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Talk Art

Arts & Culture Podcasts

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Location:

United Kingdom

Description:

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Language:

English


Episodes
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Alison Goldfrapp

12/21/2025
It’s the Talk Art Christmas special! We meet Alison Goldfrapp, the creative force behind some of the most captivating music of the past two and a half decades!!! We celebrate Alison’s new reinterpretation of David Bowie’s Heroes which she has just released with Lorne Balfe for The War Between The Land and The Sea soundtrack, the new TV series starting our very own Russell Tovey. Having set a towering bar for synth-pop in the 21st century, Alison Goldfrapp– the magnetic British songwriter, vocalist, performer & producer – is recognised for approaching each iteration of her stellar career from an innovative new position. With the release of Alison's debut solo album The Love Invention — an electrifying dance-pop suite — her multi-faceted musicianship reaches a new peak. “It feels like a new time, and a new era,” Alison says decisively. The momentum towards her journey into solo music was solidified back in 2021, when she was collabored with Röyksopp on the shimmering track “Impossible”. This led to Alison signing with legendary Skint Records and recording 'The Love Invention' which marks Alison’s reawakening as a dancefloor priestess, featuring an intoxicating showcase of the disco and house influences that have always been at the heart of her musical DNA. Alison's previous seven albums with Goldfrapp were fuelled by an unfailing modernity & a sixth sense for sounds that were more timeless than any trend. The band's 1999 debut album 'Felt Mountain' was nominated for a Mercury Prize and over their career they produced 3 #1 US dance singles & received multiple Grammy nominations incl. Best Electronic/Dance Album. The multi-platinum selling band have won prestigious awards including 2 Ivor Novellos, ASCAP/PRS, Music Week, MTV Europe and Music Producers Guild award. They were also nominated for two BRITs and a Mercury. Follow @Alison_Goldfrapp and @GoldfrappMusic. Alison’s new album FLUX is out now. Watch @TheWarBetweenTV now on BBC iplayer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:01:00:49

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Barbara Dawson (Francis Bacon Studio at Hugh Lane Gallery)

12/18/2025
Russell & Robert meet Barbara Dawson for a behind the scenes visit to Francis Bacon’s Studio, installed in Dublin’s iconic Hugh Lane Gallery. The gallery is currently closed to the public for major renovations so we thought it would be a great opportunity to bring the studio and galleries to life with this exclusive audio tour, while closed to public. A visit to Francis Bacon’s Studio at Hugh Lane Gallery gives you a unique opportunity to experience the working process of one of the twentieth century’s greatest artists. Born in Dublin in 1909, Bacon grew up in county Kildare. He left home at the age of sixteen and eventually settled in London where he established himself as one of the leading international artists of his generation. Bacon moved into 7 Reece Mews, London, in 1961 where he lived and worked until his death in 1992. In 1998, director Barbara Dawson secured the donation of Francis Bacon’s studio from the artist’s heir, John Edwards, and Brian Clarke, executor of the Estate of Francis Bacon. Her vision was to remove the entire studio including all of the items without exception, as well as the architectural features, and relocate the studio as it was, to the Hugh Lane Gallery. In the August of that year, as project manager, she assembled a team of conservators, curators, and archaeologists to carry out the move. The archaeologists made survey and elevation drawings of the small studio, mapping out the spaces and locations of all the objects, while the conservators prepared the works for travel and curators tagged and packed each of the items, including the dust. The walls, doors floor and ceiling were also removed. Follow @TheHughLane and visit: https://hughlane.ie/arts_artists/francis-bacons-studio/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:01:02:30

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Isabel Nolan (Live at Dublin Gallery Weekend)

12/11/2025
We are delighted to announce the first ever Irish episode of Russell Tovey and Robert Diament’s acclaimed Talk Art podcast, recorded live at the National Gallery of Ireland Lecture Theatre on Saturday November 8th for Dublin Gallery Weekend 2025. Isabel Nolan, Ireland’s representative at the 2026 Venice Biennale, has an expansive practice that incorporates sculptures, paintings, textile works, photographs, writing and works on paper. Her subject matter is similarly comprehensive, taking in cosmological phenomena, religious reliquaries, Greco-Roman sculptures and literary/historical figures, examining the behaviour of humans and animals alike. These diverse artistic investigations are driven by intensive research, but the end result is always deeply personal and subjective. Exploring the “intimacy of materiality”, Nolan’s work ranges from the architectural – steel sculptures that frame or obstruct our path – to small handmade objects in clay, hand-tufted wool rugs illuminated with striking cosmic imagery, to drawings and paintings using humble gouache or colouring pencils. In concert, they feel equally enchanted by and afraid of the world around us, expressing humanity’s fear of mortality and deep need for connection as well as its startling achievements in art and thought. Driven by “the calamity, the weirdness, horror, brevity and wonder of existing alongside billions of other preoccupied humans”, her works give generous form to fundamental questions about the ways the chaos of the world is made beautiful or given meaning through human activity. In 2026, Nolan will represent Ireland at the 61st Venice Biennale, with Georgina Jackson and The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art as the curator and Cian O’Brien as producer. In 2025, Nolan participated in the 13th Liverpool Biennial, Bedrock, curated by Marie-Anne McQuay. Isabel Nolan lives and works in Dublin. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:01:04:25

