We meet leading artist Rana Begum to discuss her new public art flag display on London's Piccadilly in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Arts and Art of London. We also explore her incredible current solo exhibition at The Box in Plymouth titled 'Dappled Light'.The vibrant designs entitled No.1273 Flag are currently adorning the London skies until 20th August 2023, so make sure you visit if you're in London this month! Each flag showcases intricate geometric patterns, celebrating the multicultural fabric of the city. Rana Begum, a distinguished Royal Academician elected in December of 2019, has skilfully infused the flags with meticulously tiled mosaic patterns, symbolising unity and the diverse community of London. With her mastery of minimalist abstraction, she captures the vibrant essence of the city's world-class culture and entertainment scene, particularly in the iconic West End. Her artwork spills out onto the streets of the West End, bringing vivid colours and vibrancy along London’s iconic Piccadilly.Part of Art of London's Summer Season, these striking designs give us a glimpse of what's in store for the city's streets. Rana Begum's designs, responding to the "Art of Entertainment" theme, reflect the liveliness and excitement of dance, music, and theatre. Her clever blend of colour and geometry captures the fluidity of movement, resulting in a rhythm that connects with passers-by.The work of London-based artist Rana Begum distils spatial and visual experience into ordered form. Through her refined language of Minimalist abstraction, Begum blurs the boundaries between sculpture, painting and architecture. Her visual language draws from the urban landscape as well as geometric patterns from traditional Islamic art and architecture. Light is fundamental to her process. Begum’s works absorb and reflect varied densities of light to produce an experience for the viewer that is both temporal and sensorial. In 1999, Begum graduated with a BA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and Design and, in 2002, gained an MFA in Painting from Slade School of Fine Art. Rana Begum lives and works in London.Follow @RanaBegumStudio @TheArtofLdn and view image of Rana's new flags at: https://artoflondon.co.uk/events/art-of-london-unveils-new-flags-by-rana-begum-on-piccadillyand visit @TheBoxPlymouth for her current solo exhibition. @RoyalAcademyArts Summer Exhibition 2023 is open until 20thAugust, for more information visit: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/summer-exhibition-2023 Thanks for listening and happy Summer!!! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We meet renowned British painter and artist David Remfry MBE RA RWS, to discuss curating/coordinating this year's RA Summer Exhibition, working with watercolour, more than 5 decades of art making, and what it was like to live in New York's iconic Hotel Chelsea for 20 years!!!Remfry’s Summer Exhibition 2023 explores the theme Only Connect, taken from the famous quote in Howards End by E.M. Forster. Among the 1,614 featured works you will find towering sculptures by the late Phyllida Barlow RA, Richard Malone’s dramatic mobile installation in the Wohl Central Hall, and a witty painting by comedian Joe Lycett. Plus pieces by Tracey Emin RA, Hew Locke RA, Barbara Walker RA, Gavin Turk, Lindsey Mendick, Caroline Walker and much, much more.Remfry was born in Worthing, UK, in 1942. His family moved to Hull and he studied Art and Printmaking at the Hull College of Art. He currently lives and works in London. Early solo exhibitions include Ferens Art Gallery, Hull in 1974 and Folkestone Art Gallery, Kent in 1976. Since 1973 he has exhibited regularly at galleries and museums across the UK, Europe and the USA. He is perhaps best known for his large-scale watercolours of dancers; his series of drawings and watercolours of his neighbours and friends at the Hotel Chelsea New York City where he lived from 1995-2016, and his commission by designer Stella McCartney to produce a series of drawings for the launch of her fashion house and for Absolut Vodka.Over the past five decades his work has been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide, including Boca Raton Museum of Art, Florida; MoMA PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Pallant House Gallery, Chichester; and the DeLand Museum of Art, Florida. In 2014 he was commissioned by Fortnum & Mason, London, to create a series of watercolours which is now on permanent display in Piccadilly, and he was commissioned to paint Sir John Gielgud for the National Portrait Gallery, London, which also acquired for their collection his portrait of Jean Muir.Remfry was elected a member of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1987. In 