Talk Art

Russell Tovey and Robert Diament
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Talk Art

Actor Russell Tovey and gallerist Robert Diament host Talk Art, a podcast dedicated to the world of art featuring exclusive interviews with leading artists, curators & gallerists, and even occasionally their talented friends from other industries like acting, music and journalism. Listen in to explore the magic of art and why it connects us all in such fantastic ways. Follow the official Instagram @TalkArt for images of artworks discussed in each episode and to follow Russell and Robert's latest art adventures. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  1. Rob Rinder and Rylan Clark

    EPISODE 1

    Rob Rinder and Rylan Clark

    Talk Art returns for Season 23! We meet Culture-loving Rob Rinder MBE and Architecture-fan Rylan Clark as they follow in the footsteps of 19th century romantic poet Lord Byron, and other Grand Tourists, on the 200th anniversary of his death. We discuss Caravaggio, Murano glass blowing, Artemisia Gentileschi & her censored ‘Allegory of Inclination’ (1816) and what it was like to become nude life models themselves. We explore how they met the Venice-based drag/art collective House of Serenissima, and hear all the gossip from the historic era of the Grand Tour. Rob and Rylan’s Grand Tour follows Rob Rinder and Rylan Clark – presenters, friends, and men who love the finer things in life – as they discover the greatest art treasures in Italy, finding out more about themselves along the way. Together, they retrace the steps of countless English aristocrats who took the Grand Tour – the original gap year – leaving behind the confines of British society for freedom and discovery abroad. But can the Grand Tour still work its magic today? Starting their journey in the winding canals of Venice, Rylan and Rob are ready to embark on the Grand Tour, once a cultural rite of passage designed to turn young men into distinguished gentlemen. In the city, they unveil one of the largest canvas paintings in the world, Tintoretto’s Il Paradiso, leaving them in awe. They also learn about the legacy of Italian painter Canaletto before heading off to the quaint island of Murano, famous for its glass blowing art. Rob, a lover of opera and poetry, attempts to realise a lifelong dream by conducting Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in the same church it was first performed in. Meanwhile, Rylan learns all about the lesser known side of the famous Venice Carnival.  In episode two, Rob and Rylan head to the Renaissance city of Florence, the “Beating Heart of Tuscany”. Famous for its many museums and art galleries, this charming city is oozing with history around every corner. Set out to uncover the secrets of the Renaissance period, the pair soak up the sights, including the well known Uffizi Gallery in the historic centre, home to pieces by legendary artists Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raffaello. They go on to visit more iconic locations: the Stibbert Museum, the Bargello Museum, Piazzale Michelangelo, Piazza Santa Croce during the final of the Calcio Storico, Piazza della Signoria, Piazza Santa Maria Novella, and Ponte alle Grazie. Along the trip, the duo learnt what it meant to be a Grand Tourist, trying on flamboyant Italian looks, fencing, dancing. On their final stop, the dynamic duo head to Italy’s capital city, Rome. Here they enjoy exploring the classical ruins of the famous Colosseum and the Roman Forum as well as the Pantheon. Channelling their love of opera, Rylan and Rob enjoy a rooftop performance with sensational views of the city in the background. Rob and Rylan’s Grand Tour is available now to stream on BBC iPlayer. Follow @RobRinder and @Rylan Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 11m
  2. Megan Rooney