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Marco Falcioni (BOSS & Art Basel Awards)

12/9/2025
This episode is a special partnership with BOSS. Special episode recorded during Miami Basel week, December 2025. #AD Russell & Robert catch up with Marco Falcioni, Creative Director of HUGO BOSS. We discuss the Art Basel Awards which BOSS have been partnering with. The BOSS AWARD for Outstanding Achievement was presented at Art Basel Miami Beach to Meriam Bennani for her work entitled “For My Best Family.” The BOSS AWARD for Outstanding Achievement celebrates work that embodies the BOSS values of boldness, personal authenticity, ambition, and responsibility. It honors a singular work, produced within the last 18 months, that has catalyzed change at the intersection of art, technological innovation, social dialogue, and identity. Moroccan-born and New York-based, Meriam Bennani uses a broad range of artistic mediums that include video, sound, animation, sculpture as well as large-scale installations, among others. She’s known for mixing humor, pop-cultural aesthetics and digital language in her storytelling to create immersive, playful yet critical pieces that resonate with the viewer. The BOSS AWARD for Outstanding Achievement has a prize of US$100,000 and empowers the awardee to amplify voices beyond their own, allowing them to allocate a reward of US$50,000 to a community or cause of the artist’s choosing. The remaining US$50,000 will be invested in a project, commission, or cultural activation by the artist that will be co-developed with BOSS. Introduced earlier this year in May, the Art Basel Awards recognized 36 Medalists across nine categories within the contemporary art world. These categories included iconic, established, and emerging artists, as well as cross-disciplinary creators, curators, institutions, patrons, media and storytellers, and allies shaping the future of cutting-edge artistry. Through a peer-driven process, the Medalists then selected 12 Gold Medalists from among their ranks, who were honored with the highest distinction at last night’s ceremony. BOSS has supported art for 30 years and is known for timeless and sophisticated style, and commitment to culture, sport and sustainability, underpinned by technical innovations developed over its century-long history. Russell explores his inspirations and design approach, including runway collections, collaborations with David Beckham, Aston Martin, and reimagining classics with a modern twist. Follow @FalcioniMarco and @BOSS Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:41:20

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Kate Bryan & David Shrigley

12/5/2025
We meet curator Kate Bryan and artist David Shrigley to explore their new book How To Art. Recorded live in London, in front of a sold out audience. What is art, where do I find it, and once I’m in front of it, what am I supposed to think about it? Kate Bryan is a self-confessed art addict who has worked with art for over twenty years. But before she studied art history at university, she’d visited a gallery just twice in her life and had no idea she was entering an elitist world. Now, she’s on a mission to help everybody come to art. Like playing or listening to music, or cooking and eating great food, reading or watching films, making art or looking at other people’s deserves to be an enriching part of all our lives. How to Art provides a nifty way to ingest art on your own terms. From where it is to what it is, to tips on how to actually enjoy famous artworks like the Mona Lisa, to how to own art and make art at home, to vital advice for making a career as an artist and even how to make your dog more cultural, How to Art gives art to everyone—and makes it fun. Laced throughout with original artworks by the very down-to-earth artist David Shrigley. Follow @KateBryan_Art and @DavidShrigley Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:01:03:02

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Louisa Buck (Cork Street Galleries special episode)

