Alathea Vavasour

Bachelor in Visual Arts  (College of Fine Arts, Sydney)

Master of Arts (Hons) Specialising in Museums and Collections, Australian National University (2010), Research School of Humanities, Canberra.

Experience

1995 – 2005 Textiles/Bhutan and the Himalayas – a business exhibiting, selling and commissioning Bhutanese textiles in Australia (Perth, Sydney and Melbourne), London and Santa Fe.

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Thesis             

Elaborate weaving in the Khoma Gewog/ North-central Bhutan.

The role of materials and colour in kushüthara weaving to transmit socio-cultural knowledge.

Supervisors    Assoc Prof. Diana Young (Primary Supervisor, School of Social Science)

                        Dr Adam Bowles (School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry)

Awards           Endeavour Scholarship (2019)

(Hosted by the Textile Museum, Thimphu, Bhutan)

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Interests

Himalayan textiles, Visual and Material Culture, Tibetan Buddhism, Natural dyes.

Conference presentation

Title: ‘The Colour Mix: the impact of chemical colour in Bhutanese weaving’, at the Royal Anthropological Institute Conference (London), Art, Materialitiy and Representation, 2018.

Publications

Vavasour, Alathea. "Rediscovering Rainbow Colour in the Textile Colour of Bhutan", Chap. 21 In Asian Horizons; Giuseppe Tucci's Buddhist, Indian, Himalayan and Central Asian Studies, edited by A. A. Di Castro and David Templeman, 529-43. Melbourne: Monash University 2015.