A brush with...

Ben Luke talks to Ai Weiwei about his influences, from art to literature, film and music, and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Ai, born in Beijing in 1957, is an artist who needs little introduction; he is among the most famous artists in the world, principally due to the activism which led him to be incarcerated in his native China for months without charge in 2011. Since his release he has not let up and he continues to be a thorn in the Chinese government’s side, relentlessly documenting and publicly speaking out against its attacks on freedom and manifold other human rights abuses. And while this conversation addresses his political activities it also explores his wider work, including the early objects inspired by Marcel Duchamp, his first pieces made with ancient Chinese ceramics, his middle-finger salutes, Study of Perspective, and the huge actions, like Fairytale at Documenta in 2007, for which he has come to be best known. He also answers the questions we ask all our guests, including the ultimate: what is art for?Ai Weiwei: The Liberty of Doubt is at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, UK, until 19 June. His show Intertwine is at the Serralves Museum in Porto, Portugal, until 9 July. The opera Turandot is at the Rome Opera House from 22-31 March. His book, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, is published by Bodley Head in the UK, priced £25 and Crown in the US, priced $32. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ben Luke talks to Allison Katz about her influences in the realms of literature, music and, of course, art, and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Born in Montreal in 1980, Katz is an artist who probes the complexities of painting, drawing on diverse imagery, a range of painterly techniques and distinctive forms of display to create environments that are by turns delightful and perplexing, but always enthralling. The longer you spend in the company of Katz’s work, the more the associations, the playful connections, and the fundamental rigour of her thinking emerge. In this conversation, she discusses the influence of being a life model at a young age, and making numerous “portraits” of a painting of a woman by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. She reflects on paintings by Edgar Degas and Andrea del Verrocchio, among others, discusses how the poet and translator Richard Howard helped her read poetry and see that frivolity could be serious, and expresses wonder at British radio programmes, including sporting commentary. And she answers the questions we ask all our guests, including the ultimate one: what is art for?Allison Katz: Artery, Camden Art Centre, London, until 13 March. That exhibition originated in a slightly different form at Nottingham Contemporary, and a catalogue accompanying the two versions of the show will be published in early 2023. An exhibition of Katz’s posters is at Canada House, London, until 26 March. Her paintings are in The Milk of Dreams, the central exhibition at the Venice Biennale, 23 April-27 November. She has a solo exhibition at Luhring Augustine, New York, in September. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ben Luke talks to Charles Ray about his influences and the cultural experiences that shape his life and work. Ray, born in 1953 and based in Los Angeles, is one of the most singular voices in contemporary sculpture, with a extraordinary grasp of the key elements of the discipline—space, material, surface, scale, weight and mass—and a unique approach to imagery, drawing on a huge range of sources to create absorbing, yet deeply ambiguous works. Carved and cast by hand and using cutting-edge technology, they often take years to come to fruition, and are made and remade in a variety of different patterns and prototypes in a range of materials and scales before being completed. Ray engages deeply with the history of sculpture, and in this conversation reflects on his admiration for everything from Anthony Caro’s abstract metal sculpture Early One Morning to the ancient Greek Great Eleusinian Relief. He also reflects on the significance to his work of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and the importance of his daily walks to his practice. Plus, he answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?The exhibition Charles Ray is at the Bourse de Commerce and the Centre Pompidou in Paris from the 16 February and continues until 6 June at the Bourse and until 20 June at the Pompidou. Charles’s exhibition Figure Ground is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York until 5 June. Charles is in this year’s Whitney Biennial, called Quiet as it’s Kept, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, from 6 Apr–5 Sept. And the third special installation of Ray’s works at Glenstone, Potomac, Maryland continues until spring 2023. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this first episode of 2022, Ben Luke talks to Dayanita Singh about her influences, from art to literature, music and film, and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Singh, who was born in 1961 in New Delhi, India, is one of the most pioneering photographers of recent decades. She resists the idea of a single, decisive image, and instead presents her richly diverse, poetic photographs in the context of constructed environments, bespoke archival structures and artists’ books. She continues to push the presentation of her photography in new directions. In the conversation, she recalls how her mother’s photography was a “traumatic” part of her childhood and remembers an early opportunity to photograph the celebrated tabla player Zakir Hussain. She talks about her passion for the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke and Michael Ondaatje, the revelatory visits to Shankar’s Dolls Museum in Delhi, and about her remarkable project documenting Mona, a lifelong friend and collaborator. Plus, she answers all our usual questions, including the ultimate one: what is art for? Dayanita Singh: Dancing with My Camera, Gropius Bau, Berlin, 18 March-7 August 2022. The exhibition tours to Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, MUDAM Luxembourg, the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, and Les Rencontres d’Arles, France.This podcast is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ben Luke talks to Kehinde Wiley about his influences, including artists, writers, composers, musicians and filmmakers, and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Perhaps more than any other contemporary artist, Wiley has situated himself within the history of Western portrait painting. He makes direct reference to the art of the past, quoting from artists like Holbein, Titian, Rubens, Gainsborough and David, but replacing the royal, noble and ecclesiastical figures depicted by the Old Masters with ordinary people he has encountered on the street. These “moments of impact” happen mostly in New York, where he lives much of the time, but also—in his grand ongoing project The World’s Stage—in cities in Jamaica, India, Haiti, Nigeria, Brazil and beyond.As well as his project at the National Gallery in London, Wiley discusses the early influence of John Singer Sargent, his latest works relating to Caspar David Friedrich, the influence of museums like The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens and a formative visit to the Soviet Union. Plus he tells us what work of art he would most like to live with and ponders the ultimate question: what is art for? This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects. Kehinde Wiley, The Prelude, National Gallery, London, until 18 April 2022; The Obama Portraits Tour is at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art until 2 Jan 2022. He features in 30 Americans, Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina, until 17 January 2022. And his work is in Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear, at Victoria and Albert museum, London, from 19 March 2022. