Singing stars, anti-apartheid activists, writers and mavericks are among the Southern African women honoured by visual artists in a new exhibition, And she was wearing trousers: a call to our heroines curated by Roberta Joy Rich and Naomi Velaphi. Enter the studio of Michaye Boulter, a nipaluna/Hobart-based painter whose seascapes are unmistakably of southern Tasmania… but painted from her imagination, not from life. Plus, Tom O’Hern on why it's ok to draw badly. And Wiradjuri architect-slash-mu...
Aug 02, 2022•54 min
Curator Petrit Abazi fled Kosovo as a child with his parents and now heads a contemporary art centre in Darwin. This month he’s returned to the city of his birth, Mitrovica, where Albanians and Serbs still live divided, to curate two artworks for the European art festival Manifesta 14. With Ukrainian-Australian artist Stanislava Pinchuk and endurance-swimmer and artist Piers GrevillePlus, we speak to the winner and judges of the Hadley's Art Prize, and ask: is landscape as a genre still fit for ...
Jul 27, 2022•54 min
Bruce Munro is the hugely popular light installation artist who filled the foreground of Uluru with a Field of Light. He talks to Daniel about his career, new show and early encouragement from Kevin McCloud. Plus, how does a string of amethyst beads tell the story of an astonishing ancient maritime trade? And hear the story behind The King of Kowloon, Louis Lim's rollicking new podcast about an enigmatic Hong Kong street artist.
Jul 20, 2022•54 min
Can you separate the misogynist from the art? If you walk around the winter blockbuster The Picasso Century at the National Gallery of Victoria, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this wasn’t a live debate. Daniel speaks with Didier Ottinger from the Centre Pompidou, who hopes the exhibition he’s curated presents the 20th Century's most famous artist as a sensitive man defined by his friendships and rivalries and shaped by his extraordinary times. Art historian Ksenia Soboleva and writer Shanno...
Jul 13, 2022•54 min
Richard Bell is one of the few individual artists curated into Documenta 15, the highly-anticipated global survey of contemporary art. This year, for the first time, it’s been dominated by artists and collectives from the Global South. But the historic takeover has been eclipsed by a media storm ignited by what appears to be a Jewish caricature in a mural painted by Indonesian artist group Taring Padi, since taken down. Queensland-born sculptor Sebastian di Mauro who now calls Delaware home, dis...
Jul 06, 2022•53 min
A conversation with artist Daniel Boyd whose work has focussed on reframing Eurocentric images from Australia's past. Plus, Sally Ryan discusses her latest commission, a giant oil painting of Jesus, Mary and Joseph for St Mary’s cathedral in Sydney. She says it's her hardest painting yet. And, returning artefacts taken from Kunwinjku and Gagadju artists in Arnhem Land in the early 1900s.
Jun 29, 2022•54 min
Have you ever walked through an epic entanglement of red cotton thread, by the artist Chiharu Shiota? The Japanese installation and performance artist takes Daniel through The Soul Trembles, an exhibition highlighting 25 years of her practice. Including the time she undertook a nude workshop with Marina Abramovic, mistaking her for the textile sculptor Magdalena Abakanowitcz. Plus, Daniel speaks with performance artist Wura-Natasha Ogunji, who came to Sydney to lead a public endurance performanc...
Jun 22, 2022•54 min
Why artist and curator David Sequeira doesn't believe in just a 'pop of colour'. How a colour-blind artist adapted to colours he couldn't perceive. And how glasses that allow colour-deficient people to see the full spectrum of colours, work.Plus, Daniel chats to V&A curator Catlin Langford about her book on the mania for Autochrome, an early colour photography process invented by the Lumière brothers.
Jun 15, 2022•54 min
We start the show at the Parade for the Moon in Melbourne's Chinatown, part of the city's RISING festival.Then Daniel speaks with tattoo and visual artist eX-de-Medici about her intense and detailed watercolours that interrogate violent power structures. And step inside the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where Daniel catches up with Australian artist Angelica Mesiti, who teaches there.
Jun 08, 2022•54 min
Daniel chats with artist brothers Abdul-Rahman and Abdul Abdullah, who are close in life but not so much in their art. However, thorny issues unite them in Land Abounds, their new joint exhibition. Hear how Filipino sculptor Leeroy New builds his large-scale sci-fi installations made from 100% recycled materials. He's in Australia for Melbourne's RISING festival. And how did an 1897 painting by the Wurundjeri clan leader William Barak, end up at a Sotheby's auction house in New York? Last week W...
Jun 01, 2022•54 min
The American artist Kiki Smith talks about tapestry and her long career.My Art Crush: painter and printmaker Kirtika Kain makes tactile work about the oppression and unrecorded history of Dalit people.Step inside the Palais de Tokyo (in Paris), Europe's largest centre for contemporary art, for a tour of the exhibition Reclaim The Earth.
May 25, 2022•54 min
How often does a political artwork fall into the national spotlight during a federal election? Hear from Archibald portrait prize winner Blak Douglas.Plus, an Italian art exhibition that puts NFT juggernaut Beeple alongside European masters and Australia's Richard Bell. And enter the studio of weaver, printmaker and textile artist Ema Shin.
May 18, 2022•54 min
Greetings from the 22nd La Biennale di Venezia, in Italy! The Venice Biennale is known as the Olympics of the art world, complete with golden awards, stunning achievement and sometimes, disappointment. This year has seen more female artists, Black artists and minority cultures representing national pavilions than even before. Take a tour with Daniel around the storied pavilions and canals of the world’s most prestigious art event, speaking with participants, former Australian representatives and...
