Talk Art

Robert meets painter David Dawson to discuss his new large scale landscape paintings, part of an ongoing body of work created en plein air in the artist's county of Montgomeryshire, Mid Wales. From April 25 – October 11, ‘Land, Sky, Light’ is a solo exhibition at Gainsborough’s House featuring fifteen of David Dawson’s (b. 1960) recent large-scale paintings of his native Welsh countryside. Having left Wales for London where he was a student at the Chelsea School of Art and later becoming a model and assistant to Lucian Freud, these paintings represent an artist returning to their childhood home to explore the nature and solitude of its surroundings. The canvases possess a deeply autobiographical nature, being representative of Dawson's formative childhood years in the country side, and his continued experiences of solitude and connection. Initially painted outdoors during each season of the year, the artist continues to work on them in his London studio to then complete them back in the countryside. About this creative process, which can take years, the artist states: “Painting to me is about the reality of being in the land and making marks that correlate to me reacting to that experience. You paint what you think you know. When I’m in the land, I always get surprised by what I see, even if I thought I knew the landscape in which I grew up so well. That’s why I need to be there, en plein air. Painting to me is very much about being in the presence of the land”. Forcing the artist to be alone in the fields, exposed to the elements, Dawson’s canvases are deeply autobiographical as they connect him to his formative years growing up in the countryside, when the artist learned about solitude. Dawson describes his practice in almost meditative terms: painting the Welsh landscape and its waterfalls, “being in the presence of the land”, becomes a way of getting rid of his ego, to reach a feeling of connection and communion with nature. Visit the exhibition: https://gainsborough.org/event/land-sky-light-new-landscapes-by-david-dawson/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Robert meets Nick Willing at the studio of his mother Paula Rego (1935–2022) to discuss a major exhibition of drawings and works on paper by Rego, opening this week at Victoria Miro in London. The most comprehensive exhibition of Rego’s drawings to date, Story Line features works from the 1950s until the artist’s death, shining new light on Rego’s evolving use of line in media from pen and ink to pastel, conté, charcoal and pencil, and how it was driven by her unique approach to storytelling throughout her life. The exhibition is accompanied by a new book written by the artist’s son, Nick Willing. ‘When you write your story… invention comes when you do a drawing. As you are drawing something, it very often turns into something else, and you can go with it. It develops in a completely different way, it’s organic and it’s done with the hand. The hand makes it change and so on.’ – Paula Rego, The White Review, 2011 Paula Rego considered herself first and foremost a ‘drawrer’ (her word). From political protest to personal introspection, activism to domestic power games, subversive humour to challenging family relationships, it was through drawing that she understood herself and the world around her, discovering ways of expressing complex ideas through a single image. As Nick Willing comments, ‘A Rego drawing is never just one thing, but many feelings working together to reveal the truth. They not only helped her understand the world but can also help us understand it too.’Driven by her distinctive approach to storytelling, this exhibition demonstrates how Rego adapted her line to emphasise the emotional nuance of the stories she told, and how her drawing techniques also reflected her interior emotional narrative. The works reveal the unique development of an artist whose visual storytelling, drawn from a wide variety of sources, spoke directly to us about the essential human traits of desire, loss, violence and power. The works on show vary from intimate drawings which have never been exhibited before to studies for some of Rego’s most recognisable paintings. These are accompanied by notes, letters, sketchbooks, photographs and other archival material from throughout Rego’s life – among myriad rarities is a drawing Rego made when she was nine years old of her grandmother, while the exhibition concludes with works including a drawing she made of her own granddaughter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

