Actor Russell Tovey and gallerist Robert Diament host Talk Art, a podcast dedicated to the world of art featuring exclusive interviews with leading artists, curators & gallerists, and even occasionally their talented friends from other industries like acting, music and journalism. Listen in to explore the magic of art and why it connects us all in such fantastic ways. Follow the official Instagram @TalkArt for images of artworks discussed in each episode and to follow Russell and Robert's latest art adventures.
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We meet Anya Gallaccio (b. 1963, Scotland), an artist renowned for her innovative use of organic, ephemeral materials – ranging from chocolate, ice, wax, apples, flowers and chalk – and for her explorations of transformation, change and impermanence. Throughout her practice, Gallaccio has significantly reshaped understandings of contemporary sculpture. Anya Gallaccio: preserve is her largest survey exhibition to date at Turner Contemporary, Margate. The exhibition spans three decades of Gallacci...
We meet artist Jesse Darling. His multi-disciplinary practice, of sculptures, drawings and objects, considers how bodily subjects are initially formed and continuously reformed through sociopolitical influences. Darling (b. Oxford, UK) draws on his own experience as well as the narratives of history and counter-history. He explores the inherent vulnerability of being a body, and how the inevitable mortality of living things translates to civilizations and structures. Featuring an array of free-f...
We meet Tom Rasmussen to explore their new album Live Wire. We discuss their love of art, collaborations with artists Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings, Shon Faye and Travis Alabanza, their love for Rene Matić, writing new songs with Romy and Self Esteem and what it was like being photographed by the legendary Tim Walker on both album covers. This episode was recorded in Los Angeles while Tom put the final touches to the Live Wire album. “Live Wire (Globe Town Records 2024) was written over a ...
New Talk Art special episode!!!! We meet leading artist Alvaro Barrington, presented by BMW . We explore his work since we last met him on the podcast a few years ago, his current, epic solo 'Grace' at Tate Britain's Duveen Galleries, as well as a very cool recent collaboration with BMW at Frieze Seoul. Inspired by the BMW Art Car Collection and curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, the artist has paint over seven miniature i7s, drawing inspiration from video games and music. Barrington's practice expl...
We meet leading artist Jeffrey Gibson to discuss his Venice Biennale solo and explore his inspiring and illustrious career thus far. The first Indigenous artist to represent the USA at this year’s Venice Biennale, Gibson is a painter and sculptor whose work is held in many major American collections. Incorporating murals, paintings, textiles and historical objects, Gibson’s work also weaves together text drawn lyrics, poetry and his own writing, complete with references to abstraction, fashion a...
It’s FRIEZE WEEK! We meet artist Fani Parali to explore his multifaceted practice. For Frieze Sculpture 2024, London-based multidisciplinary artist Fani Parali presents Aonyx and Drepan; two monumental steel armatures from which performers, as hybrid creatures, 'sing' to each other across a path in Regent's Park. In the video commissioned by Frieze, Parali describes the layered processes behind the 'lip-sync opera' she produces, 'I feel that it [the recorded voice] exists before and after everyt...
New Talk Art! We meet painter Jonas Wood to discuss his new solo exhibitions with Gagosian in London. With Frieze week upon us in London, be sure to visit Jonas' inspiring new shows in Mayfair. Gagosian present an exhibition of new paintings by Jonas Wood, opening at the Grosvenor Hill gallery in London on October 7, 2024. These works see Wood extend the unmistakable visual language that he has developed over two decades, exploring the dynamics of color, pattern, and space through the treatment ...
We meet Ekow Eshun, leading curator, writer and broadcaster to discuss his new book The Strangers. In the western imagination, a Black man is always a stranger. Outsider, foreigner, intruder, alien. One who remains associated with their origins irrespective of how far they have travelled from them. One who is not an individual in their own right but the representative of a type. What kind of performance is required for a person to survive this condition? And what happens beneath the mask? In ans...
We meet artist Megan Rooney to explore her solo exhibition at Kettles Yard, Cambridge. Titled 'Echoes & Hours', this is the first major solo exhibition in the UK of work by Megan Rooney (b. 1985, South Africa). Her paintings have an irresistible life and energy, renewing the potential of abstraction to embody the richness of the visual world. It is curated by Andrew Nairne and Amy Tobin. This spectacular show is in it's final weeks, running until 6th October 2024, and we strongly recommend v...
