ART FICTIONS Jillian Knipe
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- Arts
It's astounding how much crossover there is between creative endeavours and how stories circle around the artist's studio practice. 'Art Fictions' is a fortnightly podcast hosted by artist and critical writer Jillian Knipe. For each episode, a guest artist discusses their work through the lens of a piece of fiction of their choosing. We explore the book's themes, context and characters as well as the author's background, which opens up and steers a rich conversation about the artist's work. The podcast bounces back and forth between artworks and text, often meandering around film, television, exhibitions and other inspiring artists.
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Symbolic Prose and Personal Politics (HELEN JOHNSON)
Guest artist HELEN JOHNSON
joins JILLIAN KNIPE for this final episode of Series 5, to discuss her work via 'The Birds' by Tarjei Vesaas. Published originally in 1957, then by Penguin Random House in 2019, this short novel describes the relationship between Hege and her younger, mentally challenged brother Mattis. With a sense of non-judgemental simplicity and acute sensitivity, we join the siblings as they negotiate everyday life in partial isolation and on the edge of something happening.
HELEN and Jillian's conversation encompasses lightning, tenderness, siblings, gullibility, hiding, tapestry, holding, frustration, anguish, excavation, metaphors, equality, masking, knitting needles, dream worlds, shattered trees, portals, body punctures, art therapy, white supremacy, honest thieves, cartography lines, blinding flies, Oedipus complex, intergenerational privilege, psychotic structure, architectural blueprints, birthing shit, monetising colonialisation, not being othered, the weight of the work, creating a space for healing, writing being like a drawing, and a lot of Lacanian psychotherapy - a real learning experience !
HELEN JOHNSON
helenjohnson.net
'Opening' Pilar Corrias Savile Row til 6 Jan 2024
'Agency' Pilar Corrias 2019
'Warm Ties' ICA 2017
ARTISTS
Aleksandra Waliszewska
Aliza Nisenbaum
Bridget Riley
Christina Quarles
Denzil Forrester
Fred Williams
Georgiana Houghton
Joy Labinjo
Judy Watson
Katie Pratt
Laura Owens
Maja Ruznic
Marcus Coates 'The Directors' Artangel
Melanie Jackson
Nicole Eisenman
Njideka Akunyili Crosby
Paola Balla
Rosie Mullan
Shanti Panchal
Yhonnie Scarce
AUTHORS + BOOKS
Darian Leader 'The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression' 2008
Jackie Wullschläger 'Monet: The Resless Vision' 2023
Jennifer Higgie 'The Other Side: A Journey into Women, Art and the Spirit World' 2023
Karl Ove Knausgaard
National Gallery of Australia 'Know My Name: Australian Women Artists Since 1900' 2021 Part 1 2022 Part 2
CURATORS + ART HISTORIANS
Helen Molesworth 'Dialogues' David Zwirner
Sarah McCrory
THEORISTS + ANALYSTS + ACTIVISTS
Anna Freud
Donald Winnicott
Jacques Lacan
Joy Shaverien
Melanie Klein
Meriki Onus
Sigmund Freud
Shirley Sharon-Zisser 'What Would a Lacanian Art Therapy Look Like'
Walter Benjamin
Wilfred Bion
GALLERIES + ART INSTITUTIONS
Glasgow International
ICA Institute of Contemporary Art
Kunstverein in Hamburg
Kingsgate Project Space
Latrobe University
MCA NSW Museum of Contemporary Art Australia
NGV National Gallery of Victoria
Pilar Corrias
SeMA Seoul Museum of Art
Tate Galleries
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Closure Difficulties and Performative Reality (ELEONORA AGOSTINI)
Guest artist ELEONORA AGOSTINI joins PELUMI ODUBANJO to discuss her art practice via 'Boxes', a short story featured in 'Elephant and Other Stories' 1998 Collins Harvill. Written by Raymond Carver and originally published in The New Yorker, the story explores connections, disillusion, powerlessness, worry and loss within a mother and son relationship, as well as the distance between listening and hearing.