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Isaac Julien talks to Ben Luke about his influences, from art to literature, music and film, and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work.Julien's films and video installations are often swooningly beautiful, and always deeply engaged in diverse cultural histories, reflecting on, among other things, diaspora and Blackness, queer identity and the movement of people. His work actively involves other art forms, and is often produced from collaborations with choreographers and actors. He responds repeatedly to the art, literature and cinema of the past, but is also pushing video installation into new territory, using multiple screens—sometimes as many as ten—to create fractured narratives which envelop the viewer, encouraging distinctive readings of the complex stories he tells, and constantly expanding the frames through which we see his subject matter.He discusses the epiphany of seeing Max Beckmann at the Whitechapel Gallery, his admiration for Peter Doig, Stan Douglas and Glenn Ligon, the influence of poets including Aimé Césaire and Derek Walcott, the architect Lina Bo Bardi, the cultural scene in London when he began his film-making journey in the 1980s, and discovering, in his archive, his student photographs of early 1980s protests against police brutality—images that he had forgotten he had even taken. Plus, he answers our familiar questions, including the ultimate one: what is art for? This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pablo Bronstein talks to Ben Luke about the art, literature, music, film and much more that have influenced him and inspire him today, and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Bronstein was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1977, but came to the UK as a child and grew up in suburban London. He makes beautifully executed drawings, performances and video works. They reflect on the architecture, design and cultural traditions of mostly pre-20th-century eras and what they tell us about the role of aesthetic taste both when they were made and as we see them today. Pablo’s work is often funny, though with a sardonic edge, but its impact is heightened by the fact that it is also deeply learned—his knowledge of the intricacies, pretensions, quirks and excesses of art, design and architectural history are crucial to the effectiveness and precision of his work. He discusses his early fascination with drawing buildings, his love of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, his admiration of Mark Leckey, the power of Emile Zola’s The Beast in Man and JG Ballard’s Crash and much more. He answers our usual questions about his working life in the studio and has perhaps the most unexpected response to our final question—What is art for?—to date. This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

South African artist Candice Breitz talks to Ben Luke about the artists, writers, musicians, film-makers and other figures that have influenced her and inspire her today, and the cultural experiences that have defined her life and work. Breitz is a film-maker whose work, mostly in the form of video installations, explores selfhood and identity, community, race and gender, and reflects on how mass media like television, cinema and music shape our response to them. Among much else, she discusses her recent work Digest, and how it was influenced by the Middle Eastern folk tales One Thousand and One Nights and On Kawara’s Today series, or date paintings. She reflects on the power of Octavia Butler’s speculative fiction and her complex response to the South African novelist JM Coetzee. She talks about her video works telling the stories of refugees and sex workers. And she discusses growing up in Apartheid South Africa and its bearing on her choice of subjects and media. This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Billie Zangewa talks to Ben Luke about the art, literature, music and film that have influenced her and inspire her today, and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work.Zangewa hand-stitches images, often featuring herself, using raw silk, in highly coloured, intricate compositions, and hopes to challenge existing representations of Black women. Born in 1973 in Blantyre, Malawi, she grew up in Botswana and then studied at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, in the 1990s. She now lives and works in Johannesburg. Zangewa’s imagery is both highly personal and universal—in recent years, particularly since the birth of her son, Mika, she has focused increasingly on depictions of herself at home, as a woman and a mother in domestic space, engaging in humdrum activities. By training her eye on the mundane moments of daily existence, she says she wants to explore the overlooked aspects of women’s lives—she refers to this as “daily feminism”. She discusses her use of silk and how she began working with it out of necessity rather than by design. She recalls her early love of Vincent van Gogh, her response to the films of Jane Campion. She reflects on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on her life and practice, and how she still works at her kitchen table, even despite the fact she has a dedicated studio. This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thomas J Price talks to Ben Luke about the art, books and music that have influenced him and continue to inspire them today, and the cultural epiphanies that have defined his life and work. For two decades, Price has been making work about a subject that has now become a major cultural issue across the world: how power is transmitted through statuary and public sculpture and how diverse people in society are represented, or mostly not represented, in our streets and squares. Price was born in London in 1981, and studied at Chelsea College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London, and his works ask questions of the nature and history of his medium and of the perceptions and biases of the viewer. He talks about his early shift away from performance art, his long journey into the history of classical statuary, his passion for Alberto Giacometti and Giorgio Morandi, his early love of opera and his conflicted engagement with the British Museum. Plus, he ponders the questions we ask all our guests, about his studio rituals and the one work of art he’d choose to live with, and answers the ultimate one: what is art for? This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects. Thomas J Price: Thoughts Unseen, Hauser & Wirth, Somerset, UK, until 3 January 2022. Witness, for the Studio Museum in Harlem’s inHarlem series, Marcus Garvey Park, New York, until 1 October 2022. Reaching Out has just been permanently installed at the Donum Estate, Sonoma, California. Price’s work for the Hackney Windrush Art Commission, will be unveiled in June 2022. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.