    EPISODE 2

    Megan Rooney

    We meet artist Megan Rooney to explore her solo exhibition at Kettles Yard, Cambridge. Titled 'Echoes & Hours', this is the first major solo exhibition in the UK of work by Megan Rooney (b. 1985, South Africa). Her paintings have an irresistible life and energy, renewing the potential of abstraction to embody the richness of the visual world. It is curated by Andrew Nairne and Amy Tobin. This spectacular show is in it's final weeks, running until 6th October 2024, and we strongly recommend visiting! In June 2024, Rooney spent three weeks making a new ‘mural’, painting directly on the walls of one of Kettle’s Yard’s two galleries. In the other gallery a group of new paintings is exhibited for the first time.  Created in ‘family groups’, the size of the canvases she uses are determined by the reach of her outstretched arms. Vibrant colour and line appear boundless, capturing the ebb and flow of their making, from the use of abrasives to remove pigment to repeated overpainting. Each work tells a compelling story, poetically recalling the real, the remembered and the imagined – inviting visitors into their restless and pleasurable worlds. An enigmatic storyteller, Megan Rooney works across a variety of media – including painting, sculpture, installation, performance and language – to develop interwoven narratives. The body in her work, as both the subjective starting point and final site for the sedimentation of experiences explored through her practice. The subjects of her works are drawn directly from her own life and surroundings, while her references are deeply invested in the present moment. She addresses the myriad effects of politics and social conventions that manifest in the home and on the female body. Recurring characters and motifs form part of a dreamlike narrative that is never fixed, but obliquely references some of the most urgent issues of our time. Painting on uniform canvases measuring 200 x 150 cm – the wingspan of the average woman – Rooney presents layers of ethereal forms, often sanded back and painted over multiple times to create abstracted narratives without a discernible beginning or end. 'Each painting is a capsule of time and space,' writes critic Emily LaBarge, 'a palimpsest of effort and care, a portal into an intimate conversation between artist and canvas in which the journey of the work remains pulsing just beneath its surface.' She punctuates these layers with a contrasting dash of colour or energetic line, drawing the viewer in, only to disrupt their gaze with unexpected elements. These elements are often suggestive of corporeal forms that emerge and recede from view in an otherworldly space, as if captured in the process of becoming. Based in London, Rooney grew up between South Africa, Brazil and Canada, completing her BA at the University of Toronto followed by an MA in Fine Arts at Goldsmiths College, London in 2011. Her work has recently been shown in solo museum exhibitions, including at the Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg (2020–21); Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto (2020); and Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2019). Follow @KettlesYard and @ThaddeusRopac Visit: https://ropac.net/artists/210-megan-rooney/ Learn more about the Kettles Yard exhibition here: https://www.kettlesyard.cam.ac.uk/whats-on/megan-rooney/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 30m
  3. Ekow Eshun

    EPISODE 3

    Ekow Eshun

    We meet Ekow Eshun, leading curator, writer and broadcaster to discuss his new book The Strangers. In the western imagination, a Black man is always a stranger. Outsider, foreigner, intruder, alien. One who remains associated with their origins irrespective of how far they have travelled from them. One who is not an individual in their own right but the representative of a type. What kind of performance is required for a person to survive this condition? And what happens beneath the mask? In answer, Ekow Eshun conjures the voices of five very different men. Ira Aldridge: nineteenth century actor and playwright. Matthew Henson: polar explorer. Frantz Fanon: psychiatrist and political philosopher. Malcolm X: activist leader. Justin Fashanu: million-pound footballer. Each a trailblazer in his field. Each haunted by a sense of isolation and exile. Each reaching for a better future. Ekow Eshun tells their stories with breathtaking lyricism and empathy, capturing both the hostility and the beauty they experienced in the world. And he locates them within a wider landscape of Black art, culture, history and politics which stretches from Africa to Europe to North America and the Caribbean. As he moves through this landscape, he maps its thematic contours and fault lines, uncovering traces of the monstrous and the fantastic, of exile and escape, of conflict and vulnerability, and of the totemic central figure of the stranger. Described as a ‘cultural polymath’, Ekow Eshun has been at the heart of international creative culture for several decades, curating exhibitions, authoring books, presenting documentaries and chairing high-profile lectures. His work stretches the span of identity, style, masculinity, art and culture. Ekow rose to prominence as a trailblazer in British culture. He was the first Black editor of a major magazine in the UK (Arena Magazine in 1997) and continued to break ground as the first Black director of a major arts organisation, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London (2005-2010). As Chairman of the commissioning group for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, he leads one of the world’s most famous public art projects. In July 2022, Ekow curated In the Black Fantastic at the Hayward Gallery in London a landmark exhibition of visionary Black artists exploring myth, science fiction and Afrofuturism. His most recent exhibition, The Time Is Always Now, is a landmark study of the Black figure and its representation in contemporary art. The show opened at the National Portrait Gallery, London and is travelling to multiple venues in the USA, including The Philadelphia Museum of Art. Eshun’s writing has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Observer, Esquire and Wired. His latest book is a work of creative non fiction called The Strangers, published by Penguin in September 2024. Follow @EkowEshun or www.ekoweshun.co.uk/ Buy The Strangers, his new book from Waterstone's. Learn more: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/319734/the-strangers-by-eshun-ekow/9780241472026 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 11m
  4. Jonas Wood