ELEONORA and Pelumi's discussion encompasses immortality, microcosmos, waitressing, belonging, mothers, self representation, the grid, family frictions, bitter endings, creepy observation, archival images, being deeply uncomfortable, hiding in bushes, multiple layers of meaning, the complicated teenage years, difficulty bringing closure to relationships, connections between pictures and performance, and not wanting to be the dictator of the image.
@eleonoraagostini
eleonoraagostini.com
Foam Talent 2024-2025
Bloomberg New Contemporaries, 2019
'A Study of Waitressing'
'A Blurry Aftertaste' 2018
'Laying with Strangers'
'Welcome Sir'
'How to Stand in Front of the Camera'
'How to Stand in Front of the Client'
'Notes for my Clients'
'The Steps'
@pelumi.odubanjo
ARTISTS
Olukemi Lijadu
Ragnar Kjartansson
WRITERS
John Cheever
Raymond Carver
GALLERIES & INSTITUTIONS
Barbican
Borough Road Gallery 'With Monochrome Eyes' 2020
Palais de Tokyo
Royal College
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Social Mobility and Beyond Language (MELANIE JACKSON)
Guest artist MELANIE JACKSON joins artist JILLIAN KNIPE to discuss her art practice via 'Corey Fah Does Social Mobility' by Isabel Waidner. Published in 2023 by Hamish Hamilton, part of Penguin Random House, the novel explores binaries, boundaries and borders, freeing us to imagine other ways of being within the context of award winning social mobility, cyclical history, and watching reality TV.
MELANIE and Jillian's discussion encompasses shame, humility, apology, gratitude, wormholes, reconfigured animations, cultural disruption, synthetic biology, persistent amnesia, complicated truths, brutalist architecture, unsustained caretaking, industrial metaphysics, winged penises, synthetic biology, false blaming, clashing ideologies, idealistic social housing, nano scale engineering, vulvas on horseback, ridiculing the middle class, colonialisation of language, pig fat in ice cream, what art can do as an experience, and the way histories and future technologies bounce off one another.
MELANIE JACKSON
@melanie.jjj
melaniejackson.net
'Rouge Flambé'
'Deeper in the Pyramid | Share of Throat'
'Spekyng Rybawdy'
'The Urpflanze'
ARTISTS + CURATORS + ACADEMICS
Esther Leslie
Ezra Lloyd Jackson
Kirsten Cooke
Nicole Eisenman 'Bambi Gregor' 1993
Olukemi Lijadu
Pelumi Odubanjo
BOOKS + MAGAZINES + WRITERS
Brian Massumi 'What Animals Teach Us About Politics' 2014
Charles Darwin 'On the Origin of the Species' 1859
Eileen Myles 'Afterglow: A Dog Memoir' 2017
Franz Kafka 'The Metamorphosis' 1915
'Frieze' magazine
Goethe 'Die Urplanze' ('The Metamorphosis of Plants') 1829
Isabel Waidner ' Sterling Karat Gold' 2021
Jo Orton
John Lahr 'Prick Up Your Ears' 1978 (film 2007)
EXHIBITIONS + INSTITUTIONS
Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth
Banner Repeater, London
Block 336, London 'Spekyng Rybawdy' 2022
Grand Union, Birmingham
Matt's Gallery, London 'Mattflix'
Max Mara Prize
Jerwood Drawing Prize
San Mei Gallery, London 'Rouge Flambè' 2023
Wellcome Collection, London 'Living with Buildings' 2018-2019
Wellcome Collection, London 'Milk' 2023
Whitechapel Gallery, London
FILM + TELEVISION
'The Nasty Girl' 1990
'Top Boy' 2011-2023
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Revealing Histories and Gender Variations (JULIET JACQUES)
Guest writer and filmmaker JULIET JACQUES joins artist and writer JILLIAN KNIPE to discuss her creative practice via 'Variations' 2021 by the one and only Juliet herself. Published in 2021 by Influx Press, this book of short stories portrays the mixed, messy and moving lives of transexual women transexual men, non binary, gender queer, cross dressers and inverts, around London, Manchester, Liverpool, Blackpool, Brighton, Belfast, Cardiff and Norwich.