12/1/2025
#AD - Cork Street Galleries special episode! We meet art critic Louisa Buck to explore 100 years of Cork Street! Cork Street Galleries this year celebrates its centenary as a pioneering force in the art world, with 2025 marking 100 years as the iconic London art destination. A specially curated programme honours its rich legacy as the historic and enduring home of modern and contemporary art in London. In tribute to the centennial year, a first-of-its-kind initiative, a group exhibition entitled Fear Gives Wings to Courage was staged across all 15 galleries on Cork Street in the Summer, with each gallery presenting a response to a central theme conceived by Tarini Malik, curator of modern and contemporary Art at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Fear Gives Wings to Courage has been commissioned in three parts as a response to the curatorial theme conceived by Malik. This is comprised of Fear Gives Wings to Courage Part I; a new edition of the Cork Street Galleries Banners Commission forming an outdoor element of the exhibition on view until the end of 2025; Fear Gives Wings to Courage Part II; a presentation of works within each participating gallery space, on view from 11 to 25 July 2025; and Fear Gives Wings to Courage Part III; CATALOGUE Issue 8:0, guest-edited by Malik, which coincided with Frieze London 2025. Taking its title from Jean Cocteau’s seminal 1938 work La peur donnant des ailes au courage (Fear Giving Wings to Courage), the exhibition celebrates 100 years of Cork Street and the transformative potential of artists' voices both within gallery spaces and outside of them. Gesturing to the street's long-established cultural history, the exhibition's theme recalls Cork Street’s pioneering role in transforming London into a hub for international art practices in the twentieth century, while also making it one of the key platforms in Europe for the expansion of Surrealist and Dadaist movements. 13 years after Freddy Mayor established the first gallery on Cork Street in 1925, Peggy Guggenheim opened her 'Guggenheim Jeune' gallery in 1938. While hosting her first show with the famed polymath Jean Cocteau, the gallery stirred up significant controversy due to his painting La peur donnant des ailes au courage (Fear Giving Wings to Courage), which was confiscated by British customs authorities upon arrival in the United Kingdom. Similarly, this exhibition nods to the necessity of the gallery ecosystem in encouraging, upholding and presenting artists' practices that are assertions of agency in the face of societal and political pressures. The galleries on Cork Street were asked to respond to the theme with artists’ work that can be thought of as emblematic of Cocteau’s unabashed vigour and Guggenheim’s abiding belief in supporting artists. The galleries were also encouraged to profile artists who continue to draw from the legacies of Surrealism, not as a mere style or movement within the Western canon, but rather as a state of mind; a fluid, boundless approach of navigating notions of the self and society that transgress borders and temporalities. Follow @CorkStreetGalleries and Visit http://CorkStGalleries.com to discover more about this history of Cork Street as well as current exhibitions! Follow Louisa Buck on her Instagram @LouBuck01 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:59:54

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Edmund de Waal

11/27/2025
The artist and author Edmund de Waal (b.1964, Nottingham) has curated the first major exhibition of acclaimed Danish ceramicist Axel Salto (1889 – 1961), considered one of the greatest masters of 20th-century ceramic art. Salto was a radical polymathic figure who crossed boundaries from one discipline to another, producing an extraordinary body of ceramic work alongside paintings, wood- cuts, drawings, book illustration and textiles. Salto is internationally renowned for his highly individual and expressive stoneware inspired by organic forms, characterised by budding, sprouting and fluted surface textures that appear to ripple and burst with life. Salto’s ceramics will be shown alongside lesser-known and unseen works on paper, illustrations, writings and textiles, with a major new installation by de Waal reflecting on Salto’s enduring influence. Playing with Fire: Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto is now open and runs until 4th May 2026 at Hepworth Wakefield. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:01:11:09

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Jeffrey Fraenkel on Diane Arbus (Live in London)

11/20/2025
— Sanctum Sanctorum: a sacred room or inner chamber; a place of inviolable privacy Diane Arbus: Sanctum Sanctorum, an exhibition of forty-five photographs made in private places across New York, New Jersey, California, and London between 1961 and 1971, is on view at David Zwirner, London, from 6 November to 20 December 2025, and travels to Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco in spring 2026. The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive monograph reproducing all works in the exhibition, jointly published by both galleries. Through her singular combination of intelligence, charisma, intuition, and courage, Diane Arbus was frequently invited into homes and other private realms seldom seen by strangers. Though made in intimate settings, her photographs evidence no sense of intrusion or trespass. Instead, they reveal an unspoken exchange between photographer and subject, a moment of recognition in which confidences emerge freely and without judgment. Arbus’s desire to know people embraced a vast spectrum of humanity. Her subjects in Sanctum Sanctorum include debutantes, nudists, celebrities, aspiring celebrities, socialites, transvestites, babies, widows, circus performers, lovers, female impersonators, and a blind couple in their bedroom. The exhibition brings together little-known works, such as Girl sitting in bed with her boyfriend, N.Y.C. 1966; Ozzie and Harriet Nelson on their bed, Los Angeles 1970; and Interior decorator at the nudist camp in his trailer, New Jersey 1963, alongside celebrated images like Mexican dwarf in his hotel room, N.Y.C. 1970 and A naked man being a woman, N.Y.C. 1968. While many of Arbus’s photographs have become part of the public’s collective consciousness since her landmark retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1972, seen in this context, viewers may discover aspects of even familiar works that have previously gone unnoticed. Sanctum Sanctorum follows two recent major exhibitions of the artist’s work: Cataclysm: The 1972 Diane Arbus Retrospective Revisited at David Zwirner New York (2022) and Los Angeles (2025), and Diane Arbus: Constellation at LUMA, Arles (2023–2024) and the Park Avenue Armory, New York (2025). Follow @DianeArbus @FraenkelGallery @DavidZwirner Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:52:25