    EPISODE 4

    Jonas Wood

    New Talk Art! We meet painter Jonas Wood to discuss his new solo exhibitions with Gagosian in London. With Frieze week upon us in London, be sure to visit Jonas' inspiring new shows in Mayfair. Gagosian present an exhibition of new paintings by Jonas Wood, opening at the Grosvenor Hill gallery in London on October 7, 2024. These works see Wood extend the unmistakable visual language that he has developed over two decades, exploring the dynamics of color, pattern, and space through the treatment of recurring subjects, including plants, family, and interiors. At once exuberant and obsessive, intimate and imaginative, the paintings on view—like much of Wood’s work—are marked by the interplay of apparent opposites. Wood’s compositions are characterized by sudden disjunctures, the collision of contrasting graphic passages, and sly shifts of scale and perspective, all within a compressed picture plane. These qualities grow out of his elaborate studio process: the artist works from photographs that he frequently alters and collages by hand, which, in turn, form the basis for preparatory drawings from which the paintings derive. Through these stages, he transforms volumes, surfaces, and textures into dense blocks of pattern and vibrant color. A feeling of intimacy is palpable, too, in the portrait of Wood’s wife (the artist Shio Kusaka) and their two children, titled Shio, Momo, and Kiki with Leaf Masks. Based on a photograph taken in the couple’s shared studio, the painting presents a playful moment, with the kids, in their pajamas, and Kusaka holding up masks improvised from large leaves taken off one of the copious plants around them, as if dressing up as one of his paintings. Other works on view represent family through their creations rather than as themselves: Wall of Fame portrays a wall from Wood’s studio crowded with his children’s art; Shio Shrine imagines a compact staging of work Kusaka made over the course of two decades; and Still Life with Coffee and Minibook features paintings by the children as well as a book of Kusaka’s art, arranged among potted plants and a cup of coffee. These works entail a deft intermixing of subject and object, making and staging, art and life. Concurrent with the exhibition, Wood is taking over Gagosian Burlington Arcade from October 7 to November 23, 2024. Wallpaper and prints by the artist are on view in the gallery, while posters, artist-designed hats, and books, including a new catalogue that accompanies Wood’s exhibition at Grosvenor Hill, are available in the Gagosian Shop. Jonas Wood's new solo exhibition runs from October 7–November 23, 2024 at Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London, W1K 3QD. His concurrent solo of prints and books runs for the same dates at Gagosian, Burlington Arcade, London, W1J OQJ. Jonas' new print will launch exclusively from www.countereditions.com at the end of October to fundraise for the charity Choose Love. Follow @JonasBRWood Visit @Gagosian and learn more: https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2024/jonas-wood/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 24m
  5. Fani Parali

    EPISODE 5

    Fani Parali

    It’s FRIEZE WEEK! We meet artist Fani Parali to explore his multifaceted practice. For Frieze Sculpture 2024, London-based multidisciplinary artist Fani Parali presents Aonyx and Drepan; two monumental steel armatures from which performers, as hybrid creatures, 'sing' to each other across a path in Regent's Park. In the video commissioned by Frieze, Parali describes the layered processes behind the 'lip-sync opera' she produces, 'I feel that it [the recorded voice] exists before and after everything else, and the performers then become like channels, like mediums for these voices to come through them.' Like Charon traversing the river Styx, Aonyx and Drepan represent gatekeepers guiding the viewer from one temporal zone to the next. Parali's practice is inspired by 'Deep Time', the 18th-century timescale used to plot non-anthropocentric geological events. In this ecologically destructive era, the work is a portal by which to view the vastness of geological time and think of ourselves as guardians of this, our own, brief epoch. Fani Parali (b. 1983 Greece) lives and works in London. She studied BA Sculpture at Camberwell College of Arts and completed her postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy Schools. Parali's practice includes sculpture, sound, performance, large-scale painting, drawing and moving image. Notable recent exhibitions include 'Aonyx and Drepan & The Minders of the Warm' at Southwark Park Galleries (2020). Her work is currently included in Hayward Galleries touring exhibition 'Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood' curated by Hetti Judah (2024). Frieze Sculpture returns to London's Regent's Park 18 September - 27 October 2024. The much-celebrated public art initiative coincides with Frieze London and Frieze Masters, which take place concurrently in The Regent's Park, 9 - 13 October. Curated by Fatoş Üstek, Frieze Sculpture has expanded for its 12th edition to include 22 leading international artists hailing from five continents, whose work will be sited throughout the park's historic English Gardens. Fani Parali (b. 1983 Greece) lives and works in London. She studied BA Sculpture at Camberwell College of Arts and completed her postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy Schools.   Parali’s practice includes sculpture, sound, performance, large-scale painting, drawing and moving image. She is renowned for the creation of ‘lip-sync’ operas, in which performers mime synthesised audio works; ambitiously scaled installations that are at once other-worldly and deeply human. Parali’s practice reflects on the concepts of ‘deep time’, caregiving and the fragile interconnectivity of human experience.   Notable recent exhibitions include ‘Aonyx and Drepan & The Minders of the Warm’ at Southwark Park Galleries (2020). Her work is currently included in Hayward Galleries touring exhibition ‘Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood’ curated by Hetti Judah (2024). Follow @Fani_Parali Visit Frieze Sculpture: https://www.frieze.com/article/frieze-sculpture-2024-fani-parali-aonyx-drepan-2020 Learn more at Cooke Latham Gallery: https://www.cookelathamgallery.com/artists/65-fani-parali/biography/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 1m
  6. Jeffrey Gibson