Juliet and Jillian focus on 'Standards of Care' and also discuss humour, poverty, divorce, testosterone, rainbow capitalism, fake tits, ink blot tests, electric shock therapy, alternative Miss World, punk rock gender play, friendship in the face of prejudice, making objects that cannot be sold, itchy balls of wool for breasts, fresh meat advertising slogan, interest in post communist countries, the importance of questioning how people pay the rent and the disappointment of greater understanding not necessarily bringing about greater tolerance.
JULIET JACQUES
julietjacques.com
'Monaco' Toothgrinder Press 2023
'Variations' Influx Press 2021
'Trans: A Memoir' Verso Books 2015
'Transgender Journey' 2010-2012 The Guardian
'Suite 212' 2017-2021 Resonance FM
'Revivification: Art, Activism and Politics in Ukraine' 2018
ARTISTS
Boris Mikilov
Cecilia Sjoholm
David Goymer
Deborah Tchoudjinoff
Garth Gatrix
Hatty Buchanan
Iain Hales
Laura Moreton-Griffiths
WRITERS
Susan Stryker 'Transgender History' 2008
MUSIC
Genesis
Joy Division
Man Enough to be A Woman (Jayne County)
New York Dolls
NME magazine
Sex Pistols
Siouxsie and the Banshees
Siouxsie Sioux
The Fall
The Roxy
Wayne County and The Electric Chairs
FILM + TV
Adam Curtis 'Can't Get You Out of my Head' series 2021 BBC
Bill Grundy 'Today' 1968-1977
Derek Jarman 'Jubilee' 1978
Hattie Jacques 'Carry On' series 1958-1992
Oksana Kazmina, camera and editor
Josh Appignanesi 'Female Human Animal' 2018
EDUCATION + INSTITUTIONS
ICA London
Somerset House Studios
The Royal College
POLITICS + MOVEMENTS
Black Lives Matter
Femen 2008 Ukraine founded by Anna Hutsol, Alexandra Shevchenko, Oksana Shachko
Gay Liberation Front
Margaret Thatcher for Section 28
Revolution of Dignity 18-23 Feb 2014 Ukraine
ReSew - Kyiv based feminist sewing cooperative
Viktor Yanukovych -
Unwavering Sensitivity and Valuing Confusion (ANNA CLEGG)
Guest artist ANNA CLEGG joins curator and critic VANESSA MURRELL to discuss her multi-disciplinary art practice via 'My Loose Thread' by Denis Cooper. Published in 2002 by Canongate Books, this claustrophobic novel circulates around teenage Larry who is wrestling with the point of his own existence and explores teen depression, moral vacuity and the confusion of love.
Please be warned that in following the content of Cooper's text, the programme contains references to violence and suicide.
Anna and Vanessa's discussion also encompasses psychedelics, obsession, faux Nazis, feeling violated, animal stickers, unwavering sensitivity, stupid imagery, internal rhyming, Santa Claus, swimming through mud, looping back on oneself, eyes being gummed shut, the value of confusion, dark and disturbing worlds, begrudging awareness of the reader, not being able to fathom the logic of decision making, writing through an idea rather than creating a story, and the steampunk weaponisation of ice skates.
Please!
