Anthony "Ace" Bourke - art.afterhours

CELEBRITY TALK in association with Printmaking in the age of Romanticism.

Ace Bourke, art curator and co-author of A Lion Called Christian in conversation with Bryan Seymour, senior reporter at Today Tonight.

The romance of wild creatures was clearly a great inspiration to some of the artists in Printmaking in the Age of Romanticism, which exhibits some beautiful images of lions. Join Anthony "Ace" Bourke, star of the hit YouTube phenomenon about Christian the lion, as he talks about this extraordinary footage of friend John Rendall and himself, reuniting with their pet lion Christian.

John and Ace bought the cub from Harrods department store in London. Once he'd outgrown their flat, they decided to introduce Christian into the African wild. A year later, they went to visit him and the response was extraordinary. The footage of their reunion was put on YouTube some 40 years later and has already been viewed by an estimated 60 million people worldwide.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Anthony Bourke
• Ace Bourke
• art.afterhours
• Christian the lion
• John Rendall
• wild
• animal
• Africa

[ArtGalleryNSW]

Yes we have asked John but his travels did not allow him to appear for AAH. We would like to invite him again when we have a relevant spot for him. All our Artafterhours programs are in association with our exhibitions so we need to find the right match.

Cheers and thanks for the question

[ArtGalleryNSW]

Yes it's a great interview/talk isn't it, one of my favourites also.

[heulceris]

@laoqudeqiangshen: It was when they were interviewed on the 'Today' TV programme I think, Ace was there as well and he did answer one or two questions, but John answered most of them, but don't get me wrong here..I enjoyed the way he explained the various situations which happened with 'Christian' it was very exiting. It is still on the Youtube videos I think.

[laoqudeqiangshen]

@heulceris

Hey could you please give the link of the interview by John you mentioned ? ThankS !

[heulceris]

It's difficult to tire of watching Ace's interview with Bryan here, I could watch it over and over..in fact I think I might just about be able to repeat it all word by word,...fanatic? probably. It would have also been nice to see John along side Ace here too. Although I did see an interview once with John answering most of the questions, perhaps he was giving Ace a bit of space to tell it as he knew it.

This story has become a world wide known true story, and what a beautiful one it is too.

[TheLongAndWindingRd]

@ArtGalleryNSW - Just a quick question for you, do you think you might ever do an interview with John Rendall? I believe John travels and/or lives between England and Australia. I'd love to see an in depth interview with him, like the one you did with Ace.

[TheLongAndWindingRd]

That's a great interview, one of the best I have seen with Ace. Thank you for posting it.

[rosie56run]

Ace: How lovely to watch 30 full minutes of you talking about Christian. I think you and John, in all the videos, have given the world a gift by increasing our understanding of the need to protect Africa's predators. But what was that? An 80% decline? In the '08 interviews, you mentioned a 2/3 decline. An additional 14% decline in 18 months?! Oohing and aahing over Christians sweetness is very nice but we must also put our money where our mouths are and work harder towards conservation.