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Chantal Joffe

11/13/2025
This evocative new series of large-scale paintings explores themes of memory, nostalgia and personal history to offer a reflective and deeply personal journey into the artist’s childhood and family life. I Remember takes its title from Joe Brainard’s iconic memoir and is inspired by the late American writer’s poetic prompts that evoke the atmosphere and time of memories. Joffe’s paintings attempt to capture the fleeting yet enduring nature of memory and how it shapes our sense of self. The exhibition is accompanied by a new text, entitled Time Transmission, by Olivia Laing. ‘Joe Brainard’s book always makes me list for myself the things I remember and the atmosphere and time that they conjure. These paintings are a sort of memoir of my childhood and of my family, an attempt at a kind of time travel. When I am making them, it’s almost as if I am existing in that past.’ – Chantal Joffe Victoria Miro is delighted to present I Remember, Chantal Joffe’s fourteenth solo exhibition with the gallery. I Remember takes its title from Joe Brainard’s iconic memoir and is inspired by the late American writer’s poetic prompts that evoke the atmosphere and time of memories. Joffe’s paintings attempt to capture the fleeting yet enduring nature of memory and how it shapes our sense of self. ‘Joe Brainard’s book always makes me list for myself the things I remember and the atmosphere and time that they conjure. These paintings are a sort of memoir of my childhood and of my family, an attempt at a kind of time travel. When I am making them, it’s almost as if I am existing in that past.’ – Chantal Joffe Chantal Joffe’s paintings are always attentive to narratives about connection, perception and representation, alerting us to the endless intricacies of bodily expression, the complexities of emotion and attachment, and how these change over time. This evocative new series explores themes of memory, nostalgia and personal history to offer a reflective and deeply personal journey into the artist’s childhood and family life.New publication Published by MACK in November 2025, Painting Writing Texting chronicles the friendship between Chantal Joffe and writer Olivia Laing, which began in 2016 when Joffe approached Laing to ask if they would sit for a portrait. From this unexpected encounter, the two embarked on an expansive and ranging collaboration, fuelled by conversations about art, books, and their shared attempts to understand the world. Combining ten essays by Laing with a sequence of paintings by Joffe, Painting Writing Texting explores the strange and risky process by which everyday life is converted into art. About the artist Born in 1969, Chantal Joffe lives and works in London. She holds an MA from the Royal College of Art and was awarded the Royal Academy Wollaston Prize in 2006. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:01:07:10

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Alice Neel Estate - Ginny and Hartley Neel

11/6/2025
We meet Ginny and Hartley Neel, Executive Directors of the Estate of Alice Neel, and the artist’s daughter-in-law and son. We explore her current exhibition in Belgium at Xavier Hufkens. Alice Neel is widely recognised as one of the great American painters of the twentieth century. Her success, however, has largely been posthumous. In the past decade, interest in her work has grown exponentially, with a series of landmark exhibitions and art historical studies firmly cementing her position on the international stage. Neel’s oeuvre is fascinating on two counts: not only was she an incredibly gifted painter, but also an astute and idiosyncratic chronicler of some of the most tumultuous decades in American history. While she also painted landscapes and still lifes, Neel is best known as a painter of people. Her sitters included artists, writers, intellectuals and family members, as well as people living on the margins of society, particularly immigrants. Deeply committed to equality and social justice, Neel was interested in the human struggle for survival, and in mankind’s capacity for resilience in the face of hardship and deprivation. With her distinctive brushwork and remarkable feel for colour, Neel succeeded in capturing the inner psychological depths of her sitters. Her commitment to truth and dedication to figuration—unfashionable during her lifetime—ensured that her work remained permanently out of kilter with avant-garde movements such as abstract expressionism, pop art and minimalism. Yet her uncompromising approach gave rise to a unique and highly individualistic body of work that continues to exert an influence on contemporary artistic production. Alice Neel Still Lifes and Street Scenes runs until 22 November 2025 at Xavier Hufkens, Van Eyck, Brussels, Belgium. Follow @XavierHufkens The first retrospective dedicated to the artist in Italy, ’Alice Neel: I Am the Century’ is now open @PinacotecaAgnelli at in Turin, Italy – on view through 6 April 2026. Special thanks to the Estate of Alice Neel and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels for making this conversation possible. #aliceneel #xavierhufkens #pinacotecaagnelli Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:01:06:51