*rate and review
*support production through patreon.com/ARTFICTIONSPODCAST
*follow us on instagram @artfictionspodcast
*contact us on artfictionspodcast@gmail.com
Recorded at Cubitt Community Radio by Andi Armishah
Music GRIFFIN KNIPE
Production consultant LORI E ALAN
Logo JOANNA QUINN of BERYL PRODUCTIONS
ANNA CLEGG
relevant-confluences.com
'Half Truths' curated by Vanessa Murrell til 30 November 2023 at Unit 2 Cassia Building 97-101 Hackney Road Shoreditch London E2 8ET
ARTISTS
David Musgrave 'Lambda' 2022
James Turrell
John Baldassari 'Wrong' 1967
Joseph Cornell
BOOKS + MAGAZINES + WRITERS
Artforum magazine
Barry Pierce 'Another Magazine'
Beatrice Forster
Brett Eastern Ellis
Denis Cooper 'The George Miles Cycle' series 1989-2000
Denis Cooper 'I Wished' 2021
Elliot Jeffries
Frieze magazine
George Bataille 'Story of the Eye' 1928
Hervé Guibert 'Ghost Image' 2014
Interview magazine
Kathy Acker
Katja Kemnitz 'Too Much Love' on Tumblr
Nour El Saleh
Paul Auster
Roland Barthes 'An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative', 1975
Spin magazine
Tao Lin 'Leave Society' 2021
Tom of Finland
Victory Burgin 'Remembered Film' 2004
Vivian Sobchack
William Burroughs
MUSICIANS + FILM
Brooke Shields
Claire Denis, director and screenwriter
Larry Clark 'Bully' 2001
NLE Chopper
Terence Stamp
Xaviersobased
GALLERIES + ORGS
Chelsea School of Art
Greengrassi
Nicoletti Contemporary
Split Gallery
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Absent Mothers and Colonised Bodies (OLUKEMI LIJADU)
Guest artist OLUKEMI LIJADU joins curator and PHD researcher PELUMI ODUBANJO to discuss her multi-media art practice through the prism of 'The Stranger' (aka 'The Outsider' aka 'The Foreigner') by Nobel Prize winning writer Albert Camus. Published in 1942, the novella tells of an indifferent French settler who, soon after his mother's funeral, commits the senseless murder of an unnamed Arab man on a Algerian beach. Heralded in the west as a classic text which explores the absurd, their exchange questions the mono-critique which underlies this status, through their personal and uniquely individual experiences. For Olukemi, this is being Nigerian born and raised, where she was educated in the British system, going on to study philosophy at Stanford, USA. While Pelumi is British with Nigerian heritage.
Olukemi and Pelumi's discussion also encompasses psychoanalysis, philosophy, elusive racism, European critique, American critique, contradictory affection, self knowledge, segregated Algeria, compilation of memory, disregard for women, disregard for black people, anonymous Arab characters, ancestors speaking in the first person, the presence of absent women, who can make claims of objectivity, who can make claims of the absurd, women fading from the novel as male desire for them fades, the assumption that one must divorce one's positionality from how they engage with work for their opinion to be valid, the black woman as photographer and therefore narrator, as well as the radicalised and colonised body.
Please support the production of this podcast via https://www.patreon.com/ARTFICTIONSPODCAST
Contact Art Fictions via artfictionspodcast@gmail.com
Follow Instagram @artfictionspodcast
OLUKEMI LIJADU
olukemilijadu.com
insta @kemlij
contact@kemkemstudio.com
'Guardian Angel' commissioned by ICA 2022
ARTISTS + EXHIBITIONS
Atong Atem
Kahlil Joseph 'BLKNWS' 2018 ongoing
Theaster Gates
Wura-Natasha Ogunji
'A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography' at Tate Modern til 14 Jan 2024
'Genetic Automata' by David Blandy and Larry Achiampong at Wellcome Collection til 11 Feb 2024
BOOKS + AUTHORS + FILM
Frantz Fanon
Fred Moten 'Black and Blur' 2017
Harper Lee 'To Kill a Mockingbird' 1960
James Baldwin 'The Fire Next Time' 1963
Jane Austen 'Pride and Prejudice' 1813
Lola Olufemi
Paul Gilroy 'The Black Atlantic' 1993
Saidiya Hartman 'Lose Your Mother' 2006
Saint Omer 2022 director Alice Diop
Timothy Ogene 'Seesaw' 2021
Toni Morrison
MUSICIANS
Aretha Franklin
Bob Marley
Christopher Williams
Frankie Knuckles
Lee Scratch Perry
Rokia Traoré
Whitney Houston
GALLERIES + INSTITUTIONS
Sanford University
Institute of Contemporary Art
Tate Modern
V.O Curations