A time-travelling, multi-regional journey through the histories of ceramics that explores how contemporary artists are politicising this elemental medium.Nell has said that “all my life is a practice", but what does that mean for the work she creates? And how has her latest piece, a quilt featuring work by 400 people, changed her perspective on collaboration?Glenn Barkley looks back at the many histories of ceramics, shares his favourite skewer, and discusses the impact of the “Anglosphere mind virus.”
The self-portrait is perhaps the most ubiquitous image of the modern era, but how do contemporary artists use the portrait, not just to reflect themselves or their subject, but to shift our understanding of who we are and who we can be?Atong Atem takes us into her practice of self-portraiture, exploring how the history of beautification has inspired her images, and why a love for interior design has been an important influence.And acclaimed contemporary artist Joan Ross explains why fluorescent yellow became central to her work, and how she is reframing the colonial context of the portrait.Those trees came back to me in my dreams is on at the National Portrait Gallery until February 2025
Public art comes with big price tags and excites popular opinion, but what does it actually take to produce such large work and how does art change our experience of the public sphere?Justene Williams takes a chainsaw to her art and to the idea that women in public should be passive, with giant feminine statues that are inspired by the sheela na gig carvings of the middle agesLindy Lee discusses her major new work, Ouroboros, at the National Gallery of Australia. And for most artists, the idea of the audience climbing all over their work would be a nightmare, but for Mike Hewson, it's the whole point. Mike has created playgrounds across Australia that bring an artistic approach to the park and invite children and parents to accept a bit of risk into their lives.
Australian designer Marc Newson has helped to define the shape of our world today. But what are the artworks that inspired his approach and shaped his world?NGV Curator Laurie Benson takes you into the history of Rodin's The Thinker and explores what happens when a work of art becomes a cultural phenomenon.Jason Phu shares his latest Phuism.And chef and restaurateur Kylie Kwong shares the deeply personal story of the artwork that watched over customers at her restaurant Lucky Kwong.
Tim Winton is one of Australia's greatest writers, but this year he found himself at the centre of the art world when Laura Jones' portrait took out the Archibald Prize. From his earliest experiences in a gallery to some of the earliest examples of art in Australia, Winton shares the work that's helped to shape his own keen observations of nature and our own place in it.Two guards from the Art Gallery of NSW explain what it takes to keep the work safe and introduce us to their own favourite paintings.And Lucienne Rickard discusses her new durational work, Wreck, and why she's chosen to erase her own art, leaving only ghostly shadows behind.
Adam Weinberg ran the Whitney Museum of American Art, one of New Yorks most iconic art spaces, for over 20 years. And he is a quintessential New Yorker.More artful poetry from millennial slashie Jason Phu.A peek into the studio of another real life artist partnership in the Blue Mountains of NSW, Claire Healey and Sean Cordeiro. They will be exhibiting shortly here, and in 2025 at The Tokyo Art Fair
One of the most salacious art scandals to hit the global art market is that of the Wildensteins. Author and journalist Rachel Corbett brings us her New York Times investigation of this secretive and flawed family dynasty that stretches back five generations.Poet and sculptor Jason Phu with more of his artful silliness.Plus the idea of artists, romantically partnered with other artists is a powerful narrative. Nabila Nordin and Nick Modrzewski join us from LA.
