Talk Art

Robert & Russell meet artist Shawanda Corbett, best known for her ceramics, paintings and performances. Shawanda is a recent recipient of The Turner Bursary which replaces the Turner Prize 2020, recognised for her significant contribution to contemporary art in the UK during the past 12 months. We discuss the themes within “Neighbourhood Garden”, her current debut solo exhibition at Corvi-Mora gallery in South London, studying at the Ruskin at Oxford University, her admiration for her tutor Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, the ceramics of Magdalene Odundo and her love of jazz music including Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus, Alice Coltrane & John Coltrane. We discuss cyborg theory and growing up with a disability, the question of “what is a complete body?” and the influence of Bauhaus and Sci-Fi. We consider the importance of collaboration in creating her performances particularly with choreographers, notably her brother Albert Corbett and the role and vital energy of, and connection to, the audience. We discuss theatre and dance such as Pina Bausch and Katherine Dunham who kept dancing even when in a wheelchair later in her life. Finally we discuss family and her experiences growing up, her memories of childhood and her inspiring grandmother Mary Bells who was a big supporter and ally to the trans and gay community in New York during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.Shawanda is pursuing a doctoral degree in Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Art and Wadham College, University of Oxford. "Her practice-led DPhil focuses on the relationship between differently-abled body and abled body as cyborgs. In replacing disability theory with cyborg theory, Corbett’s practice is challenging her to be the primary maker and performer in her conceptual practice. She applies prosthetic making and the transitional period for prosthetics to techniques in filmmaking, analogue photography, and live performances."Visit her current solo exhibition at Corvi-Mora, running until 31st July 2020. https://www.corvi-mora.com/Follow @Cyborg_Artist on Instagram and official website website https://www.shawandacorbett.com. You can also view images at her gallery too @CorviMora. For images of all artworks discussed in this episode visit @TalkArt. 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. Thank you for listening to Talk Art, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email talkart@independenttalent.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Season 6 continues! Russell & Robert chat to emerging artist Ana Benaroya from her studio in Jersey City, New Jersey. Recorded remotely on 19th April 2020 during lockdown, we are massive fans of Ana's paintings!!!We discuss her early career as an illustrator, her love of cartoons, her passion for drawing, identifying with male characters in 80s/90s movies growing up and how she developed studies of the human body, in her early paintings of male physicality and how her focus has recently shifted to representing women’s bodies, particularly women in positions of power, muscularity, the influence of superheroes, bodily fluids, and smoke. We explore queerness, her passion for music especially opera and classical but also YES... the one and only, Celine Dion!!! We learn about Ana’s recent sport influenced paintings including use of multi-colours to project deep emotions, her admiration for painters such as Tom of Finland, Carroll Dunham, Peter Saul, Nicole Eisenman, Dana Schutz, Henry Taylor, Robert Cole Scott, Artemisia Gentileschi, the Chicago Imagists like Jim Nutt, Gladys Nillson, Karl Wirsum and the artists she studied with such as Rebecca Ness, Blair Whiteford and Dominic Chambers. Finally, we find out why her dream is to one day exhibit at the Met museum!!Ana’s forthcoming solo exhibition will open this Autumn in Chelsea, New York at Ross + Kramer gallery. Ana's current joint show with Peter Saul 'Summer-Upon-Summer-Love' is on display in their East Hampton gallery.Follow @anabenaroya on Instagram and view images at her gallery too @rosskramergallery. For images of all artworks discussed in this episode visit @TalkArt. 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. Thank you for listening to Talk Art, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email talkart@independenttalent.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

New Talk Art! Russell & Robert meet Aindrea Emelife, art critic, independent curator, advisor and arts presenter.We discuss her recent powerful mission statement written for The Independent newspaper investigating how the art world can step up for Black Lives Matter. Aindrea spoke to leading figures for their perspectives including Jasmine Wahi, the Holly Block Social Justice Curator at the Bronx Museum in New York, Eva Langret, artistic director of Frieze London, Osei Bonsu, curator of international art at Tate Modern and Courtney J Martin, director of Yale Centre for British Art in Connecticut.We explore her admiration for Studio Museum associate curator Legacy Russell and director/chief curator Thelma Golden, Chisenhale's director Zoé Whitley, the challenges with online art fairs in lockdown, Arthur Jafa's film 'Love is The Message', her passion for emerging artists artist Jade Fadojutimi and Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings, and Russ & Rob's recent discovery of Sola Olulode paintings part of a recent Stephen Lawrence Trust fundraiser.We hear about Aindrea's first column for the Financial Times (published when she was aged 20 years old), studying History of Art at The Courtauld Institute of Art, her commitment to philanthropic efforts including being a patron at Matt's Gallery and her joint founding the Plop Residency with artist Oli Epp, which gives three artists a month a residency space that includes tutorials from industry professionals, mentorship, studio space in Central London and exposure to the London art scene.Thanks for listening!! Follow Aindrea on Instagram @AindreaLondon. Learn more at her website http://aindrea.com/ or visit the Plop Residency at www.plop-residency.com. Read Aindrea's article at The Independent (click here).For images of all artworks discussed in this episode visit @TalkArt. 