Talk Art

Talk Art exclusive! Russell & Robert meet legendary British artist Dame Rachel Whiteread DBE for an intimate studio visit where we view her new works prior to installing her new exhibition ‘Internal Objects’. In Rachel Whiteread’s sculptures and drawings, everyday settings, objects, and surfaces are transformed into ghostly replicas that are eerily familiar. Through casting, she frees her subject matter—from beds, tables, and boxes to water towers and entire houses—from practical use, suggesting a new permanence, imbued with memory.  We discuss childhood, experimenting with numerous materials as a student, the joy of sharpening pencils, studying with Richard Wilson, her now iconic artworks 'House' (1993) and 'Ghost' (1990), further early works made by casting a wardrobe and household furniture and her large permanent Holocaust Memorial (2000) in Vienna's Judenplatz. We learn about her ‘Shy Sculpture‘ series installed in unexpected international locations and hear of her experiences during the YBA years, and subsequently being the first woman to win the Turner Prize in 1993.We explore the new works made during lockdown including two large cabin-like structures 'Poltergeist' (2020) and 'Döppelganger' (2020–21) which now form the central part of a new exhibition at Gagosian’s Grosvenor Hill gallery, made of found wood and metal, meticulously overpainted in white household paint. The exhibition also features a new body of sculptures in resin and new works on paper, as well as recent cast sculptures in bronze, similar to works in bronze Whiteread made in 2000–10, and exhibited at a major retrospective at Tate Britain in 2017. Finally, we discover her interest in cinema, admiration for Italian Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca and living with contemporary artworks by Bridget Riley, Christopher Wool, Kiki Smith and Rebecca Warren and why Kenwood House in North London is worth a visit!   Rachel Whiteread’s new solo show ‘Internal Objects’ opened this week at Gagosian in London and runs until 6th June 2021. Follow @RachelWhitereadOfficial and @Gagosian on Instagram. View exhibition views at Gagosian's website: https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2021/rachel-whiteread-internal-objects/ A fully illustrated catalogue, including a short story by John Steinbeck and an essay by Richard Calvocoressi, will be published to accompany the exhibition.For images of all artworks discussed in this episode visit @TalkArt. Talk Art theme music by Jack Northover @JackNorthoverMusic courtesy of HowlTown.com We've just joined Twitter too @TalkArt. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. For all requests, please email talkart@independenttalent.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Russell & Robert meet leading artist Mandy El-​Sayegh from her studio in Acton, West London where she is currently finishing new works for a forthcoming solo exhibition in Seoul, South Korea. We discuss memory as a material, insomnia and nocturnal shifts making art, what its like to be a hoarder, her early love of microscopes, collecting stamps and being a self-confessed geek!We explore her breakthrough 2019 solo show ‘Cite Your Sources’ at Chisenhale gallery in East London and learn about the layers of materials in her studio and resulting artworks. We discover her connection to medical language to speak about her art, the thought processes behind her well-known ‘Net-Grid’ paintings and the influence of film on her practice such as David Lynch's movies and in particular the work of David Cronenberg whose 1986 SciFi horror opus ‘The Fly’ made a formative and lasting impact.Mandy El-Sayegh’s (b. 1985, Selangor, Malaysia) highly process-driven practice is rooted in an exploration of material and language. In her paintings, table vitrines, immersive installations and videos, El-Sayegh creates layered anthologies of found text and images from a variety of sources. These include newsprint, advertisements, aerial maps, anatomy books and her father's Arabic calligraphy, which take on unexpected new meanings through proximity. Set adrift from their original contexts, these fragments become open to multiple readings that are personally, socially or politically determined and undermine the supposed objectivity of language and media. Moving between material, corporeal, linguistic and cultural frameworks, El-Sayegh highlights the constant flux of meaning that is shaped by environment and individual experience.By emphasising the boundaries of her chosen medium, El-Sayegh draws attention to the systems that determine how information is categorised, contained and understood. She creates 'quasi-archives' in her table vitrines, suggesting associations and references through the objects' placement in a shared, delineated space. In her ‘Net-Grid’ canvases, overpainted grids simultaneously structure and obscure the detritus of popular culture. These paintings also reference the primacy of the grid in modernism, which El-Sayegh found alienating: 'I felt that there was a whole set of systems that I did not know, like a joke that I didn't get'. Instead, she creates 'forms [that] bring about questions of legitimate and illegitimate readings of culture and context', as well as the implicit power structures that determine who legitimises such readings.Follow @MandyElSayegh on Instagram and visit @LehmannMaupin (her gallery in New York and Seoul) to view images from her current NY joint-show with Lee Bul titled ‘Recombinance’ which runs until 17th April 2021. You can also see more of Mandy's work by visiting @ThaddaeusRopac gallery in London and Paris. Visit her official website: https://MandyElSayegh.com/For images of all artworks discussed in this episode visit @TalkArt. Talk Art theme music by Jack Northover @JackNorthoverMusic courtesy of HowlTown.com We've just... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Russell & Robert meet legendary actor Pierce Brosnan OBE, perhaps best known worldwide by another very significant name - BOND, James Bond!!!! 007 meets Talk Art!!! Speaking from his home in Kauai, Hawaii, we explore his passion for ART!!!We discuss Pierce's longterm dedication to painting which he first seriously started in 1987 with the work 'Dark Night'. We explore his recent phone drawings, his awesome film Thomas Crown Affair (THE 1999 movie that inspired Talk Art's infamous art heist question!) and how grief and trauma can inform creativity. We hear how art has been a constant companion during a solitary journey as an actor, and as way of grieving the loss of both his first wife Cassandra in 1991 and later his daughter Charlotte in 2013, both to ovarian cancer. We learn of Pierce's late teens studying and working within commercial illustration in London, his irrepressible love of making colourful paintings and admiration for David Hockney, Picasso, Anselm Kiefer, Matisse and how the work of Roy Lichtenstein inspired his own well-known 'ear plugs' artwork, painted whilst filming 'Golden Eye'. We reminisce about the record breaking 2018 auction of his painting depicting his hero Bob Dylan which raised $1.4 million USD for AIDs charity AMFAR. We also learn of his experiments with 'plein air' painting, his friendship with artist Charles 'Chuck' Arnoldi, and a keen interest in ceramics, lino cutting and more recently wood carving... proof that Pierce's inquisitive artistic mind knows no bounds! Finally, we discuss the joy of working with late actor Robin Williams on the ICONIC 1993 movie 'Mrs Doubtfire', the film that inspired Russell to begin his own acting career.Follow @PierceBrosnanOfficial and visit Pierce’s official website with sections dedicated to his art, his acting and activism: https://PierceBrosnan.com/ Special thanks to Seasons art gallery in Los Angeles. Visit @Seasons_LA's website to learn more about Pierce's new screenprint edition of his 'Ear Plugs' work: https://seasons.la/For images of all artworks discussed in this episode visit @TalkArt. Talk Art theme music by Jack Northover @JackNorthoverMusic courtesy of HowlTown.com We've just joined Twitter too @TalkArt. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. For all requests, please email talkart@independenttalent.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Russell & Robert meet artist Nathan Bowen, world-renowned for his 'After Lives' movement of murals and street painting!!! We discuss his childhood drawing, making street art & graffiti in his teens, the magic of East London, making the choice to study at St Martins aged 17 in order to make the most of his talents and to reach his artistic potential. We hear tales of international painting adventures, the power in collaborating & ‘art jams’, art treasure hunts on Brick Lane, how his UK fanbase grew after starring on The Apprentice in 2012 and his passion for touring the UK to find new public places to paint (including Margate, Northampton, Brighton, Nottingham and many more!). We learn about his controversial 2019 commission for The Metropolitan Police's custody suite in Charring Cross, his respect for artists as varied as Hieronymus Bosch and Banksy, and the inspiration behind his numerous tributes to the NHS during lockdown! In Nathan's own word, "Art is the ONE!!!!".Bowen is a guerrilla street artist, he actively works as an art vigilante, seeking for dull, lifeless spaces around London, also describing himself as the 'Artistic Gangster', Nathan has a lawless approach to street art. By openly using his imagination he transforms these old walls, creating new and inspiring works of art. His style is unique, fast, dynamic and unpredictable, his signature characters known as 'The Demons' invade building site hoardings all over London, using the streets as his own gallery. Nathan paints on streets internationally, keeping his ideas fresh and edgy, reminding people that there is no limit to your imagination, just be creative and free.Follow @NathanBowenArt and visit Nathan’s art store with available unique works: https://NathanBowenArtShop.comFor images of all artworks discussed in this episode visit @TalkArt. Talk Art theme music by Jack Northover @JackNorthoverMusic courtesy of HowlTown.com We've just joined Twitter too @TalkArt. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. For all requests, please email talkart@independenttalent.