May 11, 2022•54 min
What do artists think about when making huge public art? Lindy Lee is making the most expensive work commissioned by the NGA, and Judy Watson's bara will grace Sydney's harbour with a giant Gadigal fish hook.Then, the US art lab addressing the problem of confederate monuments to racist causes... and Indigenous artists Julie Gough, Nicholas Galanin and Yhonnie Scarce on Australia's own colonial memorialising.
May 04, 2022•54 min
Rebecca Belmore is one of Canada's most important artists and is now having her first Australian solo show.Plus, visit Sally Smart's studio, inspired by one of the most influential dance companies of the twentieth century. And Yuki Kihara's Venice Biennale entry Paradise Camp, where the artist reimagines tropes used by Paul Gauguin and Samoan tourism brochures, with a Fa’afafine cast.
Apr 27, 2022•54 min
Marco Fusinato is representing Australia at the 2022 Venice Biennale with work for 'monstrous times'.Plus, artworks that tell queer stories selected from the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, for NGV Queer.And who was Lala Deen Dayal? The pioneering Indian photographer who documented a vast nation.
Apr 20, 2022•54 min
Victor Ehikhamenor is one of Nigeria’s most prominent artists and calls for the Benin bronzes, the looted cultural treasures of Edo State, to be repatriated. So what did he do when he was asked to make an artwork in response to the memorial to the 19th C. British leader of the looting?Plus, South Australian artist Helen Fuller turns her hand to unconventional ceramic pots -- and an original way to exhibit them.And why tropical fruit, low-cost bejewelling and a Thai auteur inspire artist Nathan B...
Apr 13, 2022•54 min
David Noonan makes intriguing black-and-white collage of people in often liminal states. But despite their evocative drama, his pictures don't tell a story.Plus, Hoda Afshar's photographic project Speak the Wind, about people in the Persian Gulf who believe that humans can be possessed by the wind.And spotlight on the Australian artist and feminist Erica McGilchrist, whose painting series in the 1950s was based on her experiences teaching art at a mental hospital.
Apr 06, 2022•54 min
Ian Strange uses entire houses -slated for demolition- as his canvas, exploring the symbolism of 'home' through eras of unaffordability and urban development.Plus, meet Irish artist Sean Lynch onsite at his new public artwork in inner-city Melbourne.Sera Waters uses old English needlework techniques and crafts to examine the legacy of her settler forbears.And celebrating the work of feminist artist Frances Phoenix, whose doilies and embroidery packed a punch to the patriarchy.
Mar 29, 2022•54 min
Colombian artist Carolina Caycedo gives voice to rivers dammed for huge hydroelectric projects.What happens when the art world turns its back on Russia's major contemporary art museum?And Dennis Golding shares memories of 'the Block', using treasured iron lace from Redfern's terrace houses.
Mar 22, 2022•54 min
Aunty Elaine Russell has legendary status in her home town of Sydney. She was an artist and storyteller who inspired many, and whose work has been acquired by a number of Australia's major galleries and museums.
Mar 21, 2022•11 min
British filmmaker and installation artist Isaac Julien on his latest works: a spellbinding interpretation of Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi and a portrait of 19th C. abolitionist Fredrick Douglass. Plus, Heather B. Swann's potent retelling of the Greek myth 'Leda and the swan', where Leda is at the centre of the story.And why you should know the name Thanakupi -- the pioneering ceramic artist from the Thaynakwith language group in western Cape York, whose legacy looms large.
Mar 15, 2022•54 min
Jennifer Herd is a Mbarbarrum artist and founding member of Brisbane's proppaNOW art collective.
Mar 14, 2022•8 min
Floods have ravaged art galleries and studios in northern New South Wales. We hear from a gallery director and artist Megan Cope.Plus Ukrainian-Australian artist Stanislava Pinchuk.And a spotlight on the bold modernist printmaker Ethel Spowers.
Mar 08, 2022•54 min
Dianne Jones is a provocative photo-media artist who manipulates images from colonial art to give prominence to Indigenous people.
Mar 07, 2022•15 min
The goddess of love has reigned supreme through Western art, but her roots are darker, more ancient and shape-shifting than you'd expect.Historian and TV presenter Prof Bettany Hughes joins Daniel to tell the surprising history of Venus/Aphrodite.Plus, a seascape painter who lives on a yacht, and step into the studio of Yul Scarf, who uses ceramics, old bricks and the revived tech of QR codes, to explore questions of colonialism.
Mar 01, 2022•54 min
Laurel Nannup is a Noongar artist and elder who grew up near Pinjara in Western Australia. As part of the Stolen Generation she was taken from her mother at the age of 8 and sent to the Wanderling Mission.
Feb 28, 2022•16 min
Who makes up “the canon” in Art today? A new book picks 50 artists from around the world, and across centuries, to take a meaningful snapshot of art masters.Plus, a curator on 16th C. artist Lavinia Fontana, Europe's first female professional painter.And Atong Atem's panoramic collage that charts 10 years of life, family and art.
Feb 22, 2022•54 min
Julie Gough is a Trawlwoolway artist whose practice often refers to her family's experiences as Tasmanian Aboriginal people and is held in many private collections and major galleries in Australia.
Feb 21, 2022•15 min
Patricia Piccinini is Australia’s foremost artist exploring the relationship between humanity and technology, and the ethical tensions it inspires in the viewer.Plus, introducing our new segment My Art Crush. Jess Cochrane on the impact of Édouard Manet's Olympia on her work.And Thea Anamara Perkins on family legacy and NFTs.
Feb 15, 2022•54 min
