The Gallery Companion

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thegallerycompanion.com Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com In this week’s episode I am talking about lines -- the ones that you can see and the invisible ones that you can only feel. It’s a subject that the geographer Maxim Samson discusses in his recently published book, Invisible Lines, which is an exploration of the hidden geographies that affect the way we exist in and move through our physical environments. These are lines that we experience and sense, consciously and subconsciously acting on them. I talk about these ideas in relation to the work of the New York-based artist Mika Rottenberg, whose film Cosmic Generator (2017) explores ideas about the movement and restriction of goods and people, and the visible and invisible divisions that are constructed to separate us. And I discuss the charcoal portraits of the British artist Frank Auerbach, whose practice of drawing the faces of his sitters and rubbing them out repeatedly in his quest to represent the truth suggests to me another kind of invisible boundary in space — that separation between two people that we can feel and sense but we can’t see. If you’d like to access the full podcast you can subscribe to it on my Substack publication at thegallerycompanion.com. A subscription gets you a podcast and email from me every Sunday and access to a lovely community of artists and art lovers from around the world. The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thegallerycompanion.com Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com I’ve been thinking a lot this week about the practice of looking closely at things. It started when one of my readers sent me some wonderful writing and drawings that her boys had done in response to an exhibition in London that I reviewed a few weeks ago. With a brief to write what they thought about the artworks, my young friends spent over an hour deeply engrossed in looking closely at them. The critical thinking and stretching of imagination evident in both boys’ observations made me think once again about how valuable art is for children’s learning. The benefits spill over in every direction, not only in the process of making art but also in thinking about it. Kids learn to identify patterns and structures, think about scale and perspective, describe and question, imagine and analyse. Then there’s the social and emotional learning that goes on. The practice of looking closely, of slow contemplation, is the opposite of what is going on for the majority of children nowadays, according to the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, whose new book The Anxious Generation explores what he calls the ‘Great Re-Wiring of Childhood’. One of the compelling arguments he makes is about how current levels of smartphone usage are likely to have a detrimental impact on the development of young brains. In this week’s episode I talk about all of this, and I discuss the work of two British artists, Tiffany Arntson and Rackstraw Downes, whose practice is all about looking closely. If you’d like to access the full podcast you can subscribe to it on my Substack publication at thegallerycompanion.com. A subscription gets you a podcast and email from me every Sunday and access to a lovely community of artists and art lovers from around the world. The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thegallerycompanion.com Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com I’ve often heard artists talk about how making art for them is not optional, it’s essential. Life-saving, even. In this week's episode I discuss the meaning of the phrase ‘art is life’ by thinking about the work of one of Britain’s leading conceptual artists, Martin Creed. He has said that for him there is no separating line between what he creates and anything else he does in his day. Other people might call what he does ‘art’ but he’s not sure what ‘art’ actually is. He does what he does to try and grasp on to something solid to help him get through life. Art is something you can rely on, he says. It’s a relief. I know what he means, and it has given me another perspective on his work. If you’d like to access the full podcast you can subscribe to it on my Substack publication at thegallerycompanion.com. A subscription gets you a podcast and email from me every Sunday and access to a lovely community of artists and art lovers from around the world. The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thegallerycompanion.com Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com In this week's episode I discuss the highly profitable commercial world of human egg freezing, which has seen a dramatic rise in the UK and across the global north. There are many things about this new phenomenon that I find fascinating: what it says about the strong biological urge to reproduce; the expectations of and on women around career and family; and the industries targeting women with culturally-generated anxieties about their ageing bodies. But what I find most interesting about it is what doesn’t really get talked about much: who exactly is having these procedures and why. The common assumption is that most women who freeze their eggs are twenty-somethings who want to delay childbirth as they pursue their careers. But in her recent book Motherhood on Ice, the Yale anthropologist Marcia