Talk Art

Talk Art Live! We meet artist Studio Lenca (Jose Campos) within his recent solo exhibition 'Leave to Remain' at Carl Freedman Gallery in Margate. ‘Leave to Remain’ is the official term used by the UK Home Office, meaning someone who is allowed to stay in the UK with restrictions and without permanent legal status. According to the latest data from the UNHCR, 70.8 million people around the world have been forced from their own homes. Among them are 25.9 million refugees, over half aged under 18. In this latest body of work, Studio Lenca continues to explore his own displaced experience whilst questioning universal themes of belonging, home and lost histories.Growing up as an illegal immigrant, Studio Lenca travelled illegally overland to the USA, growing up ‘without papers’ in San Francisco. As a young adult the artist moved to the UK, settling in Margate where he is now based. In his ‘Los Historiantes’ paintings Studio Lenca continues to play with the frames of history and identity. This new series depicts the folkloric dancers that theatrically re-enact stories of colonisation and the subjugation of indigenous peoples. The work playfully references a combination of biographical anecdotes, personal reflections and national iconography.Alongside his characteristically vivid paintings, Studio Lenca will collaborate with KRAN (Kent Refugee Action Network), turning Carl Freedman Gallery into a working studio. Young refugees and asylum seekers will work with Studio Lenca to build large sculptural works based on the volcanoes of El Salvador. These works will explore the ‘borderless’ process of making and reference the artists own problematic encounters with a colonised education system.Leave to Remain, offers a critical window within the gallery and a space for discussion. The show asks us to address Margate as a border town and who is allowed to leave and to remain. Studio Lenca (b.1986 La Paz, El Salvador) is based at TKE Studios, Margate, UK. Studio Lenca is the working name of artist Jose Campos – ‘Studio’ referring to a space for experimentation and making; ‘Lenca’ referring to the Mesoamerican indigenous people of southwestern Honduras and eastern El Salvador.He works with performance, video, painting and sculpture. He received an MA from Goldsmiths University of London and his work is included in the permanent collection of the Pérez Art Museum Miami and the Parrish Art Museum in New York.Follow @StudioLencaVisit: https://carlfreedman.com/exhibitions/2024/studio-lenca/Special thanks to @CarlFreedmanGallery (where Talk Art's Robert Diament is Partner). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We meet Precious Okoyomon – poet, artist, and chef – stages sculptural topographies composed of living, growing, decaying, and dying materials, including rock, water, wildflowers, snails, and vines. For Okoyomon, nature is inseparable from the historical marks of colonisation and enslavement. In their work, plants like kudzu – a vine native to Asia that was first introduced by the US government to farms in Mississippi in 1876 as a means to fortify erosion of local soil, which had been degraded by the over-cultivation of cotton, and then turned to be uncontrollably invasive – become metaphors for the entanglement of slavery, racialisation, and diaspora with nature, nonetheless holding the capacity for change and revitalisation.Through their work, Okoyomon explores the intricate interplay between nature, chaos, and regeneration. Raised in the expanses of Ohio’s Midwest, Okoyomon’s formative years were steeped in the natural world. ‘My first love is very much the Earth, the soil,’ they say in this new episode of ‘Meet the artists.’ The sentiment informs their multifaceted practice, encompassing installations, poetry, and culinary arts. Characterized by what they describe as an ‘organic flow,’ in their work each medium seamlessly intersects with the others to create ‘the endless poem.’Their invasive garden installations frequently feature kudzu, a vine introduced to the American South post-slavery, which Okoyomon employs as a potent metaphor for colonization. The kudzu’s unrestrained growth overtakes a space, embodying themes of chaos and natural reclamation. ‘What dies, dies. What grows is sprung up inside of that. And the beauty of everything is that it regenerates,’ they explain, underscoring the cyclical nature of their practice.Precious Okoyomon’s work can be seen at Fondation Beyeler’s ‘Summer Show’, May 19 – August 11, 2024. They have also co-conceptualized the show. Their work is also on view as part of the Nigerian Pavilion at the 60th Biennale di Venezia 2024.Follow @DevilInTraining Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We meet artist Puppies Puppies. Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo (b. 1989, Dallas, TX), widely known by the moniker Puppies Puppies, expands ideas around the readymade by imbuing ubiquitous and everyday objects, signifiers, and actions with a personal and political charge. Puppies Puppies works across sculpture, installation, and performance art.She has, for example, reconfigured antibacterial gel dispensers, toilet bowl liquid, the color green, as well as the acts of sleeping, peeing, and taking a pill in installations and performances that challenge ableist frameworks of artistic and capitalist production. Many of Puppies Puppies’s exhibitions have also included actionable components: a GoFundMe campaign to support a friend’s transition fund, free HIV testing and counseling, and a working shower available for use by the public. Kuriki-Olivo thus asserts that life can be viewed as its own form of endurance practice, especially for those whose very survival is at stake, including trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people of color.At the Venice Biennale 2024, Puppies Puppies is exhibiting two works. A Sculpture for Trans Women... (2023) is a life-size bronze sculpture taken from a 3-D scan of the artist’s body. Emblazoned with the word “WOMAN”, the work – which will be activated with performances throughout the Biennale – subverts the power of monuments to make visible and celebrates trans life in an act of protest and commemoration.Electric Dress (Atsuko Tanaka) (2023) pays tribute to those killed in 2016 at the mass shooting that took place during a “Latin Night” party at Pulse, a queer nightclub in Orlando, Florida. The sculpture references Atsuko Tanaka’s Electric Dress (1956) with LED lights that flicker to the pulse of a heartbeat and lights that cycle through the rainbow colours found in the Progress Pride Flag. Both sculptures honour queer and trans life while confronting oblivion and invisibility.Follow @PuppiesPuppiesJadeTrigger Warning runs until 31st August @BaliceHertling gallery. Special thanks to Daniel Balice for connecting us! https://www.balicehertling.com/2024/puppies-puppies-jade-guanaro-kuriki-olivo/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We meet Es Devlin CBE to discuss her new multi-media work SURFACING commissioned by BMW and unveiled at Art Basel in Basel 2024.A pioneering combination of sustainable energy and movement in an installation of water, light, sound and dance. A dance collaboration and a series of mobile sound installations within a pilot fleet of BMW iX5 Hydrogen vehicles.In Hall 1.1 of the art fair Devlin created a booth displaying four works: Surfacing (2024), an illuminated cube of rain penetrated by a line of light and Surfacing II (2024), a pair of painted televisions in which a dancing figure appears to displace pixels and pigment, are flanked by Mask (2018) a projection-mapped model city fusing hands and river, and Mask in Motion (2018) a revolving illuminated translucent printed city which meshes viewers within its kinetic shadow.Each work continues Devlin's 30 year exploration of the entangled dance between humans and technology. The booth surprises visitors each hour as Surfacing's box of rain, like a magician's apparatus, conjures a 7 minute dance work by renowned Paris-based choreographer Sharon Eyal with music composed by London-based duo Polyphonia. A meeting of artist and engineers: Devlin has spent the past year engaging with engineers at BMW, learning the mechanics behind the hydrogen fuel cell technology and its implications for the future of sustainable energy systems. As an opening chapter to the works on view in Hall 1.1, she has created a simple soundscape drawn from their conversations and underscored by composers Polyphonia which is played to guests in the pilot fleet of BMW iX5 Hydrogen vehicles.Devlin says: “I learned from the BMW engineers the beautiful symmetry of the system at work within the hydrogen fuel cell: the energy that is used to separate hydrogen atoms from oxygen is recreated when the oxygen is reunited with hydrogen within the car. The by-product is not only the energy which propels the vehicle, but water.”The exterior of the BMW iX5 Hydrogen has been wrapped in a painted blue and white collage in which Devlin overlays paintings and text made in response to the prints and literature which populated her wall and bookshelves as a teenager. Painted gestures echoing the 1831 woodcut ‘The Great Wave off Kanagawa’ by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, are superimposed over hand written extracts from literature’s longest sentence about water drawn from James Joyce’s seminal novel ‘Ulysses’. Underlying the collage are excerpts from BMW Group publications on hydrogen fuel cell technology.Artist and Stage Designer, Es Devlin’s work explores biodiversity, linguistic diversity and collective ai-generated poetry. She views the audience as a temporary society and encourages profound cognitive shifts by inviting public participation