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. Thank you for listening to Talk Art, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email talkart@independenttalent.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's Talk Art, we're feeling the POWER of LOVE! Russell & Robert chat to the captivating superstar duo of Ellie Goulding and Caspar Jopling from their home in Oxfordshire.As passionate art collectors, we learn about the artists they admire and collect including Rebecca Warren, Julie Mehretu, Tracey Emin, Donna Huanca, Raymond Pettibon, George Rouy, Wolfgang Tillmans, Jack Whitten, Raqib Shaw, Cy Gavin, Christina Quarles and Ellie’s favourite - a neon of a double cross by Jonathan Horowitz in rainbow colours. We hear about the shyness of their first date visiting two exhibitions in London: Anselm Kiefer at White Cube followed by Robert Rauschenberg at Tate Modern. As their relationship grew, visiting exhibitions has become an integral part of their life as well as art fairs like Frieze and Art Basel!Ellie discusses her dedication to female artists and how her art collection has evolved since meeting Caspar, the works she used to collect were “dark stuff” gothic in style like ship wrecks or skeletons, skulls or ghosts! Whilst Caspar reminisces about his first art purchase growing up of a poster by Sir Terry Frost, his admiration for his uncle the legendary gallerist Jay Jopling (White Cube), how he advises his friends to support and collect art, and how he even experimented with screen printing and painting during his teens inspired by Rauschenberg, Richard Prince and Andy Warhol.With no motivation for investment, Ellie feels a close correlation between the art she loves and the songs she writes, something she explored whilst writing her forthcoming new album 'Brightest Blue': “I love the idea that you can buy something, that I can stare at for a long time and then it could maybe draw a song or a lyric out of me”. The album's title directly inspired by a Doug Wheeler artwork the couple saw at David Zwirner's gallery in New York. The intense installation of a blue room was “like walking into another world”.Art also inspires her music's visuals, collaborating with creative director Imogen Snell as well as photographers Louie Banks, Ronan Park and Rankin. We discuss her musical collaborator SerpentWithFeet who appears on her new album but also recently sang at her and Caspar's wedding in Yorkshire. We remember her collaborator the late rapper Juice Wrld and the impact of his passing on artists like Katherine Bernhardt and the international art and music communities.Finally we discuss Caspar's experiences working for Sotheby's but also within the film industry, his current studying for his MBA at Oxford University, the recent news of the Gallery Climate Coalition and how the art world is approaching sustainability, online viewing rooms, the positives and negatives of buying art (and clothes) online, and the escapism in lockdown watching period drama Downtown Abbey as well as the joys of completing Kandinsky and Lichtenstein-inspired puzzles! Ellie's fourth studio album 'Brightest Blue' can be pre-ordered NOW, released in full on 17th July 2020! Follow Ellie & Caspar on Instagram @EllieGoudling and @CasparJopling, @EllieGoulding on Twitter, her official website https://www.elliegoulding.com/. For images of all artworks discussed in this episode visit @TalkArt. We've just joined Twitter too @TalkArt. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Season 6 continues! Recorded remotely on 3rd April 2020 during lockdown, Russell & Robert chat to leading artist Katherine Bradford, best known for her radiant paintings of swimmers, superheroes, ships and dreamy landscapes that critics describe as simultaneously representational and abstract, luminous, and richly metaphorical.We explore how Katherine changed her life aged 30 years old to become an artist moving with her twin children from Maine to New York City, making friends with Chris Martin and other passionate intense painters in 1980s Brooklyn: "It was quite a new idea. People were not going to Brooklyn to be artists. So we were in a sense pioneers and we all stuck together, we relied on each other.” We discuss landscape painting, lobsters and Brunswick Maine's cold water coast, the sense of night in her works and how she came to add figurative elements which in turn increased her audience and interest in her paintings. We learn of her admiration for Marsden Hartley’s clouds "logos of the sky", John Marin and Alex Katz who share a direct, simplified language of painting. We explore the influence of folk art and children’s art, the spiritual in art (à la Kandinsky), and how working with the influential CANADA gallery helped her to progress. We find out what success means to her and the themes within her new solo show Adams and Ollman gallery in Portland. We discuss the joy of Instagram and her love of other painter's works including Susan Rothenberg, Rothko, Rose Wylie, Chris Martin, Katherine Bernhardt and Nicole Eisenman.Follow @KatheBradford on Instagram and please also visit Katherine's galleries @CanadaGallery and @AdamsandOllman and visit their website to view Katherine's current solo exhibition 'Mother Joins The Circus' www.adamsandollman.com. For images of all artworks discussed in this episode visit @TalkArt. 