Curator and art writer Micheal Do is sitting in for Daniel Browning for the next five weeks.Author Markus Zuzak takes us back to 2005, to a wintery day in Vienna where an artwork by a little known German/Austrian painter Werner Berg found and transported him. Micheal and Markus discuss art, writing and memoir - his latest book is Three Wild Dogs and The Truth.Angelica Mesiti's arresting and monumental immersive piece The Rites of When startles and entrances Micheal Do at the Tank at the Art Gallery of NSW.Poet, sculptor and painter Jason Phu presents one of his classic poetic Phu-isms And we visit a very tidy studio in Western Melbourne where artist Darren Wardle divulges his obsession: ruination.Images left to right:Detail from Werner Berg Vor Der Auferstehung (Before the Resurrection) (1965)Detail from screenshot of Angelica Mesiti The Rites of When (2024)Detail from Darren Wardle Slumlord (2016)
Cressida Campbell and Margaret Preston (1875-1963): two beloved printmakers inspired by Ukiyo-e, the Japanese woodcut genre whose influence swept through western art. Rosa speaks to Cressida and Geelong Gallery senior curator Lisa Sullivan about Ukiyo-e and Preston, for a new exhibition connecting all three printmaking styles.Art History professor Roger Benjamin joins us to talk about the Gina Rinehart portrait drama. Khaled Sabsabi moves fluidly between the genres of music and visual art, but his art always has the same goal: to make meaningful work, to make society better. After many years of community development work and thought-provoking installation artwork made from his studio in Western Sydney, Khaled was honoured with a 2023 Creative Australia award, and a residency at the prestigious American Academy in Rome.This program first aired Wed 22 May 2024
Helen Molesworth is a curator and writer who became widely known for her hit podcast Death of an Artist, about the artist Ana Mendieta, whose husband sculptor Carl Andre was charged then acquitted of her murder in the 1980s. Carl Andre died last week, and Helen has a book of collected art writing out: Open Questions: Thirty years of writing about art.Daniel visits the backyard studio of Olana Janfa. The Ethiopian-Norwegian artist started painting relatively recently but his distinct voice, drawn from his life as a refugee in Norway and migrant in Australia, is humour-filled, popular and incisive.Brent Harris' psychologically-driven artworks are often described as haunting and even ‘brooding’. So, if you haven’t ever seen his paintings– would it surprise you to know they’re also colourful and cartoonish? More Betty Boop than Edvard Munch’s The Scream. He takes producer Rosa Ellen through his studio, in preparation for Brent Harris: Surrender & Catch, on at Tarra Warra Museum of Art.This program first aired Wed 7 Feb 2024
This week it's The Art (Nouveau) Show! Flowers, peacocks and sensuous drapes. Bejewelled women entwined in billowing hair and that classic black outline, that turns the dreamy into the bold – the NEW. Despite what we may think about the arts and crafts that came out of Belgium, France and Czechia at the turn of the nineteenth century, Art Nouveau was considered to be an ultra-modern aesthetic.One artist who defined the style is Alphonse Mucha. We hear from Mucha's great-grandson Marcus Mucha and Mucha Foundation curator Tomoko Sato, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales exhibition Alphonse Mucha: Spirit of Art Nouveau.In South Australia artists like Maude Vizard-Wholohan were part of a newly empowered generation of female art school graduates who produced Art Nouveau designs while living in the first Australian state where women could vote (and the third in the world). Rebecca Evans is curator of design and decorative arts at the Art Gallery of South Australia, and traces the legacy of these artists.This first went to air Wed 19 Jun 2024
Over the past decade, Ramesh Nithiyendran has become one of the most visible artists of his generation and one of the most hardworking with his signature emoji-like, wildly coloured and often multiple-limbed sculptures making their presence felt across the globe. Daniel drops in on Ramesh as he prepares to unveil his next big solo exhibition - including his magnum opus, a self-deity in bronze.And the first in an occasional series If Not Critical, we meet art critic (and artist) Jack Wilkie-Jans. A trained political scientist, Jack’s critical writing explores the power of his country in the art of far north Queensland.
Sasha Huber is Swiss-Haitian… but she lives and works in Finland. She’s got a truly interdisciplinary practice - but she does have one particular medium, that’s quite unusual - in fact, it’s hard to imagine how she makes art from this non-art material. Her medium is the humble staple - not your desk type - she packs a semi-automatic staple gun like the ones tradies use.Sasha's work can be seen at Crepusculum along with artist Petri Saarikko at Gallery Project8 in Melbourne until 14 September.Freya Jobbins is an artist based in regional NSW. Her method of assemblage - the art of making three dimensional pieces from objects that have been discarded - creates extraordinary and often disturbingly touchable sculptures are made from the flesh coloured parts of toy dolls.Freya is set to have a solo exhibition at Penny Contemporary in Hobart in the new year.It's Poetry Month and to celebrate Radio National is bringing you brand new poems commissioned by Red Room Poetry. Poet, playwright and dramaturge Dylan Van Den Berg's poem Red Face Man is his response to to Benjamin Duterrau's 1840 painting, “Mr Robinson's first interview with Timmy”
The artist RONE was always attracted to street art's impermanence. He's since moved beyond street art and into large scale installations, involving space, sound, music, light and large scale art pieces, that breathe life into the rooms of decaying mansions and inside spaces. RONE's "Time" is on at AGWA Centenary Galleries in Western AustraliaDan visits artist Manda Lane in her Collingwood studio to see her beautiful and complex paper cut practice that came out of her background as a street artist. Manda has gone from making stencils to make two dimensional images to seeing the stencils as the art itself.