in communal choral works. Her canvas ranges from public sculptures and installations at Tate Modern, V&A, Serpentine, Imperial War Museum and United Nations General Assembly, to kinetic stage designs at the Royal Opera House, the National Theatre and the Metropolitan Opera, as well as Olympic ceremonies, Super-Bowl half-time shows, and monumental illuminated stage sculptures for Beyoncé, The Weeknd, Dr Dre, Kendrick Lamar and U2.Visit: https://EsDevlin.com/ and Follow @EsDevlin and @BMWGroupCulture Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We meet artist Jean Claracq to discuss painting, his recent shows with Galerie Sultana in Paris and Arles, plus what its like living and working from Marseille and its growing artistic community.Jean Claracq brings the past forward via savvy remarks on the culture industry of the 21st century. Claracq’s paintings exploit, in the most delicate and refined form, the language of advertisement and social media to construct desire, fascination, and lust. With eclectic references that range from medieval paintings to elements of contemporary pop culture, a dystopian view of the joie de vivre unveils a new alternative to the divine perception of the world.In his work, Jean evokes the ambiguity between joy and pleasure mixed with the anguish of an unstructured world on the verge of collapse. He evokes the architecture and study of suburban areas, in particular car parks, the symbol of a world alienated by consumerism to the point of sacrificing its own existence.In 2023, he was awarded the Prix Pierre Cardin in Painting by the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Painter of miniatures and icons, Jean Claracq contributes to the dialogue between painting and digital art. His models come from social networks (Instagram, Grindr) and are part of a gay, marginal or culturally different community. They interact with many references to the history of old master painting (especially schools form Northern Europe). Attached to traditional techniques (oil on wood, attention to the smallest details), he plays with the possible reading levels and accurately depicts our relationship to screens and loneliness in an urban environment.Claracq was Born in 1991 in Bayonne, France. Graduated from Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2017, his recent solo exhibitions include Open Space # 7 Jean Claracq, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2020), Fondation Sisley (2020), and group shows Boys Don’t Cry, Le Houloc, Aubervilliers (2020), agnès b., La Fab., Paris (2020).Follow @JeanClaracqVisit @GalerieSultana Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We meet Dominique Fung (b.1987), a Canadian artist with ancestry in Hong Kong and Shanghai, whose practice explores the subliminal liminal territory in which tradition, memory and legacy seep through our collective subconsciousness. Through her interest in casting light on overlooked or forgotten stories and her use of specific historical artifacts she infuses with living qualities and complex non-linear narrative paths, she models a new, broader, alternative space of belonging. She lives and works in New York.Fung's creations in her recent solo exhibition (Up)Rooted served as portals to ancient memories and drifting reveries. They beckon the artist to revisit her own roots, anchoring her to a specific era, geographic origin, and emotional state. Alongside her series of paintings, Fung delves into the realm of sculpture, crafting pieces that resemble ancient relics inspired by Scholars' rocks – geological formations with deep historical significance. Scholars' rocks are often referred to as the "bones of the earth" and likened to the "petrified roots of clouds." They not only represent landscapes like mountains but also embody nature itself. Eroded into intriguing shapes, scholars' rocks have been cherished since ancient times by China's intellectual elite as objects of contemplation. Their original name is gongshi, a word written in Chinese using the characters for 'worship' and 'stone.' Fung’s own gongshi sculptures are designed as living entities, engaging in activities like fishing, blossoming flowers, and hiding fish.Hailing from Ottawa in Canada, with family roots extending from Shanghai, Hong Kong to Kano in Nigeria, Fung elaborates: “My family lineage has these multiple layers of disconnect due to language and location; we are in search of the ability to communicate and connect with one another. In my art practice, I yearn for that missing piece, that history, and connection, and my works embody a profound sense of longing and distance.”Fung's exploration is vast, ranging from sea life to artifacts from the Tang and Shang Dynasties. Her curiosity also leads her to delve into the world of Dunhuang frescoes. Through these multiple sources, Fung finds a way to reconnect with a