2001 he was awarded an MBE for services to British Art in America, in 2006 he was elected a Member of the Royal Academy of Arts and, in 2007, he was invited to receive Honorary Doctorate of Arts by the University of Lincoln. He was awarded the Hugh Casson Drawing Prize at the 2010 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and, in 2016, was appointed Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy Schools.His work is included in museum permanent collections including the Bass Museum of Art, Florida; Boca Raton Museum of Art, Florida; the British Museum, London; the Contemporary Art Society, London; the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; MIMA, Middlesborough; the National Portrait Gallery, London; New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana; the Royal Academy of Arts, London; the Royal Watercolour Society, London; and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.A retrospective of Remfry’s work, curated by Dr Gerardine Mulcahy-Parker, is planned for 2025 at Beverley Art Gallery, East Riding.Follow @David_Remfry_RA on InstagramVisit his official website: www.davidremfry.com/Visit the RA Summer Exhibition until 20th August 2023: www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/summer-exhibition-2023 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Russell & Robert meet leading artist Lindsey Mendick, recorded in front of an intimate live audience at Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh. We explore Lindsey's major new solo exhibition 'Sh*tfaced', her first solo show in Scotland. Running until 1st October 2023, this multi-layered exhibition of new ceramics, film and sculptural installations is presented across all of Jupiter Artland’s galleries.Lindsey Mendick’s work is one of confession, where taboo topics and uncomfortable truths are revealed with candour and humour. Her work is characterised by an intense attention to detail and verisimilitude, whereby everyday scenes – a nightclub, a kitchen, a bedroom – are expertly crafted in ceramic and staged in larger-than-life tableaux.Mendick has transformed Jupiter’s Ballroom Gallery and Steadings Gallery into a diptych of nightlife; one that draws inspiration from the gothic novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde with all its troubling contentions of virtue, appearance, public shaming and masking. Like an anxiety dream come to life, there is a sobering mirroring of contemporary binge drinking culture and gender-based shaming presented in the work, although the anticipated judgemental tone is noticeably absent. By subverting the genre of morality tale, Mendick’s work opens a space where our public and private faces can be encountered without prejudice.Lindsey Mendick graduated from Royal College of Art in 2017 and is currently based in Margate. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate. Her work was also included in the major exhibition, Strange Clay: Ceramics in Contemporary Art at the Hayward Gallery, London. With her partner, the artist Guy Oliver, Mendick initiated Quench Gallery in Margate to provide vital support for early career artists through exhibitions and mentoring.This is second Talk Art episode with Lindsey - to listen back to the first, you can find it in the archive Season 8, Episode 4 (recorded in 2020). Also found within Talk Art's new book: The Interviews.Visit LINDSEY MENDICK: SH*TFACED from 15th July - 1st October 2023. View more details: https://www.jupiterartland.org/art/lindsey-mendick-sht-faced/Follow @LindseyMendick and @JupiterArtlandLindsey’s concurrent solo at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Where The Bodies Are Buried taking the form of a decaying house with dark secrets beneath the floorboards, Gothic stories, television and 1990s. @YSPsculptureJupiter Artland is an award-winning contemporary sculpture garden located just outside Edinburgh. Founded in 2009 by philanthropist art collectors Robert and Nicky Wilson, Jupiter Artland has grown into one of Scotland’s most significant arts organisations, with an international reputation for innovation and creativity – in 2016 this was recognised by a nomination for ArtFund’s Museum of the Year. Set over 100 acres of meadow, woodland and indoor gallery spaces, Jupiter Artland is home to over 30 permanent and unique site-specific sculptures from artists Phyllida Barlow, Christian Boltanski, Charles Jencks, Tracey Emin and Antony Gormley. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Talk Art SPECIAL EPISODE!!!! We go on an electric Art Adventure from Leeds to Edinburgh! Russell and Robert drive to Jupiter Artland in Edinburgh in a BMW electric iX to meet Jupiter's founder, the philanthropist Nicky Wilson, and discover some sculpture legends en route. Our first stop is the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds. We convene in their incredible library with Laurence Sillars, Head of the Institute, to explore their mission to inspire everyone to enjoy and study sculpture through their exhibitions, library, archive & research. We explore their current group exhibition 'The Weight of Words' and a solo show of Egon Altdorf (1922 - 2008). We chat to Errin Hussey to discover the Sculpture Research Centre with archive of sculptors papers including Helen Chadwick. Before driving through the countryside all the way to Antony's Gormley's iconic 'Angel of The North' in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear. Since its completion in 1998, this epic public sculpture has become a treasured location for local families but also art lovers who make the pilgrimage from across the UK. It is believed to be the largest sculpture of an angel in the world and is viewed by an estimated 33 million people every year.We continue our trip all the way to Lindsey Mendick's new solo exhibition at Jupiter Artland in Scotland and meet Nicky Wilson, Jupiter's incredible founder and leading philanthropist. Jupiter Artland is an award-winning contemporary sculpture garden located just outside Edinburgh. Founded in 2009, Jupiter Artland has grown into one of Scotland’s most significant arts organisations, with an international reputation for innovation and creativity. Set over 100 acres of meadow, woodland and indoor gallery spaces, Jupiter Artland is home to over 30 permanent and unique site-specific sculptures from artists Phyllida Barlow, Christian Boltanski, Charles Jencks, Anish Kapoor and Antony Gormley, as well as a seasonal programme of carefully curated exhibitions and events from a plethora of artists, both emerging and established. We navigated our art trip with help from the My BMW App and the BMW Art Guide - a wonderful book created with Independent Collectors - the go-to guide to discover new collections where art is presented in the most diverse and interesting settings. The first of its kind, the Art Guide is a perfect companion for city trips abroad or for finding havens of contemporary art right on your doorstep. Now in it's 7th edition, the guide presents 304 private, yet publicly accessible, collections of Contemporary Art — featuring large and small, famous and the relatively unknown. Succinct portraits of the collections with color photographs take the reader to 51 countries and 224 cities, often to regions that are off the beaten path.Talk Art exclusive! We have 100 free copies of the BMW Art Guide on a first come, first serve basis for our listeners. Until stocks last. Visit the BMW microsite to get your free copy: https://bmwgroupculture.com/talk-art?partner=wXh5oswjlPFollow @BMWGroupCulture to learn more about BMW's commitment to art. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We meet leading artist Ilana Savdie from her studio in New York to explore the making of her major new solo exhibition at Whitney Museum!Ilana Savdie explores themes of performance, transgression, identity and power in her vibrant, large-scale paintings. Assembling fragments into finely detailed, fluid compositions, her canvases pulsate with flamboyant colour, conjoining, merging and blending their forms in an aesthetics of riotous excess. At their core, Savdie’s paintings aim to dismantle ideas of binary or fixed identity, and to embrace the notion of performance as a transformative tool.Drawing on a range of subjects and environments for her source material, Savdie explores variable textures and forms of mark making across each expansive canvas. Combining areas of stained and blurred colour with passages of thick visible brushwork or smooth, hard-edged marks, she employs acrylic, oil and beeswax into paintings characterised by their dreamlike illusion yet grounded to the physical body.Now living and working in New York, Savdie was raised in Barranquilla, Colombia and draws extensively on the city’s tradition of Carnaval in her work. A week-long display of transgressive abundance, Savdie sees the queer potential in the Carnavalesque idea that figures and characters are mutable, with the potential to change at any moment. Connecting this to wider constructs of social and sexual identity, specifically Colombian figures such as the ‘Marimonda’ (a monkey/elephant hybrid with a phallic looking mask), assert an element of the transgressive, exemplifying the disruptive, socially-penetrating mockery at the heart of Carnaval display. ‘I loved the concept of this exaggeration of the body as a form of mockery and mockery as a form of protest’, Savdie has stated.The