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Season 9 continues! Russell & Robert meet LEGENDARY artist Roni Horn!!!! We discuss Iceland, cameras, drawing, androgyny, memory, British weather, words, Emily Dickinson, Missy Elliott, John Waters, Maria Bamford and SO much more in this extraordinary and deeply personal episode.Using drawing, photography, installation, sculpture and literature, Roni Horn’s work consistently questions and generates uncertainty to thwart closure in her work, engaging with many different concerns and materials. Important across her oeuvre is her longstanding interest to the protean nature of identity, meaning, and perception, as well as the notion of doubling; issues which continue to propel Horn’s practice.Beginning 23 February, ‘Roni Horn. Recent Work’ will present the artist’s latest achievements in the realm of drawing, a medium she has described as ‘a kind of breathing activity on a daily level.’ Here, intricate works on paper extend Horn’s masterful use of mirroring and textual play to explore the materiality of color and the sculptural potential of the medium. Her preoccupation with language permeates these works; scattered words read as a stream of consciousness spiraling across the paper. In addition to pieces from her series Wits’ End Mash and Yet, the exhibition will present for the first time LOG (March 22, 2019 – May 17, 2020), (2019 – 2020), a new large-scale installation comprised of more than 400 individual works on paper, the result of a daily ritual of art making undertaken by Horn for a span of fourteen months.‘Recent Work’ follows the artist’s two-part 2019 drawing survey ‘Roni Horn: When I Breathe, I Draw’ at the Menil Collection in Houston. Her work has been the subject of numerous major exhibitions including ‘Roni Horn’ at the Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2016); ‘Roni Horn a.k.a Roni Horn,’ organized by the Tate Modern, London, which travelled to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2009 – 2010). Roni Horn lives and works in New York.Roni Horn's solo exhibition runs until 10th Apr 2021 in New York, at Hauser & Wirth, 22nd Street. Follow @HauserWirth on Instagram and their official website at: www.hauserwirth.comFor images of all artworks discussed in this episode visit @TalkArt. Talk Art theme music by Jack Northover @JackNorthoverMusic courtesy of HowlTown.com We've just joined Twitter too @TalkArt. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. For all requests, please email talkart@independenttalent.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SURPRISE BONUS! We chat to our friend, leading art advisor Simon Oldfield to discuss the art news hitting mainstream headlines this past week with digital artist Beeple selling his NFT artwork 'EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS' for an astonishing $69.3m at Christie's auction house. As a curator, advisor and lawyer fascinated by the convergence of art and technology, the emergence of NFTs into the mainstream is something Simon has predicted for many years. Twenty years ago he won a national award for his dissertation on the future of intellectual property in the Internet age:"Few people understood the internet, fewer understood my arguments and even those who did thought it was an irrelevance. Dismissed as solutions to problems that would never exist. Well, they were wrong, clearly! Today we are on the cusp on something extraordinary within the art world - the crossroads of art, law and tech. It’s an extremely complex world with major implications for the interaction of a global digital product and national laws. NFTs have enormous possibilities but potentially even greater pitfalls. After years of talking about digital art and its potential, often falling in deaf ears, it is literally all I have been talking about for the past month with #collectors, #artists, #lawyers, #fintech etc. Last week I gave a Zoom talk to over 200 people - heads of major law firms, CEOs, heads of banks etc. about NFTs and how art and the law around it is shaping the future. The wider potential and ramifications for NFTs (non-fungible tokens), the #blockchain, crypto currency, #smartcontracts, #cyrptography is extraordinary - in the literal sense of that word. We are living in the future."A qualified lawyer with a degree and post-graduate diplomas from the University of Exeter and the University of Oxford, Simon also oversees a thriving Curatorial arts and culture programme. Since opening the Simon Oldfield Gallery, he has exhibited influential artists of all disciplines, discovered emerging talent and presented landmark exhibitions, and is currently organising an exhibition of Digital Art. He regularly spearheads collaborations with commercial partners including Burberry, Soho House and Hauser & Wirth, alongside non-profit and philianthropic collaborations with public institutions including the Tate, Turner Contemporary and the Royal Academy of Arts. He chairs and participates in talks and panel discussions on art, literature and culture and has featured in radio and podcasts including Talk Art, Monocle Radio 24 and the BBC. He has also written for various publications including Monocle, Harper's Bazaar and FT Weekend. Follow @Simon_Oldfield on Instagram and his official website at: www.simonoldfield.com/ to discover more! Simon co-founded the non-profit organisation Pindrop with Elizabeth Day (of the How To Fail hit podcast) which is... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Season 9 continues!!! We meet Jennifer Gilbert - curator, gallerist and longterm champion of Outsider Art - to discuss the work of leading Japanese artist Shinichi Sawada on the occasion of his first solo exhibition in New York at the awesome Venus Over Manhattan gallery. If you're in New York, we STRONGLY recommend visiting this extraordinary new show!!!!Thirty-eight year old Shinichi Sawada has kept the same schedule for nearly twenty years. On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, he attends Nakayoshi Fukushikai, a social welfare facility in Japan’s Shiga prefecture, where he spends the morning working at the in-house bakery, making bread. He spends the afternoons working with clay. Sawada first attended this facility, one of many similar institutions in Japan designed to support people with intellectual disabilities, when he was eighteen years old, shortly after he was diagnosed with autism. In the two decades since, his ceramic beasts – sometimes ghoulish, always fantastical, and deeply redolent of ancient mythologies still coursing through Japanese culture – have attracted the attention of critics and connoisseurs worldwide, notably after a presentation at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013.Venus' current showcase of thirty of Sawada’s ceramic sculptures follows a recent museum solo exhibition that traveled in fall 2020 from the Museum Lothar Fischer, in Neumarkt, Germany, to the George Kolbe Museum, Berlin. On view through late March, the Venus exhibition has been organized in collaboration with Jennifer Lauren Gallery, Manchester, UK, who has worked with the artist for many years. In conjunction with its presentation, Venus will publish a generously illustrated catalogue featuring new and recent writing on Sawada’s art.Shinichi Sawada (b. 1982) lives and works in Japan’s Shiga prefecture. Since 2000, he has attended Nakayoshi Fukushikai, a social welfare facility that supports people with intellectual disabilities. In 2020, a solo exhibition of his work traveled from the Museum Lothar Fischer in Neumarkt, to the George Kolbe Museum in Berlin. His work has featured prominently in major group exhibitions around the world, including “The Encyclopedic Palace” at the 55th Venice Biennale, curated by Massimiliano Gioni, and “The Doors of Perception” at Frieze New York in 2019. His work is held in the permanent collections of numerous public institutions, including the Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne; the abcd collection, Paris; and Halle Saint Pierre, Paris.Shinichi Sawada runs until March 20, 2021 at Venus Over Manhattan, New York. Follow @V_Over_M on Instagram and their official website at: www.venusovermanhattan.com to discover more! Follow Jennifer on Instagram @j_lgallery and visit her official website www.jenniferlaurengallery.com/For images of all artworks discussed in this episode visit @TalkArt. Talk Art theme music by Jack Northover @JackNorthoverMusic courtesy of HowlTown.com We've just joined Twitter too @TalkArt. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. For all requests, please email talkart@independenttalent.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Talk Art SEASON 9!!!!! For the first episode of this extraordinary new season, Russell & Robert meet one our art heroes, and bona fide artist legend, Paul McCarthy!!!! Widely considered to be one of the most influential and groundbreaking contemporary American artists, his artworks have inspired, entertained, provoked and even shocked, international audiences for decades.Born in 1945, and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, he first established a multi-faceted artistic practice, which sought to break the limitations of painting by using unorthodox materials such as bodily fluids and food. He has since become known for visceral, often hauntingly humorous work in a variety of mediums – from performance, photography, film and video, to sculpture, drawing and painting.McCarthy earned a BFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1969, and an MFA in multimedia, film and art from USC in 1973. For 18 years, he taught performance, video, installation, and art history in the New Genres Department at UCLA, where he influenced future generations of west coast artists and he has exhibited extensively worldwide. McCarthy’s work comprises collaborations with artist-friends such as Mike Kelley and Jason Rhoades, as well as his son Damon McCarthy.During the 1990s, he extended his practice into installations and stand-alone sculptural figures, utilizing a range of materials such as fiberglass, silicone, animatronics and inflatable vinyl. Playing on popular illusions and cultural myths, fantasy and reality collide in a delirious yet poignant exploration of the subconscious, in works that simultaneously challenge the viewer’s