ART FICTIONS

Jillian Knipe

ART FICTIONS is a monthly, contemporary art meets literature programme, created by artist Jillian Knipe. Each guest artist selects a piece of fiction, which we both explore, then use as a lens through which to view their artwork. We delve into the book‘s themes, context and characters, which opens up and steers a rich conversation about the artist‘s practice. The podcast bounces back and forth between art and text, all the while focussing on the ideas which govern both. It is a way of talking alongside art, rather than directly at it, getting close and personal with the origins of artistic ideas. Hosting is shared amongst a small group of artists, critics and curators, and artists are selected based on each host's area of specific interest.  Support via PATREON or BUY ME A COFFEE and follow Art Fictions on Instagram for images of works and links.

  1. 5D AGO

    Minor Violence and Productive Confusion (JENNET THOMAS + SALLY O'REILLY)

    Guest artists JENNET THOMAS and SALLY O'REILLY come together to discuss their work via the short story 'Critique' by Ben Marcus. Published in 2018 by Alfred A Knopf and Grant Books, it is one of 13 stories appearing in 'Notes from the Fog' which explore dysfunction, desolation and disconnection within a woundingly funny collision of art and reality. 'The Big Throw' at SET Social 23 April 2026 Buy us a coffee! Support us on Patreon! Get in touch! artfictionspodcast@gmail.com "...narrative plot and how sticky and unpleasant it can be" JT "The idea of just working in response to the infinity of the universe is appalling to me" SO'R Sally and Jennet's conversation encompasses anti-plot, delirium, vertigo, maximalism, hermeticism, visitations and the grotesque. Yearning superpowers of persuasion, they go on and about carboot sales, ontological slippage, lemon sucking, deceptive loops, skewing language, twiddling knobs, automatic sterilisers, visually flamboyant, minor violences, constricting constraints, painting barcodes, slyly political, shifting rules, making knickerbockers, troubling reality, social reproductions, found objects, draped flesh, ecstatic technology talk, working in a factory, the pleasure of difficulty, a taste in the head, reality from the inside out, audience participation as part of the materials, weirdness coming into the living room, jumping to the whip of the ref, being wary of simplification and elegance, well made in a brutal violent sense at gunpoint, and a seal in mud with a lion's head. JENNET THOMAS jennetthomas.com @jennetthomas 'School of Change' 2012 'All Suffering SOON TO END!' 2010 'Return of the Black Tower (after John Smith)' 2007 SALLY O'REILLY sallyoreilly.org.uk @manfredopenarms 'The Money Laundering Service' 2025 'Dog Shelves' 2024 'Where They Gather' 2022 'Estee Lauder Factory' 2022 'The Annual Retrieval' 2016 'The Virtues of Things' 2015   "I can't breath" Eric Garner George Floyd ARTISTS John Smith Kit Downes Klara Kofen Leo Chadburn Matt Rogers Maz Murray Simeon Barclay WRITERS + BOOKS Christine Brooke-Rose Frieze magazine M John Harrison Muriel Spark Russell Hoborn 'Riddley Walker' Sally O'Reilly 'Help in Cucumbers' Will Self William Empson FILM + TELEVISION 'Bedknobs and Boomsticks' 'Brimstone and Treacle' Dennis Potter Michael Kitchen 'The Terminator' GALLERIES + ORGANISATIONS Bandcamp Horse Hospital Matts Gallery ICA Institute Contemporary Art October House Records Opera North Royal Opera House SET Social SLG South London Gallery

    1h 7m
  2. JAN 29

    Beautiful Viciousness and Colourful Ova (CARRIE MOYER)

