‘When you make a painting, you want to make a good painting. You are more interested in the composition of the things, than in the precise description of the things.’ – Nathalie Du Pasquier In the seventh and final episode of Series 3 of the Frieze Masters Podcast, artist Nathalie Du Pasquier, architect Annabelle Selldorf and Curator Abraham Thomas discuss the plasticity of the creative environment, and the collisions and contrasts between the visions of artists, architects and curators. Nathali...
Jan 17, 2025•31 min•Season 3Ep. 7
‘If I can let the viewer stand in front of my painting and question – if they can ask a question – this is success.’ – Glenn Ligon How does the written and spoken word relate to the visual language of painting, sculpture and installation? To discuss this connection and the power and potential of poetry, the sixth episode of the Frieze Masters Podcast brings together artists Glenn Ligon and Dia al-Azzawi and Chisenhale Director Zoé Whitley. Glenn Ligon is a New York-based artist whose career has ...
Jan 10, 2025•35 min•Season 3Ep. 6
‘What’s left for art? Art can offer ritual and ceremony, a communal place where bodies can gather. It’s a place where things can happen visually, musically, sonically, and in dance and with the voice.’ – Mark Leckey In the fifth episode of the Frieze Masters Podcast, artist Mark Leckey, curator Polly Staple and Director of Art Fund Jenny Waldman reflect on the legacy and future of British art and discuss how it might expand its reach to engage young and underrepresented audiences. Mark Leckey is...
Jan 03, 2025•30 min•Season 3Ep. 5
‘Isn’t to exhibit to historicize?’ – Julian Rose Artist Nairy Baghramian, Director of the Museum of Modern Art Glenn Lowry and historian Julian Rose all have extensive experience of presenting art in public places and thinking about civic spaces. In the fourth episode of the Frieze Masters Podcast, they come together to rethink the role and design of museums in shaping cultural exchange. Nairy Baghramian is an artist whose sculptures offer new ways to address the architectural, social and politi...
Dec 20, 2024•35 min•Season 3Ep. 4
‘The viewer makes the painting alive. Without the viewer, that thing doesn't exist.’ – Shirazeh Houshiary What happens to our understanding of painting when we expand the canon across eras and cultures? In the third episode of the Frieze Masters Podcast, artist Shirazeh Houshiary, Director of the National Gallery Gabriele Finaldi and arts editor Jan Dalley reflect on the celebration and subversion of narrative through painting. Shirazeh Houshiary is an Iran-born, London-based artist, working in ...
Dec 13, 2024•41 min•Season 3Ep. 3
‘You have an idea and it goes off in another direction and you either pull it back or you go on the journey. I knew I wanted to make some portraits, but I also knew I didn't want to. I wanted to create some tension.’ – Barbara Walker In the second episode of the Frieze Masters Podcast, artists Barbara Walker and Ming Smith, and writer and curator Lou Stoppard discuss the evolution of portraiture and ask how it can better reflect and build community. Barbara Walker is a British artist whose work ...
Dec 06, 2024•49 min•Season 3Ep. 2
‘What do we want the UK to look like in 10 years, 20 years, 50 years in terms of culture?’ – Victoria Siddall The first episode of the 2024 Frieze Masters Podcast brings together Sir Chris Bryant MP, artist Jeremy Deller and new director of the National Portrait Gallery Victoria Siddall to talk about ‘Good Governance’. How can everyone in the UK access art? And what role should government play in the country’s creative education? Chris Bryant is the recently appointed as Minister of State at the...
Nov 29, 2024•34 min•Season 3Ep. 1
‘Sex, death, race and religion’ – these are the topics that the London-based artists Gilbert and George announced they wanted to cover in this talk with Dr Nicholas Cullinan of the National Portrait Gallery. On Context offers insights into the artist’s relationship to concepts: from sculpture to the city, ‘picture making’ to posterity. Gilbert and George resist many of the contexts and interpretations projected onto their practice: trying to keep their work as accessible and open as possible, re...
Jan 26, 2024•28 min•Season 2Ep. 8
The London home of Galerie Thaddeus Ropac is a traditional eighteenth-century Mayfair townhouse, once home to the Bishop of Ely. But for artist Mandy El-Sayegh’s 2023 exhibition ‘Interiors’, its spaces were transformed into a riot of colour and pattern across paintings, textiles and furniture. In On Interiors , El-Sayegh talks to Dr Flavia Frigeri of the National Portrait Gallery, and Valerie Cassel Oliver of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, who is also the curator of the 2023 Spotlight section...
Jan 19, 2024•36 min•Season 2Ep. 7
The year 1993 marked a watershed for the famous Turner Prize, when it was awarded for the first time to a woman. That artist was Rachel Whiteread and the work was House in East London. In On Space , Whiteread is in conversation with the art historian Briony Fer. Together, they discuss the urges and concerns that underpin Whiteread’s work, from seminal works of the 1990s to her more recent projects, such as the site-specific commission unveiled in the summer of 2023 at Palazzo della Ragione in Be...
Jan 12, 2024•36 min•Season 2Ep. 6
In On Power , London-based multidisciplinary artist Thomas J Price is in conversation with Dr Gus Casely-Hayford, the inaugural Director of V&A East. Together, they reflect on how monuments created for the public realm are not just aesthetic objects but artefacts often bound up in values, ideologies and power systems. Price, in his words, wants to convey ‘the sense of another person’ and has spent the past two decades creating large-scale figurative sculptures of everyday, unidentified Black...