phenomenological expectations. Whether absent or present, the human figure has been a constant in his work, either through the artist‘s own performances or the array of characters he creates to mix high and low culture, and provoke an analysis of our fundamental beliefs. These playfully oversized characters and objects critique the worlds from which they are drawn: Hollywood, politics, philosophy, science, art, literature, and television. McCarthy’s work, thus, locates the traumas lurking behind the stage set of the American Dream and identifies their counterparts in the art historical canon.Paul McCarthy 'A&E Sessions – Drawing and Painting' runs until 10th April 2021 at Hauser & Wirth, New York. This new solo exhibition presents new drawings, paintings, sculpture and sound work by the celebrated American artist that confront the complex mechanisms of power, politics, desire, and history. Central to the exhibition is a series of large-scale drawings from McCarthy’s most recent multi-disciplinary project ‘A&E.’ Created by the artist during improvised performances involving himself and German actor Lilith Stangenberg. Follow @HauserWirth on Instagram and their official website at: www.hauserwirth.comFor images of all artworks discussed in this episode visit @TalkArt. Talk Art theme music by Jack Northover @JackNorthoverMusic courtesy of HowlTown.com We've just joined Twitter too @TalkArt. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. For all requests, please email talkart@independenttalent.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

PODCAST CROSSOVER!!! Talk Art and Homo Sapiens UNITE!!! A celebration of LGBTQI+ History Month 2021!Dear Listeners, something different and EXCLUSIVE for you. We have done a really fun collaboration with the brilliant podcast @HomoSapiens  hosted by legendary actor @AlanCummingSnaps and TV/film director @ChrisSweeney. We’ve created a mash up episode! In this intimate 1 1/2 hour conversation, we discuss the art that inspired us in our teenage years, the story of Alan’s friendship with Madonna, art made during the 1980s AIDS epidemic and the giants of Queer Art like #DavidHockney, #AndyWarhol, #RobertMapplethorpe and #TomOfFinland plus we get all the intel on the next generation of trailblazing Queer artists like #CatherineOpie and #KehindeWiley. Plus, how does a Naan bread fit into #AlanCumming’s art collection??? THANK YOU ALAN & CHRIS! WE LOVE YOU!!The episode is split between our two feeds. So catch part 1 on Talk Art’s Podcast feed, and part 2 on the Homo Sapiens' Podcast feed.#TalkArtPodcast #HomoSapiensPodcast #LGBTQ #art #queerartLINK TO PART 2 at HOMO SAPIENS: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/homo-sapiens/id1257514825and https://linktr.ee/HomoSapiensPodcastFor images of all artworks discussed in this episode visit @TalkArt. Talk Art theme music by Jack Northover @JackNorthoverMusic courtesy of HowlTown.com We've just joined Twitter too @TalkArt. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. For all requests, please email talkart@independenttalent.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To celebrate LGBTQ+ History Month 2021, Russell & Robert select their highlights from the National Portrait Gallery’s collection in London. We discuss David Hockney, Maggi Hambling, Isaac Julien and Howard Hodgkin to discover how artists were able to share their personal stories and passions to give permission to future generations to live freely and be themselves!Throughout LGBTQ+ History Month, and beyond, the National Portrait Gallery will be sharing the stories and portraits of those that have helped shape Britain. Stay connected with the Gallery by following them on social media (Instagram & Facebook @NationalPortraitGallery; @NPGLondon on Twitter), and head to the NPG website to explore their vast online Collection - https://bit.ly/3uaBX4DTake a closer look at the works discussed in today’s podcast, via the links below.Maggi HamblingSelf-portrait by Maggi Hambling - https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw07447Maggi Hambling by Liam Woon - https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw80867Stephen Fry by Maggi Hambling - https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw09544https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw07497 Howard HodgkinHoward Hodgkin by Edward Lucie-Smith https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw84467(John) Peter Warren Cochrane by Howard Hodgkin- https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw127232Isaac Julienby Robert Taylor NPG x45784; Isaac Julien - Portrait - National Portrait Galleryby Sal Idriss NPG x125664; Isaac Julien - Portrait - National Portrait Galleryby Horace Ové NPG x126727; Isaac Julien - Portrait - National Portrait GalleryDavid Hockneyby Bern Schwartz - https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw128048by Godfrey Argent- https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw65944by Cecil Beaton - https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw65316by Cecil Beaton - NPG x40200; David Hockney - Portrait - National... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.