Talk Art returns for Season 23! We meet Culture-loving Rob Rinder MBE and Architecture-fan Rylan Clark as they follow in the footsteps of 19th century romantic poet Lord Byron, and other Grand Tourists, on the 200th anniversary of his death. We discuss Caravaggio, Murano glass blowing, Artemisia Gentileschi & her censored ‘Allegory of Inclination’ (1816) and what it was like to become nude life models themselves. We explore how they met the Venice-based drag/art collective House of Serenissi...
Talk Art Live! We meet artist Studio Lenca (Jose Campos) within his recent solo exhibition 'Leave to Remain' at Carl Freedman Gallery in Margate. ‘Leave to Remain’ is the official term used by the UK Home Office, meaning someone who is allowed to stay in the UK with restrictions and without permanent legal status. According to the latest data from the UNHCR, 70.8 million people around the world have been forced from their own homes. Among them are 25.9 million refugees, over half aged under 18. ...
We meet Precious Okoyomon – poet, artist, and chef – stages sculptural topographies composed of living, growing, decaying, and dying materials, including rock, water, wildflowers, snails, and vines. For Okoyomon, nature is inseparable from the historical marks of colonisation and enslavement. In their work, plants like kudzu – a vine native to Asia that was first introduced by the US government to farms in Mississippi in 1876 as a means to fortify erosion of local soil, which had been degraded b...
We meet artist Puppies Puppies. Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo (b. 1989, Dallas, TX), widely known by the moniker Puppies Puppies, expands ideas around the readymade by imbuing ubiquitous and everyday objects, signifiers, and actions with a personal and political charge. Puppies Puppies works across sculpture, installation, and performance art. She has, for example, reconfigured antibacterial gel dispensers, toilet bowl liquid, the color green, as well as the acts of sleeping, peeing, and taking a pi...
We meet Es Devlin CBE to discuss her new multi-media work SURFACING commissioned by BMW and unveiled at Art Basel in Basel 2024. A pioneering combination of sustainable energy and movement in an installation of water, light, sound and dance. A dance collaboration and a series of mobile sound installations within a pilot fleet of BMW iX5 Hydrogen vehicles. In Hall 1.1 of the art fair Devlin created a booth displaying four works: Surfacing (2024), an illuminated cube of rain penetrated by a line o...
We meet artist Jean Claracq to discuss painting, his recent shows with Galerie Sultana in Paris and Arles, plus what its like living and working from Marseille and its growing artistic community. Jean Claracq brings the past forward via savvy remarks on the culture industry of the 21st century. Claracq’s paintings exploit, in the most delicate and refined form, the language of advertisement and social media to construct desire, fascination, and lust. With eclectic references that range from medi...
We meet Dominique Fung (b.1987), a Canadian artist with ancestry in Hong Kong and Shanghai, whose practice explores the subliminal liminal territory in which tradition, memory and legacy seep through our collective subconsciousness. Through her interest in casting light on overlooked or forgotten stories and her use of specific historical artifacts she infuses with living qualities and complex non-linear narrative paths, she models a new, broader, alternative space of belonging. She lives and wo...
We meet curator and writer Gemma Rolls-Bentley to discuss her debut book Queer Art , recorded in front of a live audience at the Turner Contemporary in Margate. With nearly 200 artworks selected by Gemma, this book mixes the high-brow with the low, gallery stalwarts with Instagram stars, and the racy with the fabulous. This is a unique celebration of queer life – a must-have for the LGBTQI+ community, art lovers and anyone interested in the culture surrounding queer identity. The twentieth centu...
We meet Mary McCartney, world renowned photographer, film-maker and sustainable food pioneer. As a leading British creative, her work covers multiple disciplines, but is always rooted in her passion for impactful storytelling. We meet at Claridges Art Space in London to explore her joint show 'Double Exposure' with photography legend David Bailey. Unfolding like a conversation between two friends, Double Exposure: David Bailey & Mary McCartney brings two era-defining British photographers in...
We meet artist Corbin Shaw, live from the Crossed Wires podcast festival in Sheffield's City Hall. Corbin Shaw (b. 1998) is a British artist based in East London, originally from Sheffield. Exploring the complex realm of masculinity and identity through the medium of textiles. Using his upbringing in a South Yorkshire ex-mining town Corbin investigate's masculinity and how it was defined to him growing up. Breaking stigmas and stereotypes through his re-imagination of masculine 'icons' and objec...
Talk Art Live, recorded at Apple Covent Garden. We meet Rebecca Lucy Taylor aka Self Esteem to celebrate her first new music in 3 years, the new single Big Man featuring Moonchild Sanelly. Recorded in front of a live audience of 400 art lovers, we explore her rise to fame over the past few years, what it was like playing the Sally Bowles lead in Cabaret on London's West End and her love of art and how artists continue to inspire her creative process while recording her third album. We discuss he...