    EPISODE 6

    Jeffrey Gibson

    We meet leading artist Jeffrey Gibson to discuss his Venice Biennale solo and explore his inspiring and illustrious career thus far. The first Indigenous artist to represent the USA at this year’s Venice Biennale, Gibson is a painter and sculptor whose work is held in many major American collections. Incorporating murals, paintings, textiles and historical objects, Gibson’s work also weaves together text drawn lyrics, poetry and his own writing, complete with references to abstraction, fashion and popular culture. Of Mississippi Choctaw and Cherokee heritage, Gibson uses materials such as Native American beadwork and trading posts in his art that explores identity and labels.  Drawing influence from popular music, fashion, literature, cultural and critical theory, and his own individual heritage, Jeffrey Gibson (b.1972, Colorado; based in Hudson, NY) recontextualizes the familiar to offer a succinct commentary on cultural hybridity and the assimilation of modernist artistic strategies within contemporary art. Gibson’s Cherokee and Choctaw lineage has imparted a recognizable aesthetic to his beaded works exploring narrative deconstructions of both image and language as transmitted through figuration. Known for his re-appropriation of both found and commercial commodities –ranging from song lyrics to the literal objecthood of punching bags – repurposed through Minimalist and post-Minimalist aesthetics, speaks to the revisionist history of Modernist forms and techniques. His sculptures and paintings seamlessly coalesce traditional Native American craft with contemporary cultural production and references, forming works that speak to the experience of an individual subjectivity within the larger narrative defining contemporary globalization. Jeffrey Gibson grew up in major urban centers in the United States, Germany, and Korea, where he absorbed the transgressive soundtrack of the 1980s through limited access to MTV. Gibson graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995 and received a Master of Arts in painting at the Royal College of Art, London, in 1998. While in Chicago he also worked as a research assistant on the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) for the Field Museum, a formative experience that fostered an ongoing interest in questions of ownership and notions of cultural translation. Though trained as a painter, Gibson began incorporating materials and techniques that deliberately reference his heritage—such as raw hides and bead work—around 2010. A major turning point in his career, in 2012 he presented ‘one becomes the other,’ his first solo exhibition of sculpture and video, at Participant Inc. Sculpture, moving image, and sound have since become an integral aspect of his practice. He is known for his immersive, multi-sensory installations that invoke and interweave such disparate contexts as faith-based spaces of communion and night clubs. Jeffrey Gibson is represented in the permanent collections of more than twenty museums. Jeffrey Gibson is a 2019 MacArthur Fellow. He holds a MA at the Royal College of Art, London, a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA. Gibson is currently a Visiting Artist at Bard College, NY. Follow @JeffRune Learn more: https://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/jeffrey-gibson/ @HauserWirth and @SikkemaJenkins Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 10m
  7. Alvaro Barrington, presented by BMW