influence of Carnaval extends to the artist’s use of colour, which is instinctual and often saturated in hue, a saccharine palette of pinks, purples, yellows and greens: ‘There’s just something about the excess of colour that feels like seductive subversion,’ Savdie has said. While this colourful exuberance points to a tactical subversion, it also makes reference to established visual tropes: to the representation of sexuality in culture and the bright colours associated with ‘queer space’.Recalling the colourful abstract works of Helen Frankenthaler or the extenuated figuration of Francis Bacon, Savdie equally draws on the drama of Baroque painting and, more recently, on film. Her work is particularly attuned to the melodrama of horror and science fiction as an entry point into the aesthetics of excess. Using elements and figures that seem violent and other-worldly, pulling from the aesthetics and behaviours of the parasite, she blends the darkly comic nature of caricature with the euphoric and the grotesque.Ilana Savdie (b. 1986, raised in Barranquilla, Colombia) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. In 2008 she received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, USA, and in 2018 she received her MFA from Yale University, New Haven, USA.Visit Ilana's solo show 'Radical Contractions' at the @WhitneyMuseum now open until 29th October 2023: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/ilana-savdieFollow @Ilana_Savdie and @WhiteCube Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We meet Nadya Tolokonnikova of PUSSY RIOT, the legendary Russian feminist protest art collective. We discuss Nadya's journey in art thus far and her monumental current exhibition in Sante Fe at CONTAINER space."While working with artifacts, bottling ashes, and manufacturing the faux furry frames for the bottles, I used skills that I learned in the sweatshops of my penal colony. I was forced to sew police and army uniforms in a Russian jail. I turned what I learned in my labor camp against those who locked me up. Putin is a danger to the whole world, and he has to be stopped immediately." Nadya Tolokonnikova.CONTAINER Turner Carroll is bringing Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs "wanted list" Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova to Santa Fe. The exhibition Putin's Ashes will transform CONTAINER into a kind of war zone. Pussy Riot’s Putin's Ashes was initiated in August 2022, when Pussy Riot burned a 10 x 10 foot portrait of the Russian president, performed rituals, and cast spells aimed to chase Putin away. Twelve women participated in the performance. In order to join, women were required to experience acute hatred and resentment toward the Russian president. Most of the participants were either Ukrainian, Belarusian, or Russian. Nadya Tolokonnikova bottled the ashes of the burnt portrait and incorporated them into her objects that are being presented alongside her short art film Putin's Ashes, directed, edited, and scored by Tolokonnikova and co-produced John Caldwell.Follow Nadya and Pussy Riot on Instagram: @NadyaRiot and @PussyRiotView the exhibition (click here)Follow @Container_TurnerCarrollRead Nadya's book: Read and Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide To ActivismVisit the official websites: https://pussyriot.love/ https://unicorndao.com/https://zona.media/ - Pussy Riot-founded, independent news outlet. Focused on (mainly) Russian investigative reporting, courtroom live-blogging, digital censorship coverageWe stand in solidarity with Pussy Riot!!! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We meet Daniel Lismore live at Hay Festival 2023!Daniel is a London-based artist. He was born in Bournemouth and raised in Fillongley Village on the border of Coventry. Although he started his career as an artist from the perspective of the outsider, working as a photographer within a year he had moved in front of the lens as a model, later emerging as a creative consultant for Mert & Marcus, Steven Klein, David LaChapelle and Ellen von Unwerth. Lismore has been named by Vogue as ‘England's Most Eccentric Dresser’. In 2017 he was selected in the top hundred of the Out 100 List. In 2018 and 2020 he was named in the top hundred, Guardian’s Pride Power List.​In 2016, Daniel Lismore became the Circuit Ambassador for the Tate Museums. Here, Lismore hosted his first two exhibitions in Tate Modern 2012 and Tate Britain 2013 featuring self-portraits.