    Guest artist CARRIE MOYER joins JILLIAN KNIPE to discuss her work via 'Cassandra at the Wedding' by Dorothy Baker. Published in 1962 by Houghton Mifflin (US) and Victor Gollancz (UK), most recently Daunt Books, with sympathetic tenderness and acerbic wit, it follows twin sisters Cassandra and Judith as they navigate Judith’s wedding to a very pleasant and capable young doctor. The other key characters are their father, a retired philosophy professor who fancies a Brandy soda tipple, the ghost of their dead mother and their maternal grandmother. Get in touch with us via artfictionspodcast@gmail.com Buy us a coffee! Support us on Patreon!   "it feels like all of the interesting innovations have been done by women painters in terms of abstraction" Carrie and Jillian's conversation encompasses activism, wit, abandonment, confusion, family, ambivalence, agitpop, snarkiness, ambiguity, galaxy, queer, optical bliss, transitional places, menacing edge, geological time, mental illness, burying identity, utter distaste, ominous vibe and deadpan humour. They also talk about family as a cult, female body parts, destabilised vibration of colours, digging under conventions, being a lesbian in public, hard edge abstraction, vicious in a great beautiful smart way, wholesome hetro homemakers, abstract expressionism as a language and what the future is supposed to hold for you as a young woman. CARRIE MOYER 'Always Venus, Never Mars' Pilar Corrias 23 Jan - 7 Mar 2026 carriemoyer.com @carrie.moyer.studio 'Queer Abstraction' Des Moines Art Center by Curator Jared Ledesma 1 Jun - 8 Sep 2019 'Cave Dwellers who Paint Abstraction' 2025 'Radiant Granularity' 2025 'Art Glass' 2016 ARTISTS + CURATORS Amy Sillman Anish Kapoor Béla Bartók David Getsy Dona Nelson Elizabeth Murray Frank Stella Helen Frankenthaler Jack Whitten '9.11.01' 2006 after Sep 11 2001 Judy Chicago Laura Owens Louise Fishman Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley 'Best Femmes Forever' Morris Louis Pat Steir Rebecca Byrne Rochelle Feinstein Sabine Moritz Stephen Meuller William Butler Yeats BOOKS + AUTHORS + FILM Anna Burns 'The Milkman' narrator Brid Brennan Arundhati Roy 'Mother Mary Comes to Me' Audible 'Carrie Moyer' 2021 with contributions by Lauren O'Neill-Butler, Katy Siegel, Joanna Dinah Fateman by Rizzoli Electa Flann O'Brien 'The Third Policeman' narrator Jim Norton J D Salinger 'Catcher in the Rye' John Gray 'Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus' 'The Ice Tower' Travis Jeppesen 'Queer Abstraction (Or How to Be a Pervert with No Body) Some Notes Toward a Probability' Mousse magazine 2019 'Young Man with a Horn' 1950 UNIVERSITIES + ORGANISATIONS Boston University Daunt Books Hunter College, New York London Film Festivals MoMA, New York 'Jack Whitten: The Messenger' 2025 Pratt Institute

    1h 13m
  3. 10/22/2025

    Reconfigured Memories and Watery Connections (ALINE MOTTA)