For his first exhibition in London in over 20 years, New York-based artist Jack Pierson presents a new series of works at Lisson Gallery that explores love, kinship, celebration, poetry, youth, and identity. Pierson diverted from the path of documentary photographers that he studied with in Boston, and was instead drawn to punk-influenced performativity, embracing non-linear, spontaneous compilations that prioritise the expression of individual freedoms over existing narratives. He has since, th...
Nathanaëlle Herbelin joins Talk Art to delve into her acclaimed solo exhibition at Musée d'Orsay, where her contemporary works are displayed alongside her inspirations, Les Nabis. She explores her distinctive painting style, which involves unique canvas preparations and a non-elitist approach to art, and shares insights into her process of portraying unguarded, vulnerable moments from daily life. The conversation also touches on her inspirations from nature, the role of her past works, and her future international projects.
We meet author/art critic Jennifer Higgie and Sotheby’s Chloe Stead to discuss the inspiring new exhibition ‘London: An Artistic Crossroads’ which has just opened at Sotheby’s New Bond Street and runs until 5th July 2024. #AD / this episode is presented by Sotheby’s. Sotheby's, in partnership with Art UK and twelve museums across the country, are staging a month-long exhibition, open to the public and free of charge, shining a spotlight on the UK as a centre of creative cross-pollination. The ex...
We meet KAWS aka Brian Donnelly to discuss his three major institutional exhibitions all opening in 2024. The first show has just opened at The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh and is the first time that Donnelly's work has been aligned with Warhol. Followed by the Parrish Art Museum this summer, and The Drawing Center, set to open in Autumn. In celebration of its 30th anniversary, The Warhol presents KAWS + Warhol , the first exhibition to examine the dark themes present in the work of both artis...
We meet artist Shaqúelle Whyte to explore his current solo exhibition at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery in London. Whyte imagines fictional environments in his paintings, creating an enigmatic atmosphere that contributes to his psychoanalytic approach. The painted medium is paramount for the artist whose broad, loosely rendered brushstrokes are mirrored in his expansive compositions, in which time and space expand and contract across the canvas. Although non-linear, narrative plays a central role in ...
#AD - New Talk Art special episode! We meet legendary art critic Louisa Buck for a tour of Cork Street Galleries, to visit galleries including Alison Jacques, Tiwani Contemporary, Frieze No.9 Cork St, Waddington Custot, Goodman Gallery, Stephen Friedman, Marianne Holtermann and Flowers Gallery. We discover their current exhibitions but also explore the history of this iconic art street in London’s W1. London Gallery Weekend, the biggest gallery weekend event in the world, returns for its fourth ...
Talk Art exclusive! We meet Sir Elton John and David Furnish to discuss their epic, brand new exhibition Fragile Beauty. Opening this weekend, Saturday, 18 May 2024 at the V&A South Kensington. An unparalleled selection of the world's leading photographers, telling the story of modern and contemporary photography. Discover iconic images across subjects such as fashion, celebrity, reportage and the male body. This exclusive episode was recorded in person at the South of France home of Elton &...
We meet writer Oisín McKenna to discuss his debut novel Evenings and Weekends which is released today! We discuss Oisín‘s passion for spoken word and performance art and discover his early years inspired by artists like David Hoyle, Penny Arcade, Taylor Mac or Lucy McCormick. We learn how museums like the National Gallery, Dublin improved his life, the impact of his art teacher, and his love of the work of Caravaggio, Doris Salcedo, Oscar Wilde and Wolfgang Tillmans. We explore the relationship ...
We meet artist Leilah Babirye to discuss her inspiring multidisciplinary practice, her major solo show at Yorkshire Sculpture Park and new sculptures in the Venice Biennale 2024. Transforming everyday materials into objects that address issues surrounding identity, sexuality and human rights, the artist fled her native Uganda to New York in 2015 after being publicly outed in a local newspaper. In spring 2018 Babirye was granted asylum with support from the African Services Committee and the NYC ...
New @TalkArt! We meet the PET SHOP BOYS to explore their new album NONETHELESS!!! Recorded in London’s Kings Cross, we chat to Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe about their history as the UK’s most successful pop duo, their mutual love of art, collaborations with artists throughout their 40 year career including Derek Jarman, Eric Watson, Wolfgang Tillmans, and most recently Tim Walker, plus we explore Neil’s interest in the Arts & Crafts movement, and for collecting & living with art. This fe...