@TalkArt continues with an in-depth interview on the work of GWEN JOHN with curator @Lucy.C.Wood to explore a major exhibition Gwen John: Strange Beauties at the National Museum Cardiff. Hosted by @RobertDiament. This once-in-a-generation exhibition brings together over 200 oil paintings, drawings and watercolours from public and private collections across the world with rarely seen works on paper from the artist’s studio collection to celebrate her 150th birthday. Born in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, in 1876, Gwen John trained at the Slade School of Art in London and was one of the first British women to receive a formal art education. She later moved to Paris, where she became part of its vibrant artistic community, forging an independent path in a male-dominated art world. Gwen John is one of Wales' most extraordinary artists. She saw the world differently — quietly, attentively, and with extraordinary depth. That difference shaped everything: her subjects, her method, her colours, her words, her work. It is the first major collection of her work in over forty years. It tells Gwen’s story as it’s never been told before — revealing new ways of seeing her life and art and celebrating an artist whose vision still feels strikingly modern today. This is an invitation — to see the world through Gwen’s eyes — to slow down, look closer and discover the wonder in her work. Unmissable — for both newcomers and devoted admirers alike. Listen to Talk Art podcast, stream now: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts! Lucy Wood is Senior Curator of Art at Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales. She is co-curator of Gwen John: Strange Beauties (2026) and co-editor of the accompanying monograph with Rachel Stratton, Yale Center for British Art. Follow @MuseumWales Visit: https://museum.wales/cardiff/whatson/12640/Gwen-John-Strange-Beauties/ #GwenJohn Exhibition organised by Amgueddfa Cymru in partnership with National Galleries of Scotland, National Museum of Women in the Arts, and Yale Center for British Art. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Robert meets Sir Isaac Julien at Victoria Miro gallery in London to explore 4 decades of making art. We also meet Julien’s long term collaborator Mark Nash to explore his major five-screen film installation All That Changes You. Metamorphosis, 2025 and new photographic works. All That Changes You. Metamorphosis is a vivid, sweeping, visual poem about change, what it means to transform, to adapt and to survive. Commissioned to celebrate 500 years of Palazzo Te, Mantua, Italy (where it is currently on view) and exhibited here for the first time as a five-screen installation, Julien’s latest work moves between science fiction, philosophy, ecology and art, imagining new forms of life and identity beyond the human. All That Changes You. Metamorphosis draws inspiration from thinkers who explore how transformation shapes who we are and how we live, including writers Octavia Butler, Naomi Mitchison, Ursula K. Le Guin and philosopher Donna Haraway. Their ideas weave through the film’s layered images and lyrical dialogue. Two protagonists are at the heart of the film, played by internationally acclaimed actors Sheila Atim and Gwendoline Christie. Isaac Julien is as acclaimed for his fluent, arresting films as for his vibrant and inventive gallery installations. One of the objectives of his work is to break down the barriers that exist between different artistic disciplines, drawing from and commenting on film, dance, photography, music, theatre, painting and sculpture, and uniting them to construct a powerfully visual narrative. Julien came to prominence in the film world with his 1989 drama-documentary Looking for Langston, gaining a cult following with this poetic exploration of Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance. During the past three decades he has made work largely, though not exclusively, for galleries and museums, using multi-screen installations to express fractured narratives exploring memory and desire. Julien’s major film installations include Once Again . . . (Statues Never Die), 2022, commissioned by the Barnes Foundation in celebration of its centennial, an immersive five-screen installation exploring the relationship between Dr Albert C. Barnes, who was an early US collector and exhibitor of African material culture, and the famed philosopher and cultural critic Alain Locke, known as the ‘Father of the Harlem Renaissance’; Lessons of the Hour – Frederick Douglass, 2019, a meditation on the life, words, and actions of Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), the visionary African American abolitionist and freed slave, and on the issues of social justice that shaped his life’s work; Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement, 2019, reflecting on the iconic work and on the legacy of the visionary modernist architect and designer (1914–1992); PLAYTIME, 2014, which explores the dramatic and nuanced subject of financial capital; Ten Thousand Waves, 2010, exploring China's ancient past and rapidly transforming present through a series of interlocking narratives. Follow @IsaacJulien Isaac Julien’s major retrospective opens in Bergamo at gresart671 on 10th April 2026 and he will also showing a single screen version of All That Changes You. Metamorphosis at The Cosmic House in London from 22nd April, learn more here. Special thanks to Victoria Miro gallery. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Season 27 @TalkArt continues with TRACEY EMIN. Hosted by @RobertDiament. An exclusive new interview recorded in Margate within Crossing Into Darkness, a group exhibition curated by Dame Tracey Emin including works by 21 international artists. Crossing Into Darkness brings together a group of artists whose works confront the darkness inherent in human experience, not as something to be feared but as a necessary threshold toward renewal. In times marked by upheaval and uncertainty, this journey feels both universal and deeply personal. The title of the show is very self explanatory, especially for the times we are living in. But even so we have always had our own journeys. And I feel that we have to cross into darkness to find light. I’d like this show to be very emotionally immersive and people to feel the strength and vibrations within the works. I want people to know that art isn’t just something that you look at. That it has a deeper purpose and can penetrate all souls. I love the idea of people coming to Margate on the greyest of winter days with gale force winds and crashing waves to make the pilgrimage to see the show. – Dame Tracey Emin Follow @TraceyEminStudio Special thanks to @CarlFreedmanGallery This powerful group show runs until Sunday 12th April at Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate. Free entry, no booking required. Tracey Emin’s major solo exhibition A Second Life runs until Sunday 31st August 2026 at Tate Modern, London. Tickets available from Tate. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Talk Art Season 27 continues with COLLIER SCHORR. Over four decades, Collier Schorr has used photography to scrutinise the conditions and realities of contemporary subjectivity and what it means to visually represent a body - and a self. Motivated, in part, by an underlying search for alternatives to the desirous heterosexual gaze; her work has remained focused on several key themes including beauty, desire, selfhood, and masculinity and its discontents. Schorr’s early work was made in the 1980s and 1990s in New York and Germany, during the coalescence of postmodernism and identity politics. Her work from that period navigated the tension between documentary and fiction, and tested out the capacity of photography to unveil desire and repression, explore taboo identities, and highlight the contradictions inherent in subjectivity, especially in relation to gender norms. In more recent times, the artist has incorporated dance into her practice predominantly through adapting Chantal Ackerman’s film, ‘Je Tu Il Elle’ (1975), into a full-length filmed ballet performance featuring Schorr as Ackerman and a core group of professional dancers collaborating to create a multi-channel video installation. Schorr’s new exhibition in Paris is now open. ‘Problems and other stories’ brings together photographs, collages, notes, drawings and video produced over the past seven years that reconsider who an artwork is for, the multitude of places people belong and the way Schorr encounters different worlds. The title is drawn from John Updike’s collection of short stories written over the 1970s. For Schorr, the ‘problem’ opens out into a place of resistance and exploration, rather than a limitation or constraint. Runs until 4th April at Modern Art, Paris. Follow @CollierSchorrStudio Visit: https://www.modernart.net/en/exhibitions/collier-schorr-2026 Special thanks to @StuartShaveModernArt & @303Gallery Listen to Talk Art podcast, stream now: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Talk Art Season 27 continues with sculptor Nicolas Deshayes whose works explore the form and materiality of bodies and what happens below their surfaces. Hosted by Robert Diament. Process, or processing, is the impetus for Deshayes’ sculptures, which manage to convey states of liquid, hardness, hot, cold, and mechanically produced objects and systems. Vital processes of ingestion, and circulation, are evoked by elegantly utilitarian forms. Deshayes’ surfaces are consistently impermeable – recalling the architecture of public amenities. Using predominantly casting methods with bronze, iron, or earthenware, Deshayes tends to seek out artisans and factories who specialise in techniques of production; their historical lineages and geographical particularities converging within his conceptualisation of the work as it develops. Extreme heat is used in these casting processes commonly and the materials rely on changes in temperature in order to come alive. But molten metal rapidly hardens into a solid form, its movement as if suspended in time. Deshayes has recently rendered some of these sculptures functional again, plumbing hot water around a room, or pumping water into public ponds. In his 2016 installation Thames Water, he recast the gallery as an organism by installing a series of interconnected radiators, in doing so concretising an analogy of the body and its systems to the plumbed and networked city. It is in these works that we are reminded of how their organic forms are not only reminiscent of the bodies of humans, but also of domestic, civic and biological circulatory systems. Nicolas Deshayes was born in Nancy, France, in 1983, and lives and works in Dover. Follow: @NicolasDeshayes Pillow Talk, a joint exhibition with Nicolas Deshayes & Paloma Proudfoot, runs at @QuenchGallery in Margate until 22nd March 2026. Thanks to Stuart Shave Modern Art. Learn more: https://www.modernart.net/en/artists/nicolas-deshayes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Catherine Chinatree is a socially engaged multi-disciplinary artist based in Margate. She works in various contexts, including in the public realm. Her work focuses on the idea of shared “reality,” with an emphasis on identity, dualism, and cultural fluidity. This exploration is supported by research in anthropology, social surrealism, and human behaviour. Being of Welsh, Caribbean and Irish descent, she is deeply rooted in hybrid culture and seeks inspiration from the outside world of everyday life, our daily activities, symbolism, rituals, and the people she meets. Chinatree’s recent series of works invites the viewers on a visual journey through the realms of personal and subcultures exploring ideas of youth, class, memory and nostalgia, it highlights optimism & transformative moments that can alter society. Chinatree aims to evoke a palette that reflects the bass-heavy underground movement, artificial lighting and a sense of the unknown going hand in hand with the uncertainty of teenage years. At that time, pioneers of a new music genre looked to the future, with nods to outer space, and ideas of otherworldly beings, all of which are reflected in this work. The Crystallisation of the urban experience is layered and sampled, reconnecting it with the present. Working-class youth - black, brown and white united to dance is a testament to sound system culture and the creation of a new reality reflecting urban Britain, black roots & experimental sounds. With close ties to Leicester, Chinatree’s hometown, the work is supported by research and recordings from original attendees, event organisers, the venue’s history and future plans. Blending new footage, lived experiences and