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. Thank you for listening to Talk Art, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email talkart@independenttalent.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Season 6 continues! Recorded remotely on 1st May 2020 during lockdown, Russell & Robert chat to Philadelphia-based artist Jonathan Lyndon Chase whose paintings and drawings focus primarily on queer black bodies in everyday, domestic spaces.We explore the importance of family including Jonathan's husband Will (who is also their studio manager), sea horses, shyness, Bipolar disorder, identifying as non-binary and the value of having a studio in their hometown of Philadelphia. We discuss humour, depicting the messiness of the human body, bodily fluids, queerness, gender performativity & 'performing' ourselves including Du Bois' Double Consciousness, Judith Butler's Gender Trouble and a recent inspiring quote by Alexander Leon, tattoos, the inspiring music & style of Missy Elliott and more recently Lizzo, science fiction, manga such as Sailor Moon, Afrofuturism, the joy of teaching & their respect for artist Jennifer Packer, the psychology of Francis Bacon's work, Gilbert and George, the influence of nature in particular roses and flowers, being a cat-parent but also feeding stranger's cats and the rare talent of tying cherry stems with your mouth alone!!! Finally we discover that all 3 of us were born under the Scorpio star sign... Scorpio's unite for this special Talk Art episode!!!Follow @JonathanLyndonChase on Instagram, their official website https://www.jonathanlyndonchase.com/ and please also visit Jonathan's gallery @CompanyGallery and their website https://companygallery.us/. Special thanks to Sophie Mörner. For images of all artworks discussed in this episode visit @TalkArt. 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. Thank you for listening to Talk Art, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email talkart@independenttalent.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Talk Art Season 6 continues! Recorded during lockdown on 19th April 2020 from the Mexican jungle, Russell & Robert chat to Rose McGowan, leading activist, author, singer, actress and creative polymath.We discuss her debut album 'Planet 9', how creativity can promote healing, why Rose sees America as a cult, growing up as a child in the Children of God cult, Rose & Robert's shared admiration for her previous partner Marilyn Manson's Mechanical Animals album & the song Coma White that written about Rose's life story. We discover why she loves collecting art and how the works she's chosen are closely linked to her own life story, including a painting she bought, whilst filming Charmed, by artist Eric Blum of an invisible woman and more recently works by Claire Falkenstein, Grant Haffner and Stanley Donwood of a figure "holding back the waves of the ocean" which she sees as representing her strength in the face of adversity.We learn about Rose's father, a skilled painter & airbrush artist, who made futuristic surreal paintings as well as Kodak commercials and Baci chocolate box packaging designs, the inspiration she drew from Edward Hopper works while directing 2014 thriller 'Dawn', her love of Ernest Hemingway, a memorable visit to Rothko's Chapel of fourteen black paintings at the Menil Collection in Houston, her admiration for latter-day Magritte, buying a fake Magritte painting from a garage sale as a teenager and her passion for Rodin & Camille Claudel's sculptures.We reminisce about her 2018 collaboration with shoe designer Nicholas Kirkwood for the 'Hacker' live show in London, and her later performance at Venice Biennale 2019. Rose is also influenced by architecture including Zaha Hadid and Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House in LA. and her loves of two time periods 1930s and 1970s, her respect for "seminal artist" Yoko Ono and Artemisia Gentileschi, the 17th Century Baroque painter and Frida Kahlo whose house she visited recently in Mexico City!Rose's debut album 'Planet 9' is OUT NOW! We also recommend reading her memoir 'Brave'. Follow @RoseMcGowan on Instagram, @RoseMcGowan on Twitter, her official website https://www.rosemcgowan.com/. For images of all artworks discussed in this episode visit @TalkArt. 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. Thank you for listening to Talk Art, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email talkart@independenttalent.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Season 6 of Talk Art! Recorded on 10th April 2020, we chat to Troy Michie, the acclaimed American collage artist, painter, interdisciplinary installation artist, and sculptor based in New York City. Michie's work is often in dialogue with the canon of collage; as well as investigating society's understanding of race, gender, sexuality, and other fields of identity and power. This episode is released on the anniversary of the Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles from June 3-8th 1943, which has been frequently referenced in Michie's work.We discuss the history of collage, vintage erotic and pornographic magazines, his hometown of El Paso, a border city between USA and Mexico, growing up bilingual, lies about immigration, racial stereotypes, media misconceptions and the ‘fear of the other’. We explore woven paper collage, a new development in Troy’s practice, as well as assemblage works on wooden panels, and sewing through paper.We explore the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots and his body of work referencing the dapper & flamboyant Zoot Suit style, Jazz music, Pachuco culture and its long lasting impact on popular culture including mainstream films Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Bugsy Malone and Dick Tracey. We discuss camouflage