Jan 05, 2024•38 min•Season 2Ep. 5
In 2023, Frieze Masters fair sought to break the artist’s studio open to a new audience with a new section, Studio , curated by Sheena Wagstaff – the former Chairman of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Met and now Met’s Chair Emerita. In On Studios , Wagstaff talks with one of the Studio artists, Arlene Shechet, exploring how central the place and space of making is to her work, as well as its significance in the realm of creativity. 'It’s not a genius move, it’s just hard wo...
Dec 15, 2023•28 min•Season 2Ep. 4
On Photography asks what it means today for an artist to work with a living, breathing icon, like the actress Tilda Swinton. Tim Walker, the noted artist and photographer, is joined by his long-time collaborator, stylist Jerry Stafford, to talk about their work together with Tilda Swinton. Dr Nicholas Cullinan, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, moderates the conversation. 'When I’m scared of something or someone, that scare turns into being photogenic. […] The situation becomes ...
Dec 08, 2023•48 min•Season 2Ep. 3
In On Display , artist Shirin Neshat is in conversation with Jamie Fobert, the architect of London’s newly reopened National Portrait Gallery, and its Director, Dr Nicholas Cullinan, moderated by Tim Marlow, Director of the Design Museum. Neshat reflects on her 2018 portrait of Nobel Peace Prize awardee Malala Yousafzai that was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery. The conversation explores the history of this much-loved institution and how its contemporary meaning is shaped through it...
Dec 07, 2023•34 min•Season 2Ep. 2
In 2005, British artists Maggi Hambling and Sarah Lucas met at the historic Colony Room Club in London’s Soho. There, they discovered that they shared the same irreverent and unapologetic attitude – and even the same birthday. In On Rebellion , chaired by Louisa Buck, these two British artists discuss their influences, their reactions to rules and expectations, facing up to mortality and being each other’s muse. 'I think great art creates somewhere where life and death cohabit, where life and de...
Nov 30, 2023•34 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Frieze Masters presents this conversation with Anthea Hamilton & Nicholas Cullinan in partnership with Studio Voltaire @studiovoltairelondon . Their conversation explores the trajectory of Hamilton’s work, the geopolitical basis of her identity as a ‘Londoner’ and how elements from the ‘fourth dimension’ shape her work. “We're actually functioning in a four-dimensional space, and I tried to think about what might be in the fourth dimension, if it's not just depth. And for me, those fourth di...
Jan 24, 2023•52 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Frieze Masters presents Love Lucian: The Letters and Early Life of Lucian Freud in partnership with the Freud Museum ( @freudmuseum ) . This episode features Hannah Rothschild in conversation with Martin Gayford and David Dawson, speaking on their new publication and the first exhibition of Lucian Freud’s works at the Freud Museum London. Exploring the overlapping themes present in both Love Lucian and the exhibition, the discussion draws out some interesting and lesser-known facets of Lucian’s ...
Jan 16, 2023•58 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Frieze Masters presents this conversation with Kamala Ibrahim Ishag and Hans Ulrich Obrist in partnership with the Serpentine ( @serpentineuk ). To celebrate the opening of her solo exhibition at Serpentine, Ishag returns to the RCA where she studied in the 1960s. She discusses her background, her relationship with nature and the influence of the Sudanese Zār cult on her work. "If people are really genuine with their plants and they respect their plants, they should talk to them as human, as a s...
Jan 09, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Frieze Masters presents this conversation with Doron Langberg & Nicholas Cullinan, Director of the National Portrait Gallery in London. Their conversation explores various aspects of Langberg’s work including his portraiture in the context of the resurrection of figurative painting, and the influence of his educational background. "Painting really has always been my language, I feel like I almost think of it as my first language. I have been painting since I was very, very young and it's rea...
Dec 16, 2022•41 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Frieze Masters presents this conversation with Zadie Xa & Vivien Zhang in partnership with Whitechapel Gallery ( @whitechapelgallery ). Their conversation explores Xa’s new exhibition at Whitechapel as they reflect on ideas of cultural identity, the appropriation and gentrification of symbols, and disparities between static and performance art. "[The Yin Yang] feels like a very Korean or Asian thing. This is an authentic image that I can kind of attach meaning to, but then of course, it's so...
Dec 05, 2022•52 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Frieze Masters presents this conversation with Andra Ursuţa & Jeremy Deller in partnership with David Zwirner Gallery ( @davidzwirner ). Their conversation explores Ursuţa’s new exhibition at David Zwirner as well as her inclination towards using clichés and the ‘lowest’ regarded forms of artistry, her embrace of spirituality and the influence of the ancient on her work. "I look at a lot of ancient sculpture. I think, at least in my opinion, that if you try to make something that answers too...
Nov 28, 2022•45 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Frieze Masters presents this conversation with Amy Sherald, Ekow Eshun and Jenni Sorkin in partnership with Hauser & Wirth ( @hauserwirth ). The panelists discuss Sherald’s practice and the relevance of her work within the canon of historical portraiture. This episode also marks the release of the artist’s first substantial monograph by Hauser & Wirth Publishers, providing a unique insight into her work and studio practice, alongside newly-commissioned texts. "When I'm considering my Ame...
Nov 18, 2022•52 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Frieze Masters presents this conversation with Tyler Mitchell & Zoé Whitley in partnership with Gagosian ( @gagosian ). Their conversation explores Mitchell’s new exhibition, Chrysalis , at Gagosian, and a special commission for this year’s edition of Frieze Masters that reflects on his conceptual and editorial photography practices. His work is rooted in reinterpreting the tropes employed in both the Western canon of portraiture and the contemporary fashion magazine. "Sitting at the metapho...
Nov 11, 2022•56 min•Season 1Ep. 1
