda has contributed to many publications on Japanese plant and garden influences in the West.

WEALTH, ADORNMENT, ART: A STUDY OF JEWELLERY IN THE 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES

Jewellery has been worn by humans for thousands of years. It not only adorns and decorates, it is a useful way to hold wealth secure, and it provides wonderful opportunities for the skilled craftsman to show off his artistic skills and creativity. By the 1550s London was one of the foremost European centres of goldsmithing and jewellers trade. Fashion expected fantastic jewels to be worn by men and women, enhancing the dress of the time. From Tudor ‘bling’ to sombre and discreetly worn Royalist favours, from the glamorous glitter of 18th century new style gemstones (and fakes) to the restraint of Neo-Classical elegance we see trends and themes, changing fashions, and conclude on the eve of mass-production and global influences. Glamour, artistry and craftsmanship at its most colourful. Focussed on English styles.