​Daniel Lismore’s first book, ‘Be Yourself, Everyone Else Is Already Taken,’ published by Rizzoli in 2016, documented the 32 figurative sculptures of Lismore which comprised his first USA museum exhibition. The exhibition was co-curated by Raphael Gomes and Savannah College of Art and Design and was later displayed at Miami Art Basel. In May 2017 Lismore exhibited at the Venice Biennale. In June 2018, Lismore curated a month-long show of his work at Harpa Hall in Iceland as the highlight of the Reykjavik Arts Festival. The exhibition subsequently toured Europe, opening at the Pan Museum in Naples and Stary Brower Gallery in Poznań, Poland. The exhibition has been attended by over 150,000+ visitors. In April 2019 Lismore gave a TED Talk at the main TED conference in Vancouver, titled "My Life as A Work of Art" in which he spoke about his life as a Living Sculpture.​In September 2019, Lismore opened Naomi Campbell’s Fashion for Relief runway show at the British Museum revealing one of the first costumes he designed for the English National Opera (in collaboration with Swarovski) for Harrison Birtwistle's iconic opera The Mask of Orpheus which was staged at the London Coliseum.  ​During the Covid-19 pandemic, Lismore resided between Coventry and London working on LGBTQ+ activism and new artworks. His show Be Yourself, Everyone Else is Already Taken was opened in February 2022 in Coventry UK City of Culture at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum it attracted around 50,000 guests from all over the world.​In 2021 Lismore took a selection of his show Be Yourself, Everyone Else is Already Taken and exhibited them at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London as part of their Fashion in Motion program. This was also his debut performance as a performance artist. He joined the sculptures exhibiting himself as a statue between his works to deliver a dialogue under a mask to confuse the audience.​In 2023 Lismore exhibited “Studio Visit” a site-specific installation based on the studio environment that is instrumental to his practice, aiming to give visitors a unique insight into the creative process and the development of his work in Giant Gallery Bournemouth, co-curated by Stuart Semple. Follow @DanielLismoreVisit: https://www.daniellismore.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We meet living legend Sue Tilley and artist Rui Miguel Leitão Ferreira!!!Sue Tilley (b. 1957), also known as Big Sue, is an artist, artist's model and writer. Most notably, she modelled for painter Lucian Freud. Tilley collaborated, and was best friends, with performance artist and club promoter Leigh Bowery. In 1997, she published Leigh Bowery: The life and times of an Icon, a biography. Freud painted several large nude portraits of Tilley, the first being Evening in the Studio (1993). Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, painted in 1995, was sold at auction for £35 million ($56 million USD). We discuss a brand new exhibition at The Sunday Painter in South London - the first painting show of Portuguese artist Rui Miguel Leitão Ferreira (b.1977) in the UK. Curated by Daniel Malarkey, the exhibition sees Ferreira further develop his self-portrait series Posing for Sue. The works on show explore Ferreira's relationship with close friend and mentor Sue Tilley – widely known for her long-standing professional relationship with Lucian Freud – whilst subtly manipulating and subverting the complex dialogue between the three subjects traditionally involved in portraiture: the portrayed, the artist and the observer. The artist first met Tilley at a charity event in 2013. An in-depth exploration into the experiences of life models within the realm of fine art had recently prompted Ferreira to begin modelling himself, a disquieting endeavour that left the artist feeling increasingly vulnerable and directionless when it came to his own practice. Ferreira found solace in Tilley’s gaze, eventually leading the two to forge a close friendship. Inspired by the powerful artist-model dynamic between Freud and Tilley – whose iconic four-year professional relationship saw Freud produce perhaps some of his most acclaimed and psychologically charged nude portraits – Ferreira sought to capture the intimacy of time spent between artist and sitter through the specificity of paint.Rather than simply mirroring the pair’s relationship, however, the Posing for Sue series attempts to subvert art history’s long established traditions of portraiture – one of the oldest enduring art forms – by reconsidering the roles of all those involved. Ferreira begins his artistic process by filming a video piece in which he undresses in front of Tilley, with each recording capturing the collaborators reacting and responding to each other’s physical presence. Ferreira then paints from carefully chosen film stills, allowing him to analyse the process in motion rather than focusing on one particular viewpoint. By undressing in front of Tilley and