C. Inhorn has explored other factors that motivate women to freeze their eggs. What her research has found runs counter to this conventional wisdom about the who and why of egg freezing. Inhorn argues that there is, in her words, a ‘mating gap’ — a shortage of partners for university-educated women. I discuss all of this, plus the work of the contemporary Chinese-American artist Xin Liu, who explores the extension of women’s fertility through science and technology in her art, inspired by medical innovations in the field of cryogenics and egg freezing. If you’d like to access the full podcast you can subscribe to it on my Substack publication at thegallerycompanion.com. A subscription gets you a podcast and email from me every Sunday and access to a lovely community of artists and art lovers from around the world. The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thegallerycompanion.com Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com In this week's episode I discuss the Yoko Ono exhibition showing at Tate Modern in London at the moment. It is a huge show spanning a prolific creative life over more than fifty years, and frankly any contemporary artist that has a retrospective of this size in one of London’s biggest public art galleries is surely worthy of serious consideration. Ono is a much maligned and misunderstood figure in the popular culture of the past half century because of her marriage to the musician John Lennon. She’s the incarnation of the idea of female manipulation: a siren who lured Lennon away from the lads and broke up his band The Beatles. All nonsense of course, but because of this narrative she has been the target of possibly the worst, most vitriolic criticism that any female artist has ever received. The misogyny and racism directed at her over the years has been extreme; it’s the kind of abuse that makes me rage against the machine and the oppressive structures of our capitalist, patriarchal system. So I was already primed to embrace her career’s work and come away thinking how underrated Ono has been. And I really tried. But the speed at which I walked through the exhibition spoke volumes. It's not that there was nothing of interest, but her really good works are few and far between. And it made me ask once again a question that I don’t have an easy answer to, which is what makes an artist ‘great’? If you’d like to access the full podcast you can subscribe to it on my Substack publication at thegallerycompanion.com. A subscription gets you a podcast and email from me every Sunday and access to a lovely community of artists and art lovers from around the world. The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thegallerycompanion.com Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com In this week's episode I consider what it means to have something ‘useful’ to say in a world saturated with visual and textual information, with some words of wisdom from a stranger, the art of Barbara Kruger, and something very lovely that one of you said to me. Kruger has been making art since the 1970s, and is known for her bold text-based images, which address mechanisms of power, gender, class and capital. Through her provocative slogans and images appropriated from mass media, Kruger challenges viewers to critically examine societal norms and values. If you’d like to access the full podcast you can subscribe to it on my Substack publication at thegallerycompanion.com. A subscription gets you a podcast and email from me every Sunday and access to a lovely community of artists and art lovers from around the world. The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thegallerycompanion.com Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com You know when you’re looking at art and somehow it manages to convey feelings or sensations that are going on for you at that particular moment in time? I had that experience over and over again this week as I walked round the new exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London. It’s called When Forms Come Alive and is a show exploring the history of contemporary sculptural forms from the past 60 years that are static and yet have some sort of dynamic tension in them. The different levels of energy emanating from the objects is palpable. In this week’s episode I’m talking about the concept of ‘form is feeling’, and how sculpture has the power to convey emotions and sensations, and I take a closer look at the work of three artists featured in this exhibition: Olaf Brzeski, Michel Blazy and Senga Nengudi. If you’d like to access the full podcast you can subscribe to it on my Substack publication at thegallerycompanion.com. A subscription gets you a podcast and email from me every Sunday and access to a lovely community of artists and art lovers from around the world. The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thegallerycompanion.com Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com In this week’s episode I am talking about the new show at the Royal Academy in London. It’s called Entangled Pasts, and it looks at the relationship between Britain’s imperial histories and the visual arts, and how art shapes narratives of empire, slavery and resistance. Almost every art critic reviewing this show has described it as groundbreaking, extraordinary, or radical. I didn’t think it was any of those things. In fact the subject matter was so tamed