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Katy Hessel

10/30/2025
We meet Katy Hessel to discuss her incredible new book How To Live An Artful Life. The year ahead is a gift that has been given to you. What might you do with it? Dive into the year with the wisdom of artists. Gathered from interviews, personal conversations, books and talks, How to Live an Artful Life moves through the months of the year offering you thoughts, reflections and encouragements from artists such as Marina Abramovic, Nan Goldin, Lubaina Himid, Louise Bourgeois and many more. With a thought for every day of the year, whether looking for beginnings in January, freedom in summer, or transformation as the nights draw in, this is a book of words to cherish. The year is full of the promise of work that has yet to be written, paintings that are yet to be painted, people who have yet to meet, talk, or fall in love. With this book in hand, pay attention, and see the world anew. Go out and find it, taste it, seize it, and live it – artfully. Katy Hessel is an art historian and the author of The Story of Art without Men, the international bestseller and Waterstones Book of the Year 2022. She runs @thegreatwomenartists on Instagram, hosts The Great Women Artists Podcast, interviewing artists such as Tracey Emin and Marina Abramovic, and is a columnist for the Guardian. Hessel is a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University and a Trustee of Charleston. In 2024, she launched Museums Without Men, an audio series highlighting works by women artists in museum collections worldwide, such as The Met and Tate Britain. Follow @Katy.Hessel on Instagram. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:58:33

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Maggi Hambling

10/23/2025
Happy 80th birthday to Maggi Hambling, our guest this week! We meet Maggi in her studio to discuss her 6 decades of making painting and sculpture. Maggi Hambling CBE was born in Suffolk in 1945. She studied at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing from 1960 under Cedric Morris and Lett Haines, then at Ipswich School of Art, Camberwell, and finally the Slade School of Art, graduating in 1969. In 1980 she was the First Artist in Residence at the National Gallery, London, and in 1995 she won the Jerwood Painting Prize (with Patrick Caulfield). Public sculpture includes A conversation with Oscar Wilde (1998) at Adelaide Street, London, facing Charing Cross Station and Scallop (2003), a sculpture to celebrate Benjamin Britten, at Aldeburgh beach, Suffolk and for which the artist was awarded the Marsh Award for Excellence in Public Sculpture. A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft was unveiled in Newington Green, London in 2020. Hambling’s work is held in public collections including at Tate, British Museum, CAFA, Beijing and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Visit: http://maggihambling.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:58:51

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Rose Blake

10/16/2025
We meet Rose Blake an illustrator and artist making drawings and pictures in London and has just illustrated Russell & Robert’s first children’s book Art School (In A Book). Rose Blake studied at Kingston University and the Royal College of Art. She was awarded the D&AD Best New Blood Award and was shortlisted for the AOI prize and The World Illustration Awards. She shows with the Rebecca Hossack Gallery, and has had two solo show there; ‘Now I Am An Artist’ in 2015 and ‘Sing Swim Ok Moon’ in 2018. She is a Visiting Lecturer at Kingston University on the Illustration and Animation BA. Art School (In A Book) is out on Thursday 23rd October 2025. Pre-order now from Amazon, Waterstone’s and Bookshop.org An exciting introduction to the world of contemporary art for young creatives from the makers of hit podcast Talk Art, actor Russell Tovey and gallerist Robert Diament. Do you love art and want to know more but don't know where to start? Introducing Art School (in a book), a virtual gallery where you can see the most exciting contemporary artists of today, as well as some of the greatest from the twentieth century, including Henri Matisse, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Frida Kahlo. And who are the visionaries, the icons, the ones to watch now? With works by Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, and David Hockney, study the art of 20 key artists working today, find out what inspires them, how they work and the meaning behind their art. With Russell and Robert as your guides you will also discover the artist within you, with tips on new ways of seeing and reacting to the world around you and guidance on how you can develop your own creativity. Buy Art School from Waterstone’s: https://www.waterstones.com/book/art-school-in-a-book/russell-tovey/robert-diament/9781510231412 Follow @IAmRoseBlake on Instagram. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:55:24