digital memories. Described by many as one of the darkest raves attended “Some shadow demon business”, the work illuminates its legacy. Catherine Chinatree studied at Wimbledon College of Arts, graduating with a Masters in Fine Art. She was awarded the Ferdynand Zweig Arts travel Scholarship award, and set up a collaborative engagement project between the UK and Havana, Cuba. She has been shortlisted for the Mercury Music Arts Prize, Nasty Woman NYC and The Griffin x Elephant New Graduates Arts Prize. She completed an artist residency with Elephant Magazine and has been sponsored by Liquitex Paints. She was commissioned by Artquest for their 20th anniversary, which was subsequently displayed at UAL in Holborn, London. Recently she was commissioned by Artist Globe for The World Reimagined project, which is on permanent show at the World Museum in Liverpool. She created a mural for Rise Up Residency Mural in Margate and as part of the Commemorative Installation Campaign, created a Tapestry for the UK Covid-19 Inquiry. She recently co created a billboard Artwork with Kent Refugee action network, and is a panelist for Artcry, supporting artists to make work in response to social and political events. Follow @CatherineChinatree on Instagram. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Talk Art season 27 continues with British painter GEORG WILSON!!! Hosted by Robert Diament. A spirit of place informs #GeorgWilson’s practice. Drawing inspiration from ancient English folklore, poetry and painting, the artist depicts bountiful landscapes that exceed the natural; devoid of human presence, they are instead inhabited by wildling creatures that live harmoniously with the land. Wilson’s world-building is enriched by her unique approach to texture and mark-making that unifies all surfaces, forms and beings. Painting with the seasons, Wilson’s work captures the cyclical rhythm of our existence, where birth meets growth, growth meets death and death awaits resurrection. Vibrant reds and bright greens shift to vivid yellows and deep browns as the seasons turn, and the land that was once overflowing with abundance is ready to lie dormant as the year comes to an end. This new series of paintings explores the folklore and historic uses of uncultivated poisonous plants, species such as henbane, thorn-apple and nightshade that grow abundantly across the UK, that have long but frequently forgotten histories in both folk and modern medicine. Drawing on historic texts about poisonous flora, Wilson highlights the gradual erosion of plant knowledge in Britain, a process that began as early as the fifteenth century, following the enclosure of common land and the subsequent rise of industrialisation. Against Nature, a solo exhibition of new works by Georg Wilson, runs at Pilar Corrias until 7th March on Savile Row, London, and Georg’s debut institutional exhibition The Earth Exhales runs until 1st March at Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh. 🔗 Follow @Georg.Kitty Thanks to @PilarCorriasGallery and @Jupiter.Artland 📻 Listen to Talk Art podcast, stream now: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Season 27 begins! This new season is hosted by Robert Diament. Robert meets Holly Blakey, one of the foremost choreographers of her generation and one of the few female choreographers in the UK creating large-scale work. Her practice attends to the honest entanglements of embodied vulnerability, grief, and joy, always rooted in an intersectional feminist frame. Her live performance work has been presented at Southbank Centre, Hales Gallery and Théâtre National de Chaillot. As a director and choreographer, she has collaborated with artists including Robyn (for her new Sexistential album), Rosalía, Harry Styles, Celeste, and Florence + The Machine, and with fashion houses such as Vivienne Westwood, Burberry and Dior, and in films including Urchin (2025) directed by Harris Dickinson and Harvest directed by Athina Tsangari, interweaving live and commercial contexts, much of her practice often plays on the relationship between these distinct but not wholly separable worlds. We explore her 2026 collaboration with the Rambert dance company, as well as a new collaboration with artist Tai Shani, her 2025 ambitious double bill (for the Southbank Centre) titled Phantom, and A Wound with Teeth, which took her choreography to a new level of intensity, intimacy and international visibility. Holly Blakey’s new full-length work Lo will premiere in 2026. Both works develop Blakey’s fascination with social and folk dance forms, which began with her use of line dance in the Cowpuncher series and continues into Phantom and Lo with exploration of collective responsibility and euphoria through this form. For the first time, they both begin from a highly personal place and are developed through close collaboration with the dancers, drawing on their own experiences of grief and estrangement on the one hand, and pleasure and self-assertion on the other. A Wound with Teeth: How can loss of memory be a site of potential? In this excerpt from the new full-length work, Lo, Blakey uses her own experience of forgetting to create a work that questions our ability to remember, and also to imagine and invent, at the border of the rational and the irrational. In a world that is sometimes terrifying and perverse, fighting for our own survival also means creating stories, and our own monsters and beasts. Phantom: Carried by ten dancers engaged in a choreography on the verge of ritual, Holly Blakey explores with tenderness, honesty and strength a particularly painful episode of her personal journey: her miscarriage. In collaboration with Emma Chopova and Laura Lowena, creators of the Chopova Lowena brand and on a composition by the musician Gwilym Gold. We also learn about her work in film including Harvest (2024) directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari, where the entire movie revolved around choregraphy and movement. Follow @HollyTBlakey and visit https://www.hollyblakey.co.uk/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

#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.

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.

— 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.

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.

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.