theory & Roland Penrose's disruptive patterning theory, Razzle Dazzle warships, queerness and the camouflaging the self within society, safety of marginalised communities and in particular the violence and murders of the transgender community in New York.His admiration for Nancy Brooks Brody, Mark Bradford, Magritte and the Surrealists, Méret Oppenheim, Frida Kahlo, Hannah Höch, Nouveau réalisme, Kara Walker, John Stezaker, Wangechi Mutu and Wilfredo Lam. We reflect on his works in shows at New Museum, the Whitney Biennial 2019 and his primary gallery Company. We discover the inspiration he drew from The Invisible Man novel and how he hopes to honour the memory of his grandmother and his family of hard working women, growing up listening to eclectic music by Sugar Cubes to Aretha Franklin and writing songs himself.Follow @TroyMichie on Instagram, his official website https://www.troymichie.com/ and please also visit Troy's gallery @CompanyGallery and their website https://companygallery.us/. For images of all artworks discussed in this episode visit @TalkArt. 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. Thank you for listening to Talk Art, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email talkart@independenttalent.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Recorded in New York on Sunday 26th January 2020, Russell & Robert meet leading artist Toyin Ojih Odutola, best known for her multimedia drawings and works on paper, which explore the malleability of identity and the possibilities in visual story-telling. Interested in the topography of skin, Ojih Odutola has a distinctive style of mark-making using only basic drawing materials, such as ballpoint pens, pencils, pastels and charcoal. This signature technique involves building up of layers on the page, through blending and shading with the highest level of detail, creating compositions that reinvent and reinterpret the traditions of portraiture. Ojih Odutola credits the development of her style from using pen, which holds a special significance through its function as a writing tool, as her work is also akin to fiction. She often spends months crafting narratives that unfold through series of artworks like the chapters of a book.Her work is inspired by both art history and popular culture, as well as her own personal history—being born in Ilé-Ifẹ̀, Nigeria then moving as a child to America where she was raised in conservative Alabama. The idea of traveling or transporting the self is a recurring theme in her work and, for Ojih Odutola, the construction of her figures is a means of discovering an individual’s character and personal story. Though the representation of skin has been a core focus of her practice, she has also explored depictions of landscapes, architecture and domestic interiors in more recent series.We discuss Toyin's forthcoming Barbican solo exhibition 'A Countervailing Theory', her first-ever in the UK, currently postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This epic cycle of new work will explore an imagined ancient myth, with an immersive soundscape by artist Peter Adjaye. Ojih Odutola, recognising the pen as a ‘writing tool first’, plays with the idea that drawing can be a form of storytelling. Working exclusively with drawing materials including pastel and charcoal, she approaches her process of drawing as an investigative practice. She proposes speculative fictions, inviting the viewer to enter her uncannily familiar yet fantastical world. Working like an author or poet, she often spends months creating extensive imaginary narratives, which play out through a series of works to suggest a structure of episodes or chapters. Drawing on an eclectic range of references, from ancient history to popular culture to contemporary politics, Ojih Odutola encourages the viewer to piece together the fragments of the stories that she presents.Follow @ToyinOjihOdutola on Instagram and view Toyin's new online exhibition via her gallery @JackShainman's website www.jackshainman.com For images of all artworks discussed in this episode visit @TalkArt. We've just joined Twitter too @TalkArtPodcast. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to Talk Art, we will be back very soon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Russell and Robert chat to leading English actor Josh O'Connor. We discuss family connections to art with his artist/ceramicist grandmother Romola Jane, the ongoing search to buy back her previously sold studio art pottery, his sculptor grandfather John Bunting who's wooden sculptures, bronzes & stone works was a contemporary of Henry Moore and teacher to artist Antony Gormley. We explore Josh's love of Modern British Art, learning to draw as taught by his grandfather, continuing to create his own drawings in adulthood which filmmaker Xavier Dolan has expressed admiration for.We explore his experiences working with Jonathan Anderson at Loewe for numerous advertising campaigns shot by Steven Meisel, Dwayne Michaels and Grace Sorrenti in Japan. the beginning of his own art collection including an abstract painting by Max Wade (Cob Gallery), his love of craft and pots and ceramics, his respect for photographer Alasdair McLellen and artist Alvaro Barrington. Finally we discuss the power of simplicity learned during filming with director Francis Lee in the movie Gods Own Country and his challenge to do 30 wild swims in his 30th year to raise funds for Mind charity.... and we decide Josh is the male Tilda Swinton!Follow @Joshographee on Instagram and @JoshOConnor15 on Twitter. For images of all artworks discussed in this episode visit @TalkArt. We've just joined Twitter too @TalkArtPodcast. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to Talk Art, we will be back very soon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.