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Damian Barr

10/9/2025
We meet writer Damian Barr to discuss his new book The Two Roberts. This intoxicating, brave and compassionate novel from the author of Maggie and Me reimagines one of the stongest and most passionate love stories of modern British art, following Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde from their encounter at Glasgow Art School to partying with Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon in London as the Second World War draws near. 'He will stay like this forever, Robert's arm draped round him. They will be forever twenty.' Scotland, 1933. Bobby MacBryde is on his way. After years grafting at Lees Boot Factory, he's off to the Glasgow School of Art, to his future. On his first day he will meet another Robert, a quiet man with loose dark curls - and never leave his side. Together they will spend every penny and every minute devouring Glasgow - its botanical gardens, the Barras market, a whole hidden city - all the while loving each other behind closed doors. With the world on the brink of war, their unrivalled talent will take them to Paris, Rome, London. They will become stars as the bombs fall, hosting wild parties with the likes of Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Elizabeth Smart. But the brightest stars burn fastest. Stunningly reimagined, The Two Roberts is a profoundly moving story of devotion and obsession, art and class. It is a love letter to MacBryde and Colquhoun, the almost-forgotten artists who tried to change the way the world sees - and paid a devastating price. We also discuss the new exhibition curated by Damian. Explore the lives and work of the ‘Two Roberts’ — Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun, two Ayrshire artists who first met at Glasgow School of Art in 1933. This infamous duo, both lovers and creative partners, played a vital role in mid-20th century British art influencing contemporaries including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and John Minton. This exhibition, the first in England since 1962, surveys their remarkable creative journey from 1930s Glasgow to wartime Europe, through London during the Blitz, ending in tragedy in 1962. This exhibition traces their spectacular rise and fall and puts them back where they were—at the centre of an extraordinary creative landscape in a rapidly changing world. Visit the exhibition Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun: Artists, Lovers, Outsiders, from 15 October 2025–12 April 2026, at Charleston in Lewes: https://www.charleston.org.uk/exhibition/robert-macbryde-and-robert-colquhoun-artists-lovers-outsiders/ Follow @MrDamianBarr Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:01:01:49

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Sean Ono Lennon

10/2/2025
We meet Sean Ono Lennon to explore his music and life with art, plus we discuss the forthcoming box set Power to the People, that Sean has produced, of his parents’ Yoko Ono and John Lennon’s 1972 fundraising live New York concert. We consider activism in art, especially the legacy of John and Yoko’s timeless work together (as also documented in the recent One to One documentary). Recorded live at Madison Square Garden, New York City on 30 August 1972, the Power to The People box set includes 31 Live Tracks from John & Yoko's two historic sets at the One To One Concert backed by Plastic Ono Band, Elephant’s Memory and Special Guests. They were John Lennon’s only full-length concerts after leaving The Beatles and the last two full-length concerts that John & Yoko performed together. Released from 10th October 2025. Learn more: https://www.johnlennon.com/news/power-to-the-people-deluxe-box-4lp-2lp-2cd-1cd-preorder-now/ Sean Ono Lennon is a world renowned musician, songwriter, and producer. “He has always chosen his own musical path, following it deftly as he splits the difference between pop and experimental pursuits. He came of age in the kaleidoscopic '90s, working with Cibo Matto and issuing his first solo album, 1998's Into the Sun, on the Beastie Boys' Grand Royal label, while beginning a long stint playing in his mother Yoko Ono's band. In the following decade he formed the psychedelic duo the Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger and the improvisational prog group Mystical Weapons. As his musical interests expanded further, he teamed with Les Claypool to form the hard-to-categorize project the Claypool Lennon Delirium, branched out into film scoring, explored more mainstream territory as he worked with artists like Lana Del Ray, Lady Gaga and Lily Allen, and delved into jazz as well. His first foray into that style was 2024's Asterisms, a fully instrumental album of electronics-fused jazz and psychedelic soundscape music. The son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Lennon was born in New York City in 1975. During his childhood, he was educated in Swiss boarding schools, but occasionally appeared on his mother's albums and sang on the 1984 Ono tribute Every Man Has a Woman. In his early teens, he was occasionally seen decked out in a plastic Thriller jacket and hanging out with Michael Jackson, but his first official step into the spotlight was in the form of filmed interviews for the 1988 documentary Imagine: John Lennon. Three years later, he organized -- with Ono and Lenny Kravitz -- a star-studded re-recording of his father's "Give Peace a Chance" as a protest to the Gulf War. That year, he also appeared on Kravitz's album Mama Said.” Biography by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi. In 2025, Sean is working on a new Claypool Lennon Delirium album (their 3rd) and is directing a documentary film on the crazy genius fashion designers 3as4, who have designed outfits for Bjork and Yoko among many others. Follow: @Sean_Ono_Lennon, @YokoOno and @JohnLennon Visit: johnlennon.com imaginepeace.com citizenofnutopia.com escapetonutopia.com http://theclaypoollennondelirium.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:59:09

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Marco Falcioni (Creative Director of BOSS)

10/1/2025
This episode is a special partnership with BOSS. Special episode recorded in Milan, September 2025. #AD Russell meets Marco Falcioni, Creative Director of HUGO BOSS. We discuss the Art Basel Awards which BOSS have been partnering with, Marcos' beginnings discovering fashion in the clubs of Rome, how art is intrinsic to his designing, and the importance of his weekly practice of visiting art exhibitions including Venice Biennale. Collaborations and partnerships are very important to him and the integrity and respect he has for his close team at BOSS. We discuss Lucio Fontana, Spatialism, Jannis Kounellis, Arte Povera, and how their art, and the art movements they were part of, opened up his mind to the power of art. BOSS is known for timeless and sophisticated style, and commitment to culture, sport and sustainability, underpinned by technical innovations developed over its century-long history. Russell explores his inspirations and design approach, including runway collections, collaborations with David Beckham, Aston Martin, and reimagining classics with a modern twist. Follow @FalcioniMarco and @BOSS Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:45:47