distant past that resides across oceans and centuries: her sense of Chinese heritage is deeply influenced by the objects she encountered both at home and during visits to the Asian art section at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Fung reflects on these museum relics as akin to herself, distanced and often removed from their original contexts by vast oceans and the passage of time.Follow @DominiqueFungVisit: https://massimodecarlo.com/artists/dominique-fung Special thanks to Massimo De Carlo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We meet curator and writer Gemma Rolls-Bentley to discuss her debut book Queer Art, recorded in front of a live audience at the Turner Contemporary in Margate. With nearly 200 artworks selected by Gemma, this book mixes the high-brow with the low, gallery stalwarts with Instagram stars, and the racy with the fabulous. This is a unique celebration of queer life – a must-have for the LGBTQI+ community, art lovers and anyone interested in the culture surrounding queer identity.The twentieth century saw key shifts for the LGBTQI+ community across the western world: from the Stonewall uprising to the first pride parades and homosexuality law reforms. The years following these milestone moments have seen queer life face new challenges, celebrations, injustices and liberations. As ever, this journey has been closely mapped by art and culture. Artists working across all mediums from painting, performance, digital and beyond have captured key moments, from the HIV/AIDS crisis and the rise of drag, to marriage equality and the fight for trans liberation.Gemma was born and raised in South Yorkshire. She spent her early years living on a farm and then in a village on the Yorkshire/Derbyshire border at the edge of Sheffield, where her parents still live. She left when she was 18 to go to Edinburgh University to study Maths & A.I. but graduated with a degree in Art History instead. When she moved to London to do an MA at the Courtauld Institute of Art she discovered that everyone in the art world was posh. She changed her surname to Rolls-Bentley on Facebook as a joke and it stuck. Gemma curated her first exhibition when she was a student in Edinburgh, a group show of fine art students in an abandoned travel agents. She's been curating ever since.She's spent almost two decades working passionately to champion diversity in the field. Curating exhibitions and building art collections internationally, her curatorial practice amplifies the work of female and queer artists as well as providing a platform for art that explores LGBTQ+ identity. She co-chairs the board of trustees for the charity Queercircle, and sits on the Courtauld Association Committee. She was previously a trustee for Deptford X. In 2011, Gemma launched the arts arm of the East London Fawcett Group and ran their 2012-2013 Art Audit campaign.Recent curatorial projects include Tschabalala Self’s first public art project at Coal Drops Yard in London, the Tom of Finland Art & Culture Festival, and the Brighton Beacon Collection, which is the largest permanent display of queer art in the UK. In 2023, she curated the group exhibition Dreaming of Home at Leslie Lohman Museum of Art in NYC, and she is the host of the museum’s new podcast series.Follow @GemmaRollsBentleyGemma's debut book Queer Art; From Canvas to Club and the Spaces Between is out now.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We meet Mary McCartney, world renowned photographer, film-maker and sustainable food pioneer. As a leading British creative, her work covers multiple disciplines, but is always rooted in her passion for impactful storytelling. We meet at Claridges Art Space in London to explore her joint show 'Double Exposure' with photography legend David Bailey. Unfolding like a conversation between two friends, Double Exposure: David Bailey & Mary McCartney brings two era-defining British photographers into dialogue for the first time. Curated by Brandei Estes, this striking series of works spans the 1960s to the present day – exploring a shared aesthetic of reinvention, play and the art of portraiture itself.Mary McCartney’s insightful gaze reveals enigmatic and evocative portraits of celebrity icons, from Kate Moss to Harry Styles. Like Bailey, there’s a dash of the theatrical and performative in her photographs. But set alongside everyday moments – a ballet dancer ‘off pointe’ or a woman hailing a taxi – she conjures the sense that anything, or anyone, could be a subject. As a portrait and fine art photographer, McCartney’s work has been featured globally, with exhibitions taking place in London, New York, France and in 2015 was invited by Buckingham Palace to take the official photograph to mark Queen Elizabeth II becoming the longest reigning Monarch. Her work is held in major private and public permanent collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the National Portrait Gallery, London; The Royal Academy, London; and the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, Paris, and has been commissioned by leading publications including National Geographic, British Vogue and GQ. In 2023, McCartney’s first feature documentary If These Walls Could Sing, the untold story of the Abbey Road Studios 90 year history, was selected to premiere at The Telluride Film Festival. Streaming globally on Disney, and was nominated for a Critics Choice Documentary Award. McCartney has also been at the forefront of food sustainability for over 25 years, with a history and heritage rooted in her mother’s pioneering work and creation of one of the first meat free brands Linda McCartney Food in 1991. In 2009, Mary co-founded the global collective Meat Free Monday with her father and sister, and is a global ambassador for Green Common Foods, a food tech brand in Asia that is focused on plant based meat substitute products. McCartney has also executive produced and presented three seasons of her EMMY nominated plant based cooking show, “Mary McCartney Serves It Up!” for Discovery+.McCartney is a multi-published author, with a range of fine art photography books available from globally renowned publishers including, HENI and Chatto & Windus. Combining her passion for food and publishing, her latest book Feeding Creativity, published by TASCHEN is a unique hybrid coffee table, portrait and recipe book, featuring favourite recipes for friends, family, and members of the creative community.Follow @MaryMcCartneyDouble Exposure: David Bailey & Mary McCartney is open to all, and will run in Claridge’s ArtSpace until 19 July 2024. Visit: https://www.claridges.co.uk/claridges-artspace/Thanks to Katy Wick and The Wick. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We meet artist Corbin Shaw, live from the Crossed Wires podcast festival in Sheffield's City Hall.Corbin Shaw (b. 1998) is a British artist based in East London, originally from Sheffield. Exploring the complex realm of masculinity and identity through the medium of textiles. Using his upbringing in a South Yorkshire ex-mining town Corbin investigate's masculinity and how it was defined to him growing up. Breaking stigmas and stereotypes through his re-imagination of masculine 'icons' and objects. The artist pays homage to the people and places that have shaped his northern identity – the pub, football pitches and boxing gyms. Collaborations include Women’s Aid, BBC Sport & Fred Perry and had cover’s for EXIT, Perfect Magazine and Circle Zero Eight as well as features in The Guardian, The Face, Dazed and Metal Magazine. Corbin Shaw presented his fourth London solo show ‘Little Dark Age’ at Incubator, Marylebone, where he explores modern day Britishness through ancient crafts, exploring what is the meaning of tradition and questioning what it means to be ‘English’ today. Follow @CorbinShaww Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Talk Art Live, recorded at Apple Covent Garden. We meet Rebecca Lucy Taylor aka Self Esteem to celebrate her first new music in 3 years, the new single Big Man featuring Moonchild Sanelly.Recorded in front of a live audience of 400 art lovers, we explore her rise to fame over the past few years, what it was like playing the Sally Bowles lead in Cabaret on London's West End and her love of art and how artists continue to inspire her creative process while recording her third album. We discuss her admiration for artists including Lindsey Mendick, Marina Abramović, Tracey Emin, Cindy Sherman, Corbin Shaw and Jenny Holzer. Her passion for visiting museums like Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Hayward Gallery and artist degree shows, responding to Tony Soprano and masculine archetypes in her new imagery and what it feels like to be permanently hanging on the walls in the National Portrait Gallery collection in a portrait by photographer Karina Lax.Rebecca Lucy Taylor, known professionally by her stage name Self Esteem, is an award winning English singer-songwriter. Nominated for the Mercury Music Prize for her last hit album, Prioritise Pleasure, Self Esteem had sell-out tours at ever-growing venues across the UK and played the largest gigs of her career including Glastonbury – in recognising herself and others, Rebecca Taylor has made countless people feel esteemed.We love Self Esteem SO much! You can stream her new single, which is without doubt THE song of the summer BIG MAN, and also listen to her award-winning album PRIORITISE PLEASURE now at Spotify, Apple or wherever you listen to your music!!! View her new video for BIG MAN here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mteCEloA1bsFollow @SelfEsteemSelfEsteem on Instagram and @SelfEsteem___ on Twitter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.