First up we had Caroline Lambard, a sculptor who explores the experience of a three-dimensional world through installations, sculptures and drawings. In a time defined by increasingly virtual forms, Caroline’s practice re-focuses our attention onto everyday encounters with material and movement, looking at those moments of transition and heightened awareness that we often miss when a form or event, once novel, becomes familiar. It's about the pattern of trees that shift their shape as you walk by, revealing the way each trunk, branch and leaf interacts with its surroundings. Or it’s the cathedral space that alters your senses the moment you step inside, the vast heights enfolding a cool stillness.  Caroline’s work reveals these intersections of time and perception and her talk showed us how stepping back and looking from a different perspective opens us up to a new sense of presence.

Following Caroline, the photographer & story-teller Ben Gibson-Cowan  took us on a journey through his life and work. Ben has spent nearly five decades behind the camera as both a photojournalist (working as Ben Gibson) and, more recently, a fine art photographer (as Ben Gibson-Cowan). Driven by a restlessness that took root long before he ever picked up a camera, his journey has taken him around the world. From the frozen expanses of the Arctic and the empty deserts of Oman to North Korea, India and Somalia  – and more than one war zone along the way – Ben has captured images in some of the world's most challenging and beautiful places. Using his photographs and the compelling stories they tell, Ben illustrated what he’s learned about success and failure, and what it means to find your way through a world, and a life, that’s less than perfect.

Tickbird&Rhino evenings are all about the conversation and our speakers brought to us an inspiring and thought-provoking night. Fascinating & fantastic and at times both funny & sad, Caroline and Ben were never less than compelling and we could not have asked for a better night.