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Joan Snyder

9/25/2025
For six decades American artist Joan Snyder has reimagined the narrative potential of abstraction through her paintings, drawings and prints. She first garnered widespread recognition in the early 1970s with her Stroke paintings that dissect the most fundamental of painterly gestures: the brushstroke. Fuelling abstraction with autobiography, she consciously worked against the male-dominated conventions of Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism and Colour Field painting, which were prevalent in the New York art scene into which she emerged. ‘I wanted more in painting, not less,’ she says. ‘I wanted to tell a story, have a beginning, a middle, an end... to do something else, something much more intense, personal and complex.’ Building a vocabulary of recurring personal motifs – from roses and breasts, to ponds and mud, totems, screaming faces, grapes, scrawled words, cherry trees and moons, pumpkins and sunflowers – she pushes the formal possibilities of paint while developing a complex materiality through an additive process of collaged materials. Snyder’s rigorous interrogation of abstraction is underpinned by her feminist outlook, as she centres ‘the essence of feelings of a female body’ to carve out new terrain in contemporary American painting. Love from an Abstract Artist is an exhibition spanning over six decades of American artist Joan Snyder’s work on paper. Featuring nearly 50 new and historical works, dating from the mid-1960s to the present day, it bears witness to the important position drawing has always held in Snyder’s practice. Often diaristic and autobiographical, these varied works encompass Snyder’s grids, symbols, landscapes and strokes, and incorporate collaged materials including fabric, rope, berries, herbs and hand-pressed paper pulp, among others. Snyder has continually expanded the possibilities of drawing. Her works on paper are, as the American critic and art historian Faye Hirsch writes, ‘independent and self-sufficient objects’. Love from an Abstract Artist follows the artist’s first solo exhibition, Body & Soul, at Thaddaeus Ropac in London in 2024. Snyder is recognised for developing a new, distinctly embodied language of abstract painting at a time when legacies of Abstract Expressionism loomed large and Minimalism espoused new conditions of sterility and mechanical facture in American art. In this male-dominated climate, she dissected the ‘anatomy’ of painting to its constituent parts and, in the mid-1970s, began adding personal motifs to her work such as bodies and breasts, vulvas and hearts, totems and fields of flowers. ‘It seemed to me that in order to go forward, I had to push back hard,’ she reflects. ‘To again embrace ideas that were at the very foundation of all my thinking about painting – about structure, about application, about meaning, about materials.’ The earliest works in the exhibition including Stripes/Mounds and Green Strokes (both 1968) reveal how drawing offered the artist a framework, outside of painting, through which to deconstruct its most fundamental elements. ‘My drawings are the skeletons upon which I plan to add muscle and bones and flesh,’ she has said. Presenting a series of reduced marks – blobs, lines, stripes and strokes – these works contain the pictorial discoveries that would catalyse one of the artist’s major bodies of work, the Stroke paintings. Joan Snyder: Love from an Abstract Artist is now open at Thaddaeus Ropac, until 4 October 2025, 37 Dover Street London W1S 4NJ. Follow @Joan_Snyder_Art and @ThaddeusRopac on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:51:57

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Peaches and Klaus Biesenbach (Live in Berlin)

