In this episode, we speak with Vito Planeta, who is shaping the cultural direction of Planeta Wineries by building on the vision of his late uncle, the winemaker and cultural advocate Vito Planeta (1966–2023). Together, they shared a belief in the connection between land, wine and contemporary art. We discuss how the family’s estates across Sicily have become active sites for cultural engagement through the Culture for the Territory program, which commissions visual art, performance, music and l...
Jun 30, 2025•32 min•Season 3Ep. 4
We are in conversation with Sicilian artist and scholar Elisa Giardina Papa whose practice explores subjects that resist definition. Elisa lives and works between New York and Sant’Ignazio, Sicily, and teaches Modern Culture and Media at Brown University . She was one of the artists invited by curator Cecilia Alemani to exhibit in the main international exhibition of the 59th Venice Art Biennale in 2022, The Milk of Dreams . Our conversation delves into the first two works in her trilogy set in ...
Jun 16, 2025•36 min•Season 3Ep. 3
Alfio Puglisi in conversation with podcast host Sarah Rhodes on how the Sicily Artist in Residence Program (SARP) is transforming Sicily into a global hub for contemporary art through site-specific residencies, local collaboration, and atmospheric place-making. In this wide-ranging conversation, Sarah Rhodes speaks with the podcast’s co-producer Alfio Puglisi — founder of the Sicily Artist in Residence Program (SARP) — about returning to his ancestral home on the slopes of Mount Etna to forge a ...
Jun 02, 2025•36 min•Season 3Ep. 2
In this premiere episode of Art Destinations Sicily , we introduce the artists and key themes that will be explored in season. We look at how artists engage with the layered geographies of Sicily — a place shaped by ancient myths, volcanic terrain, and a complex cultural inheritance. Through residencies and site-responsive projects, the artists featured in this season reveal how creative practice emerges from deep entanglements with land, memory, and material. Our conversations begin with this p...
May 19, 2025•9 min•Season 3Ep. 1
We reflect on the Art Destinations Lutruwita | Tasmania season in a wrap-up episode that draws links between the 10 artists and writers in conversationacross the episodes. We also draw parallels between season 1 Venice and season 2 Lutruwita | Tasmania. World leading philosopher on place Jeff Malpas lays the foundation for the Lutruwita | Tasmania season as his conversation frames the role of place in thinking. We examine how artists’ practices are shaped by cultural memory and the natural envir...
Jan 20, 2025•11 min•Season 2Ep. 12
We are in conversation with US-born photographic artist David Stephenson, who received an MFA from the University of New Mexico in 1982 before taking a teaching position at the University of Tasmania’s School of Art. His work has consistently explored the sublime, in relation to his transcendental experience of place. With an ongoing interest in human interventions in the landscape, David arrived in Tasmania in the lead-up to the Franklin Dam blockade and continues to document Tasmania’s contest...
Jan 06, 2025•1 hr 14 min•Season 2Ep. 11
This is the second part of our two-part conversation with Raymond Arnold. Raymond talks about his printmaking and painting practice, and how he shares his art practice with his community in Queenstown with the aim of revitalising the region. In part one, Raymond gave us some background on why Lutruwita | Tasmania is such an important landscape and how it became an environmental batttleground. For the listeners who have never been to Queenstown, it is an extremely isolated town on Lutruwita's wes...
Dec 30, 2024•49 min•Season 2Ep. 10
We are in conversation with the wonderful painter and printmaker Raymond Arnold, who has lived in Queenstown, on Lutruwita | Tasmania’s West Coast since the late 1990s with his wife Helena, Demczuk and their four whippets. The conversation naturally shaped itself into two main themes: environmental activism and his art practice, so we have divided his podcast into two 35-minute parts. In part one, Raymond explains his involvement in the Franklin Dam blockade. He had just taken a teaching positio...
Dec 23, 2024•36 min•Season 2Ep. 9
We are in conversation with Lisa Garland, a photographic artist who has been documenting her community on the North-West Coast for more than 20 years. Lisa makes portraits of people so deeply connected to where they live that often the portrait of their place tells more about them than the people themselves. As a new generation is emerging and another passing, Lisa reflects on what she looks for in her subjects and how her focus is changing. In this episode we cover: how Lisa’s photographic port...
Dec 09, 2024•33 min•Season 2Ep. 8
We are in conversation with Pat Brassington, one of Australia’s most significant and influential artists. Over four decades, Brassington has captivated audiences with her ability to transform the familiar into the fantastical through her enigmatic photomontages. This conversation is recorded as a radio play where a voice artist performs Brassington’s responses to my questions. In this episode we cover: how Brassington’s childhood in Hobart has influenced her practice. At a young age, Brassington...
Nov 25, 2024•19 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Adam Thompson, a Pakana writer, sources much of the inspiration for his stories from his experiences working across the archipelago of Furneaux islands between lutruwita | Tasmania and mainland Australia. These islands are not only the backdrop for his dark moral tales but they also hold his family history. We talk about his work as a builder and ranger on Badger, Mount Chappell and Big Dog islands that inspired his collection of short stories Born Into This, as well as the TV series Moonbird to...
Nov 11, 2024•52 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Ellen Dahl is a visual artist who grew up in the Arctic North of Norway and is now living and working on Gadigal Country in Sydney. Her expanded photographic practice questions whether the landscapes in lutruwita | Tasmania, and Svalbard, north of the Arctic Circle share something in common. Do these two places on the peripheries offer another way of understanding how we see and feel about the world? Our conversation follows her winning the National Photography Prize 2024 with MAMA Albury, showi...