remaining completely exposed throughout each filmed session, the source of the gaze, usually strictly maintained by the artist, is intentionally displaced to the model.Posing for Sue explores the notion of shared experience between artist and sitter, tapping into the deep-rooted human desire to capture the complexities of expression via mimetic representation. Through the act of being observed in his most vulnerable state – both by the model and by the viewer – Ferreira utilises his body as an instrument to explore the heights and depths of the human psyche.Follow @SueTilley1 and @RuiMiguelLeitaoFerreiraVisit @TheSundayPainter for info on the new exhibition and their website: https://thesundaypainter.co.uk/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

New Talk Art! We meet artist Tim Stoner (b. 1970, UK), best know for his paintings, which we explore in depth in this fascinating discussion!!!Before settling in London full-time, Tim lived and worked between London and Ronda, Southern Spain. In Ronda, a village in Andalucía, he began experimenting with unfinished canvases submerging them in swimming pools, pouring dissolving chemicals and distressing their surfaces with palette knives, scalpels and sanding discs. Often reworked over several years Tim creates layered ethereal abstract scenes.Conceived from a multitude of drawings and works on paper, Stoner approaches his paintings as palimpsests, with some of the scenes described as much by the removal and erasure of painting, as by the addition of materials. They have often been amended and reworked over a period of several years. The final paintings become much like visual autopsies, their visible layers revealing damaged, dissected brushstrokes, and elements of the picture surface flayed away to reveal earlier forms and gestures. This distance from nature and the painted gesture, results in compositions which are as much abstract depictions of light, colour and movement, as recordings of the landscape.Tim Stoner was born in 1970 and grew up in London. He lives and works in London and Ronda, Spain. Stoner studied at Norwich School of Art and Design (1989−1992), the Royal College of Art, London (1992−1994), the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam (1997−1998), and attended the British School at Rome (2001). Tim Stoner was the winner of the 2001 ica Futures prize.Follow @StonerTim on Instagram.Visit his official website: www.TimStoner.net Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We meet Nicholas Cullinan, leading art historian, curator and current Director of the National Portrait Gallery in London.The new National Portrait Gallery opens its doors to the public on 22nd June 2023. The Gallery is home to the most extensive collection of portraits in the world, from the 8th century. The NPG collection has over 220,000 works, 150,000 of which are illustrated from the 16th century to the present day in a wide variety of different mediums.The National Portrait Gallery tells the story of the people who have shaped British history through the medium of portraits and encourages and promotes portraiture in all media. The Gallery houses the most extensive collection of portraits in the world, which offers unique insights into the men and women who have and who are contributing to the culture, identity and rich diversity of Britain. The Gallery aims to be the foremost centre for the study of and research into portraiture, as well as making its work and activities of interest and accessible to as wide a range of visitors as possible.Founded in 1856 and located just off Trafalgar Square, the National Portrait Gallery is home to the largest collection of portraiture in the world, featuring famous men and women who have helped shape British history from the great Tudor courts to the present day, with contemporary portraits reflecting the diversity, inventiveness and multi-culturalism of modern-day Britain. By weaving together 500 years of history, art, biography and fame, the Gallery offers a unique and fascinating insight into those individuals that together characterise a nation. Visitors can come face to face with kings and queens, courtiers and courtesans, politicians and poets, soldiers and scientists, artists and writers, philosophers and film stars. Its 3,000 paintings feature some of the most iconic and instantly recognisable faces in British history, from Elizabeth I to Tracey Emin, with artists ranging from Holbein to Hockney. Behind each image is a fascinating story giving an insight into an individual who stood out in their generation and enriched our culture and national consciousness.Follow @NationalPortraitGalleryVisit: www.npg.org.uk/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.