and contained, that it made me a little bit annoyed. I kept waiting to see the realities of the violence and cruelty of our colonial history, but it never came. If you’d like to access the full podcast you can subscribe to it on my Substack publication at thegallerycompanion.com. A subscription gets you a podcast and email from me every Sunday and access to a lovely community of artists and art lovers from around the world. The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thegallerycompanion.com Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com I’ve got four lovely things for you today. A bit of poetry, some music, a film and an artwork by Felix Gonzalez-Torres that knocked me for six this week. In this episode I’m talking about that feeling of being a bit lost and finding solace and some sort of clarity in the arts. If you’d like to access the full podcast you can subscribe to it on my Substack publication at thegallerycompanion.com. A subscription gets you a podcast and email from me every Sunday and access to a lovely community of artists and art lovers from around the world. The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thegallerycompanion.com Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com In this episode I think about the culture of contemplating art, particularly in the hushed environment of art galleries, and how we approach it with a seriousness that often precludes laughter. I wonder whether we are so primed to search for deeper meanings and wholesome lessons from visual art that we police ourselves in our responses. Laughing never seems like the ‘correct’ thing to do. There are plenty of artists who use humour in their work, but laughter is rarely my response. There’s only one artist I can think of who makes me actually chuckle, and that’s Martin Creed. The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents. To subscribe to the podcast visit www.thegallerycompanion.com.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thegallerycompanion.com Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com In this episode I think about the culture of contemplating art, particularly in the hushed environment of art galleries, and how we approach it with a seriousness that often precludes laughter. I wonder whether we are so primed to search for deeper meanings and wholesome lessons from visual art that we police ourselves in our responses. Laughing never seems like the ‘correct’ thing to do. There are plenty of artists who use humour in their work, but laughter is rarely my response. There’s only one artist I can think of who makes me actually chuckle, and that’s Martin Creed. The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents. To subscribe to the podcast visit www.thegallerycompanion.com.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thegallerycompanion.com Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com In this episode I discuss the issue of homelessness, and the radical approach that Finland has taken to tackle the problem in contrast to what is going on in the UK. And I reflect on an exhibition I saw this week by the American artist Pope L., whose work throughout his career has addressed the subject of homelessness, poverty and social and systemic inequalities head-on. Pope L. (1955-2023) was a multidisciplinary artist and although he isn’t a household name with audiences, his influence on other artists over the years has been profound. Back in the late 70s he started to make a reputation when he did a performance called Crawl (1978) in which he dressed up in a suit bought from a charity shop and crawled the length of 42nd Street in New York on his hands and knees. It probed assumptions about homelessness and poverty and was uncomfortable to watch. It got right under people’s skin in the way that only the most powerful art can. The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents. To see the images and watch the videos discussed in the podcast visit www.thegallerycompanion.com. This is where you can subscribe to The Gallery Companion, share your thoughts and join the conversation.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thegallerycompanion.com Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com In this episode I discuss our diminishing capacity for sustained attention and how we get diverted by the stuff going on on our screens, by email, social media and different apps. There’s nothing wrong in theory with having down time: our minds can’t be working on hard stuff all the time. We need to do simple, mindless activities every so often to pause and clear our heads. The problem comes for those of us who spend too much time getting diverted. It’s a sign that we are not valuing our time, which is our greatest asset. This is an idea that the artist Ryan Gander is interested in and I discuss some of the ideas he has talked about, especially the clarity that he finds in his creative thinking when he is not able to physically hold his phone. He has his best ideas when he can’t be distracted by the internet. That’s something many of us can relate to, but how do we make it happen in practice? The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents. To see the images and watch the videos discussed in the podcast visit www.thegallerycompanion.com. This is where you can subscribe to The Gallery Companion, share your thoughts and join the conversation.