Oct 28, 2024•31 min•Season 2Ep. 95
We are in conversation with Troy Ruffels, a photomedia artist drawing on the tradition of painting and drawing, to make works that are both immersive and atmospheric. Troy incorporates the elements of fire and water into his daily routine from pre-dawn ocean swims to evening fire pits, creating a discipline for his art practice. As a country boy growing up in Forth on Tasmania’s north-west coast, Troy’s career was launched at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Primavera exhibition for emerging art...
Oct 14, 2024•38 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Matthew Newton, an accomplished photojournalist and cinematographer, has spent 25 years capturing Tasmania's rich environmental landscapes. Matt discusses his unique career path, starting as a whitewater kayaker before delving into photography and filmmaking. He shares insights into his collaborative projects, including documenting Tasmania's wilderness and history, and how his work with writers, artists and conservationists has brought stories of the natural world to life. We also explore major...
Sep 30, 2024•41 min•Season 2Ep. 3
We are thinking about thinking with one of the world leading philosophers on place Jeff Malpas in Hobart. We question where and how one can do their best thinking, the roles of centre and periphery in the evolution of ideas, how the zeitgeist actually works, and the highly influential role our childhood has on how we think as adults.
Sep 16, 2024•37 min•Season 2Ep. 2
In the first episode of Art Destinations Tasmania, we sit down with 28-year-old abstract artist Zoe Grey, whose work is profoundly influenced by her upbringing in the remote town of Marrawah on Tasmania's wild west coast. Working in the field of painting, as well as drawing, collage and ceramics, Zoe uses abstraction to portray the rugged rocks, fierce winds and booming swell on the northwest edge of Tasmania. Zoe shares her unique perspective on what it was like growing up surrounded by the pow...
Sep 02, 2024•39 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Lorenzo Barbasetti di Prun is a chef who challenges Italy’s culinary traditions by responding to climate change. Lorenzo trained in Fine Arts, at IUAV University of Venice, and is now pursuing gastronomy with a focus on foraging in diverse landscapes like London, the Dolomites, and the Venetian lagoon. In this last episode of the Venice season, Lorenzo discusses foraging's role in adapting to climate change by reintroducing edible, salt-loving plants to abandoned farmlands, as part of his projec...
Jul 15, 2024•36 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Photographic artist Davide Degano started to question what it means to be Italian while studying photography at The Hague. Davide started a project focusing on the people living in Friuli, where he grew up in northern Italy, near the border of Slovenia. In the project 'Sclavanie' (2021), Davide started to investigate how people living in this border town see themselves and how they are perceived. The word sclavanie is a derogatory term for Italian people with Slovenian descent. His work expanded...
Jul 01, 2024•50 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Nuvola Ravera examines how human emotions can influence the environment through her project, If I Cry A Lot, Will the Lagoon Become a Sea?' (2016). In this project, Nuvola collaborates with gestalt psychotherapist Laura Castellani to view Venice as a patient in a psychotherapy session. Nuvola uses 3D sculptures, frottages, and sound recordings to capture the essence of Venice, alongside the verbatim transcript between Laura, Nuvola and the city. In this episode of Art Destinations , Sarah and Nu...
Jun 17, 2024•46 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Carolina Mazzolari , an acclaimed Italian textile and video artist, honours the legacy of women who ran public laundries in the project Alone Together. Collaborating with Royal Ballet dancer and choreographer Kristen McNally and Royal Opera House senior costume manager Ilaria Martello , Carolina connects viewers to the invisible world of domestic labour through stunning video projections and tapestries on Venice's streets and in the Domus Civica Gallery , San Polo. Growing up as the youngest dau...
Jun 04, 2024•50 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Join us as we dive into a fascinating conversation with Enrico, the mastermind behind Wetlands Books , a publishing house in Venice that is redefining storytelling. From commissioning African writers to exploring the intersection of theatre and books, Enrico shares his unique perspective on the cultural landscape of Venice. In this episode, we explore Enrico 's vision for Wetlands Books , and the importance of addressing contemporary issues such as over-tourism and climate change through storyte...
May 21, 2024•50 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Mary Laheen was one of five creative directors of the Ireland pavilion exhibition, at the 18th Venice Architettura Biennale 2023, titled In Search of Hy-Brasil. In this episode, we discuss the significance of islands as we re-imagine the future. This idea is of particular interest to me as I continue my research, after completing my PhD on how the atmosphere of islandness can be conveyed through the photographic image. Mary and I met in Venice during the finissage period when Australia and Irela...
May 06, 2024•22 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Cosimo Ferrigolo dissolves boundaries to challenge us to live in a more inclusive and inter-connected way. He speaks to us from his home-studio in Venice about how fluidity permeates his work. We met when I visited the Venice Biennale Architecturra last year. I was in Venice as one of five creative directors of the Australia Pavilion 2023 exhibition unsettling Queenstown . In this episode we cover: how living in Venice takes on a political meaning how Cosimo’s passion for architectural spaces sh...
Apr 22, 2024•35 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Independent curator Alice Ongaro Sartori collaborates with artists across the archipelago in the Venetian lagoon to develop site specific projects that focus on how art, ecology and the public sphere intersect. In this first episode we cover: TBA21s Ocean Space , an arts foundation advocating for ocean literacy through art. With an international focus, it has found its home in Venice, and tries to find a balance between the global and local by working with Veneto artists, alongside those further...
Apr 09, 2024•43 min•Season 1Ep. 1
Welcome to the first season of Art Destinations. Artists, curators and publishers reveal something special about Venice and the surrounding islands in the Venezia Lagoon. In this introduction, we spend time sharing the connections between those interviewed, including: curator Alice Ongaro Sartori, performance artist Cosimo Ferrigolo, one of the 2023 Venice Biennale's Ireland Pavilion creative directors Mary Laheen, publisher Enrico Bettinello of Wetlands Books, and multi-disciplinary artists Nuv...
Apr 03, 2024•6 min•Season 1Ep. 1
