The Art Show ABC listen

We remember the life of the iconic artist Destiny Deacon, with curator Natalie King, and a cast of friends who sent us voice memos. She was the first artist to creatively reuse Aboriginal kitsch - and to make it the stuff of high art. A cultural icon, she was an outlier - a quirk of the artworld - whose strikingly original vision and prolific output found her an international audience.

Plus, a studio visit with Alexander Brown, an artist who gave up interior design to focus on sculpture made from only recycled material – and minimal intervention. He's part of an exhibition about Aluminium at Craft Victoria.

Kimberley Moulten, an adjunct curator at  Britain's Tate gallery, specialising in First Nations art and Kate ten Buuren, a Taungurung curator, walk us through the public installation Blak Infinite for Melbourne's winter arts festival, RISING.

The artist Destiny Deacon, who passed away last week, first coined 'Blak' to reclaim a word often weaponised against Aboriginal people in Australia. Rosa speaks with the Art Show's own Daniel Browning, who knew Destiny, about the artist's influential work and daring humour. Work mentioned include Whitey's Watching  and Eva Johnson -- Portrait .

In the 1930s Grace Crowley taught at a private painting school and met Ralph Balson, a house painter. The two struck up a lifelong painting practice that moved into 'pure abstraction', together playing an important role in the art movement in Australia. We look at their work and still-undefined relationship with curator Beckett Rozentals, for a new exhibition placing them side by side.

Cressida Campbell and Margaret Preston (1875-1963): two beloved printmakers inspired by Ukiyo-e, the Japanese woodcut genre whose influence swept through western art. Rosa speaks to Cressida and Geelong Gallery senior curator Lisa Sullivan about Ukiyo-e and Preston, for a new exhibition connecting all three printmaking styles.

Art History professor Roger Benjamin joins us to talk about the Gina Rinehart portrait drama. 

Khaled Sabsabi moves fluidly between the genres of music and visual art, but his art always has the same goal: to make meaningful work, to make society better. After many years of community development  work and thought-provoking installation artwork made from his studio in Western Sydney, Khaled was honoured with a 2023 Creative Australia award, and a residency at the prestigious American Academy in Rome.

Daniel meets the British filmmaker and artist Sir John Akomfrah, who is representing the UK at the Venice Biennale with his work Listening All Night to Rain.

Mentors can have many guises. For Miriwoong artist Jan Griffiths, Tiwi artist Johnathon World Peace Bush and Gomeroi Yinarr  artist Sophie Honess, they each chose someone who could offer them artistic guidance as well as cultural knowledge. The resulting works were commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria for a show called My Country.

Producer Stacy Gougoulis visits the home studio of children's book illustrator Zeno Sworder, whose book My Strange Shrinking Parents was a hit of 2023.

Damien Linnane was serving a prison sentence when he took up art as mental health therapy, going on to edit the magazines for prisoners Paper Chained  and working on a PhD. Damien is the curator of a new art exhibition at Boom Gate Gallery at Sydney's Long Bay gaol, showing art from people incarcerated around the world.

My Thing...is using art to talk about gambling harm. All his life,  Nelson Nghe has seen up close the harm caused by gambling on poker machines, or 'tiger machine' in Chinese language. It's cost members of his family and his wider community a lot -- even homes. Nelson explores this in his powerful installation artwork I Bet You, on display at The Institute for Australian and Chinese Arts and Culture (IAC).

Triple J's Stacy Gougoulis visits an exhibition of the late Gunditjmara, Yorta Yorta and Barkindji artist Josh Muir, who died at age 33 in 2022. In his neon street art-style prints and projections, Muir spoke a visual  language that shone bright and bold. Stacy speaks with Josh's partner Shanaya Sheriden and Koorie Heritage Trust curator Tom Mosby.

Saudi-Palestinian artist Dana Awartani studied at a famously conceptual art school, before learning traditional Islamic crafts and principles, like sacred geometry. Now Dana is exploring the destruction of build heritage in the Arab world, most recently the devastated city of Gaza. Her work is being shown at Adelaide's Samstag Museum of Art and at the Venice Biennale.

Rosa visits the Melbourne studio of ceramic artist Georgia Harvey. Taking influences from Mesopotamian art and our cross-cultural obsession with lions, Georgia tells us about her 'cauldron' of inspiration.

Artist Anna Park was first exposed to American culture through Disney. By the time her family migrated from Korea to Utah, USA, she was a keen observer and prodigiously talented drawer. Anna's satirical and masterful charcoal drawings capturing online life, are the focus of Look, Look. Anna Park, at the Art Gallery of Western Australia.