    EPISODE 7

    Alvaro Barrington, presented by BMW

    New Talk Art special episode!!!! We meet leading artist Alvaro Barrington, presented by BMW. We explore his work since we last met him on the podcast a few years ago, his current, epic solo 'Grace' at Tate Britain's Duveen Galleries, as well as a very cool recent collaboration with BMW at Frieze Seoul. Inspired by the BMW Art Car Collection and curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, the artist has paint over seven miniature i7s, drawing inspiration from video games and music. Barrington's practice explores interconnected histories of cultural production. Considering himself primarily a painter, Barrington’s multimedia approach to image-making employs burlap, textiles, postcards and clothing, exploring how materials themselves can function as visual tools while referencing their personal, political and commercial histories.   Barrington is interested in how the vehicles of the future will have the potential to recognise our moods, emotions and schedules, and as such adapt to them accordingly. The artist explores the future of cars reimagined as self-driving entertainment units and places for meeting that can help bridge different cultures through new technologies such as instant language translation. Utilising artificial intelligence, cars will go far beyond their purely transporting function and instead help us foster new connections and fulfil our daily needs. For this project, Barrington looked into video games centered around cars, which were not only important as play and entertainment, but also as platforms for music and culture. Exploring the history of cars and other vehicles that enable travel and movement, the artist has focused on the intersection of cars and culture and the way they have influenced one another. Merging these references, the artist created 7 unique cars, each featuring a drawing from a film, music video or portraying a cultural figure, which remain influential in Barrington's life and practice. For his Tate Britain commission, Barrington's personal exploration of identity and belonging is a journey in three parts honouring his grandmother, sister and mother. He draws from personal memories across time and place, from his grandmother's Caribbean home where a thunderstorm hammers on the corrugated tin roof, to the exhilarating energy of Carnival. Tate Britain's Duveen Galleries are transformed into a space alive with sound, colour and texture. This is Barrington’s poignant celebration of the people and places that make us feel we belong. 'GRACE is the constant reimagining of Black culture and aspirational attitude under foreign conditions. GRACE here explores how my grandmother, my mother, and my sister in the British Caribbean community showed up gracefully.' - Alvaro Barrington Grace runs until 26 January 2025 at @Tate Britain, free entry. Visit: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/alvaro-barrington Follow @AlvaroBarrington and @BMWGroupCulture Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 16m
  8. Tom Rasmussen

    EPISODE 8

    Tom Rasmussen

    We meet Tom Rasmussen to explore their new album Live Wire. We discuss their love of art, collaborations with artists Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings, Shon Faye and Travis Alabanza, their love for Rene Matić, writing new songs with Romy and Self Esteem and what it was like being photographed by the legendary Tim Walker on both album covers. This episode was recorded in Los Angeles while Tom put the final touches to the Live Wire album. “Live Wire (Globe Town Records 2024) was written over a year where the last thing I wanted to talk about was violence, or what it meant to be queer. I’ve done it so much, I wanted to think about and feel about what it meant if I could live beyond that. This album is about happinness, the bittersweetness time passing, trying to live when the world is falling down both inside and out. In terms of the production, we wanted to create songs where vastness and intimacy existed in the same place like on Body, Heart, Mind; or where there was so much space for the feelings of the listener — like on There’s A Lot To Be Happy About. Other songs like Song For M and Never Look Back, with Romy, are songs which start in a dream like space and aim never to take you out of it.” Tom's debut album Body Building (Globe Town Records 2023) fused dark dance music with an aesthetic and live performance that takes influence from their past life in drag. Born and raised in Lancashire, Tom moved to London where they fell into the world of drag, performing everywhere from the Royal Opera House to Glastonbury. Although their drag alter ego Crystal was distinct for singing live, it wasn’t until Rasmussen started writing their own music that their performance persona began to change, revealing more of themselves. Thus came their debut album Body Building, an album that pierces the skin with its falsetto vocals and moments of queer euphoria punctuated by acoustic instrumentation. Having already toured with Rina Sawayama and Self Esteem, Tom Rasmussen has already made waves with audiences across the UK. Especially with their single Dysphoria, the inimitably catchy, powerful yet poignant ode to their experience with their body. Follow @TomRasmussen on Instagram. Live Wire, is OUT NOW via Globe Town Records and includes collaborations with Romy and Self Esteeem. Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/album/2e2BL8KVYFFPve2vtCmO4l Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 5m
See All Season 23 (13)

Hosts & Guests

About

Actor Russell Tovey and gallerist Robert Diament host Talk Art, a podcast dedicated to the world of art featuring exclusive interviews with leading artists, curators & gallerists, and even occasionally their talented friends from other industries like acting, music and journalism. Listen in to explore the magic of art and why it connects us all in such fantastic ways. Follow the official Instagram @TalkArt for images of artworks discussed in each episode and to follow Russell and Robert's latest art adventures. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Information

  • Creator
    Russell Tovey and Robert Diament
  • Episodes
    327
  • Seasons
    23
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Robert Diament and Russell Tovey
  • Show Website
    Talk Art

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