9/18/2025
Talk Art Live in Berlin. Season 26 of Talk Art begins!!!! This episode is a special Paid Partnership collaboration with Berlin Art Week, who flew Russell & Robert to Berlin. Recorded live, in front of an audience, outside the Neue Nationalgalerie in September 2025. Special guests Peaches @peachesnisker (musician, producer, director, performance artist) and Klaus Biesenbach @klausbiesenbach (Director, Neue Nationalgalerie) join the conversation about art, music, and the Berlin art scene. An iconic feminist musician, producer, director, and performance artist, Peaches has spent nearly two decades pushing boundaries and wielding immeasurable influence over mainstream pop culture from outside of its confines, carving a bold, sexually progressive path in her own image that's opened the door for countless others to follow. She’s collaborated with everyone from Iggy Pop and Daft Punk to Kim Gordon and Major Lazer, had her music featured cultural watermarks like Lost In Translation, The Handmaid's Tale, and Broad City among others, and seen her work studied at universities around the world. Dubbed a “genuine heroine” by the New York Times, Peaches has released five critically acclaimed studio albums blending electronic music, hip-hop, and punk rock while tackling gender politics, sexual identity, ageism, and the patriarchy. Uncut has raved that her work brought together "high art, low humour and deluxe filth [in] a hugely seductive combination,” while Rolling Stone called her “surreally funny [and] nasty.” An equally prolific visual artist, Peaches has directed over twenty of her own videos, designed one of the most raw and creative stage shows in popular music, and has appeared at modern art’s most prestigious gatherings, from Art Basel Miami to the Venice Biennale. On top of it all, she mounted a one-woman production of 'Jesus Christ Superstar’—redubbed ‘Peaches Christ Superstar’—which earned international raves, composed and performed the electro-rock opera 'Peaches Does Herself,' which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and sang the title role in a production of Monteverdi's epic 17th-century opera 'L’Orfeo' in Berlin. Visit: https://www.teachesofpeaches.com/ Klaus Biesenbach began his career in Berlin 30 years ago aged 25, when he was one of a group that set up the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in a former margarine factory. In 2004, he became a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he rose to the position of chief curator and founded a new department for media and performance art. In 2010, he became director of MoMA PS1, the museum's outpost in Queen's. At MOCA in Los Angeles, he introduced free admission, expanded the collection and navigated the museum through the pandemic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:01:01:15

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Dominic Johnson & Jamal Butt on Hamad Butt (presented by Whitechapel Gallery and WePresent)

7/31/2025
WeTransfer x TalkArt special episode recorded live at Whitechapel Gallery. Recorded in front of a sold out live audience at @WhitechapelGallery we speak with @DominicJohnson and Jamal Butt to explore the current HAMAD BUTT exhibition: his life, art and legacy. ❤️ Thank you to @WePresent for organising this exciting event! Apprehensions is the first major survey of #HamadButt (b. 1962, Lahore, Pakistan; d. 1994, London, UK). One of the most innovative artists of his generation, Hamad Butt was a pioneer of intermedia art, bringing art into conversation with science, whilst also referencing his Queer and diasporic experiences. He offered a nuanced artistic response to the AIDS crisis in the UK, taking a conceptual rather than activist approach. Butt’s conceptually and technically ambitious works seamlessly interweave popular culture, science, alchemy, science fiction, and social and cultural concerns, as forms that are simultaneously poetic and provocative. They imagine sex and desire in a time of ‘plague’ as seductive yet frightening, intimate yet isolating, compelling yet dangerous – literally, in some cases, threatening to kill or injure. Born in Lahore, Pakistan, and raised in East London, Butt was British South Asian, Muslim by upbringing, and Queer. A contemporary of the Young British Artists, and their peer at Goldsmiths’ College, London, Butt was described by art critics as epitomising the new ‘hazardism’ in art of the 1990s, as his works often imply physical risk or endangerment. Follow: @WhitechapelGallery and @WePresent and check out WePresent today to see a series of never-before-seen artworks by Hamad, generously shared by Jamal. This episode is brought to you by our friends at WePresent, the Academy Award winning arts platform of WeTransfer. Collaborating with emerging young talent to renowned artists such as Marina Abramović, Riz Ahmed and Talk Art's own Russell Tovey, WePresent showcases the best in art, photography, film, music, literature and more, championing diversity in everything it does. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:01:12:36

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Harland Miller (Live at Nevill Holt Festival)

7/24/2025
Talk Art live! As part of the Nevill Holt Festival 2025, Talk Art hosted a live podcast recording with special guest Harland Miller. From the Nevill Holt Theatre, the world-renowned artist Miller joined Russell Tovey and Robert Diament in conversation to discuss his paintings and lifetime of art making. The Nevill Holt Festival is an annual celebration of arts and culture held in the Leicestershire countryside. Recorded on 12th June 2025, in front of a sold out audience. Artist and writer Harland Miller’s (born 1964) polychromatic and graphically vernacular paintings have garnered a devoted following. Infused with irreverent northern English humour and refined by his lifelong love of language, Miller’s work synthesises references from both high and low culture, spanning literature, music, self-help manuals and medieval iconography. Attesting to his deep-rooted engagement with the narrative, aural and typographical possibilities of language, Miller expressed, ‘People read before they can stop themselves, it’s automatic. Words offer a way into what you’re looking at, but no matter how integrated the text is, no matter how much you might think it’s synthesised into the painting, there is this imbalance in terms of how much the words are doing as words.’ Follow: @NevillHoltFestival Visit: https://nevillholtfestival.com/ Learn more about Harland’s paintings: https://www.whitecube.com/artists/harland-miller Follow us on Instagram: @TalkArt 📻 Listen to Talk Art, stream now: @Spotify @ApplePodcasts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:01:01:41