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com In this last episode of the second series I discuss visibility and negotiating public space in a black female body through the work of two contemporary British artists, Claudette Johnson and Barbara Walker. I talk about the history of immigration in post-war Britain, the Windrush scandal, and the damaging effects of negative political rhetoric about race and immigration on real people's lives. The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents. To see the images and watch the videos discussed in the podcast visit www.thegallerycompanion.com. This is where you can subscribe to The Gallery Companion, share your thoughts and join the conversation. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thegallerycompanion.com

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. In this episode I discuss what happens when creatives get stuck and can't finish a piece of work. I explore ideas about what you can control in the process, and how chance, timing and patience factor in to what you can't control. There are wise words from the American artists Pope L and John Baldessari, and an interesting artwork of a clock face by the painter Josephine Halvorson. The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents. To see the images and watch the videos discussed in the podcast visit www.thegallerycompanion.com. This is where you can subscribe to The Gallery Companion email list, which goes out to accompany each new podcast episode, and is packed full of links to more info. That's where you can share your thoughts and join the conversation too. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thegallerycompanion.com

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. In this episode I discuss the recently opened exhibition on art and the feminist movement in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s at Tate gallery in London, including work by See Red Women's Workshop, Jill Posener and other British artists from this period. I talk about the value of protest / activist art, and why it's important that we record and collect this type of work. And I consider the relevance and popularity of this kind of exhibition which weaves together a rich story of the visual arts with social history. The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents. To see the images and watch the videos discussed in the podcast visit www.thegallerycompanion.com. This is where you can subscribe to The Gallery Companion email list, which goes out to accompany each new podcast episode, and is packed full of links to more info. That's where you can share your thoughts and join the conversation too. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thegallerycompanion.com

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. In this episode I reflect on how important the setting is to our understanding and experience of artworks, and the responses we can feel in our bodies when artworks actively occupy space. I discuss the retrospective of the British artist Sarah Lucas at Tate Britain, the amazing installation Behind the Red Moon by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui at Tate Modern, and a dreamy little exhibition I saw by Korean artist Chun Kwang Young in Venice last year. The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents. To see the images and watch the videos discussed in the podcast visit www.thegallerycompanion.com. This is where you can subscribe to The Gallery Companion email list, which goes out to accompany each new podcast episode, and is packed full of links to more info. That's where you can share your thoughts and join the conversation too. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thegallerycompanion.com

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. In this episode, I talk about the dangers of AI and the recent political responses to the regulation of these new technologies. I discuss Yuval Noah Harari's book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016) which suggests that the end of human history is nearly upon us. I consider a sculptural installation by the polish artist Alicja Kwade, who explores ideas about time, perception and what our reality is. And I look at the paintings of Connor McIntyre, which respond to the physical and conceptual systems underpinning our knowledge and experience of the world. The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents. To see the images and watch the videos discussed in the podcast visit www.thegallerycompanion.com. This is where you can subscribe to The Gallery Companion email list, which goes out to accompany each new podcast episode, and is packed full of links to more info. That's where you can share your thoughts and join the conversation too. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thegallerycompanion.com

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. In this episode, I talk about Naomi Klein's new book Doppelganger, which takes the reader on a journey into conspiracy culture. I consider the power of storytelling in the spread of misinformation, and I think about the work of artists who interrogate the media and who question how power circulates in our world including the great Barbara Kruger, the photographer Cassandra Zampini and the South African artist William Kentridge. The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents. To see the images and watch the videos discussed in the podcast visit www.thegallerycompanion.com. This is where you can subscribe to The Gallery Companion email list, which goes out to accompany each new podcast episode, and is packed full of links to more info. That's where you can share your thoughts and join the conversation too. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thegallerycompanion.com

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. In this first episode of the second series, I consider the value of art for those who create it, and the ways in which artists talk about their process of making. I look at the work of abstract painter Maryanne Hawes, whose process of walking and then painting is integral to her practice; the Swedish artist Anna Bjergen, who describes the freedom with which she allows herself to explore in her paintings as 'magic'; and the British painter Jenny Saville, who talks about the creative tension of 'laying down a problem'. The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents. To see the images and watch the videos discussed in the podcast visit www.thegallerycompanion.com. This is where you can subscribe to The Gallery Companion email list, which goes out to accompany each new podcast episode, and is packed full of links to more info. That's where you can share your thoughts and join the conversation too. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thegallerycompanion.com