Ceramicist Vipoo Srivilasa’s work is beautiful, playful and highly technical…and he’s having a moment, featuring in several exhibitions this year including the MAKE Award, Generation Clay and re/JOY. His work is a beacon of light and happiness in dark times.We swing by the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA) in Darwin, where artist Noli Rictor, a Pitjantjatjara man from Tjuntjuntjara in Western Australia, won the overall award for his work on canvas, Kamanti.Plus, the woodcuts, and etchings of the master artist Albrecht Durer connect us with the material Renaissance world in Europe. Daniel speaks with Professor Jenny Spinks from Melbourne University.
Hiroshi Sugimoto's sublime black and white photographs capture subjects as diverse as polar bears and landscapes, to portraits of Princess Diana – but they're not what they seem. Called 'master of time', Sugimoto is also an architect, designing galleries and art installations around the world. Daniel speaks with him at his big exhibition at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art.In lutruwita / Tasmania, three young artists share a city studio and depict the local landscape in very different styles. All have entered a lucrative landscape painting prize, Hadley's Art Prize – and one has won it. Rosa meets Zoe Grey, Rosie Hastie and Harry Bowe.
Art historian Huey Copeland is hard at work on what he says will be “the first gender-balanced and racially integrated history of Western modernism”. Daniel speaks with Huey about the overlooked stories behind some of the best known paintings in the Western canon.Australian cartoonist and illustrator Mandy Ord makes the mundane profound, with trademark wit and touching humour. She speaks with Rosa about her latest book Bulk Nuts.In 2003 a group of US artists, evicted from their studios in Providence, Rhode Island, decided to set up a space in the very shopping mall that had forced them to leave. Secret Mall Apartment is a documentary film about the escapade and the conditions that led them to takeover the space.
Three women and three artists with three very different ways of looking at the world: Kelly Koumalatsos has a book (Madjem Bambandila) that charts three and half decades of her art practice (including possum skin cloak making) that is always embedded in culture.At 82, abstract painter Lesley Dumbrell has her first career survey at a major state gallery, Lesley Dumbrell: Thrum.And Claudia Nicholson, who was adopted from Colombia as an infant, treats photos taken by other people like an archive of recovered memories. Daniel came to know her via an ephemeral and transformative performance work. You can see her latest work in Sydney: If the mountain is burning, let it burn.
She’s an artist whose medium is fashion. Dutch designer Iris van Herpen is an innovator, remaking high fashion to be wearable art - fabric is almost plastic in her hands, moulding and shaping it so that it becomes a sculptural form. The first designer to ever 3D print a dress, her atelier in Amsterdam is more like a problem-solving incubator. She trained with Alexander McQueen, and like him there’s a sense in her designs of female empowerment, even if it accords with socially acceptable femininity.Australian artist and curator, Irene Barberis was mentored by the great American artist Sol LeWitt and got to work in his studio long after his death. She’s also the driving force behind a project to assess his far-reaching influence in contemporary art across the globe.
What does a historic bark painting from Arnhem Land have to do with manganese, the metal that makes lustrous gold and liquid black ceramic glazes? It’s one of the tangents in American interdisciplinary artist Candice Lin's first solo exhibition in Australia, along with cat-led tours, wolf’s urine and the sea cucumber, the aphrodisiac fished for hundreds of years in the waters of northern Australia.Best known for his digital video, film and photographic output Daniel Crooks explains how he’s engineered robotic drawing machines to produce some of his latest work, and even 3D-mapped his own body to represent motion - a recurrent theme in his mostly screen-based practice.
P
great interviews. Instagram is an interesting platform.