    Guest artist ALINE MOTTA joins PELUMI ODUBANJO to discuss her work via 'Water is a Time Machine' by the artist herself. Originally published in Brazilian Portuguese by Fósforo Editora and Luna Parque Edições in 2022, the text reconfigures memories by using a non-linear perception of time and is part of a multi-layered project including video and performance. It includes personal documents that belong to the artist's mother, her calendars and journals from the 1970s and an account of her death in 2011, which is the central piece and backbone of the work. FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM! @artfictionspodcast BUY US A COFFEE! buymeacoffee.com/artfictionspodcast CONTRIBUTE VIA PATREON! patreon.com/artfictionspodcast EMAIL US DIRECTLY! artfictionspodcast@gmail.com Aline and Pelumi discuss the book's stories around the artist's family members and their lives in Rio de Janeiro at the turn of the 20th century, a time of political turmoil which immediately followed the abolition of slavery. Their conversation encompasses floating, bombs, bridges, tuberculosis, mistranslation, iconography, submerging, chemotherapy, prayer, breathing, stoicism, Catholicism, time machines, interracial marriage, film school, personal archives, double images, direct communication, permanent connections, exchanging cells, changing organs, fraught connections, Congolese traditions, disciplinarian mothers, avoiding sugarcoating, intentional disorientation, umbilical cords, oral histories, heavy heartedness, Yoruba influences, colonial erasure, speculative studies, layers of time, writing in fragments, metaphors of motherhood, constructing new narratives, sleeping in hammocks, foundations of thought, clothes being archives, abolition of slavery, lineage as language, contradictions in relationships, the beginning of the Republic, the way histories are told in (black) families, trying to find reasons for a person's death, the magic of making someone breath under water, using words to make maps, connecting personal history with collective history, envisioning new pasts to free us from old narratives and manifest new futures, plus a recipe to treat bruises.   ALINE MOTTA alinemotta.com @1alinemotta 'A água é uma máquina do tempo' / 'Water is a time machine' '(Outros) Fundamentos' / '(Other) Foundations' 'Pontes sobre Abismos' / 'Bridges over the Abyss'   INSTITUTIONS Bienal de São Paulo 2023 'Choreographies of the Impossible' Buenos Aires, Palermo Buenos Aires, Argentina Centre Pompidou, France MALBA Museo de Arte Lanoamericano de Buenos Aires / Latin American Art Museum of Rietberg Museum, Zurich   ARTISTS + FILM + WRITERS 'BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions' 2025  John Akomfrah 'Vertigo Sea' 2015 Kathleen Collins 'Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?' 2016 Kahlil Joseph 'Losing Ground' 1982 Machado de Assis 'Father Against Mother' 1906 Professor Stuart Hall (1932-2014) Rosana Paulino Saidiya Hartman 'Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route' 2006 'The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy' 1980   PLACES Angola Australia Bahia Bahia Brazil Burma Cachoeira Congo Germany Ghana Guanabara Bay Myanmar Niterói Nigeria Portugal Rio de Janeiro São Paulo  Sierra Leone Torres Strait Islands   TERMS + CULTURAL GROUPS ase/ashe Bantu languages capoeira martial art movement Kimbundu/Mbundu language maracatu dance ori orishas oyinbo/oyibo samba dance Yoruba

    1h 5m
  4. 09/01/2025

    Wild's Eye and Archiving Obsessions (AYO AKINGBADE)

    Guest artist AYO AKINGBADE joins ELIZABETH FULLERTON to discuss her work via 'In the Eye of the Wild' by Nastassja Martin. Published in 2021, the story follows the aftermath of a French anthropologist's gruesome attack by a bear, while she is living with the Evan people on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula. FOLLOW US on INSTAGRAM! BUY US A COFFEE! SUPPORT US via PATREON! EMAIL US artfictionspodcast@gmail.com Ayo and Elizabeth's conversation encompasses healing, hostility, joy, architecture, nepotism, romance, underdogs, irony, phobias, animism, neglect, transformation, swimming, analogue, memoir, disfigurement, hopefulness, multifaceted, strong women, self-centring, turning points, arthouse niche, tarot reading, anthropological study, defence mechanisms, shared fearlessness, spiritual guides, questioning society's expectations, power in names, thinking the worse, colonisation of microbes, French new wave and the rewards of positive thinking. AYO AKINGBADE ayoakingbade.com 'Keep Looking' 2024, 14 minute film 'Head of Idoani Girl' 2024, giclee print 'Show Me the World Mister' 2023, publication 'Faluyi' 2022, 14 minute film 'The Fist' 2022, 24 minute film 'Jitterbug' 2022, 24 minute film 'Dear Babylon' 2019, 21 minute film 'Tower XYZ' 2017 3 minute film BOOKS WRITERS Derek Walcott 'The First' Franz Kafka 'The Trial' Fred Moten FILM ARTISTS Agnès Varda Alfred Hitchcock Alice Rohrwacher 'La Chimera' Chantal Akerman 'Family Business' Chris Marker 'Sans Soleil' David Lynch Harun Farocki 'Workers Leaving the Factory' 1995 Mark Dion Jacques Rivette Jean-Luc Godard Jim Jarmusch Julian Schnabel 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' Lumière Brothers 'Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in Lyon' 1895 Roni Horn Stanley Kubrick 'Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb' Steve McQueen 'Caribs' Leap / Western Deep' 2002 Steven Spielberg Quentin Tarantino 'Inglorious Bastards' Werner Herzog 'Grizzly Man' ARCHITECTURE Dora Boatemah Le Corbusier ART INSTITUTIONS Artangel London Chisenhale Gallery Cinereach Institute of Contemporary Art John Hansard Gallery London Film Festival London LCC Spike Island The Baltic Gateshead The Whitworth PERFORMERS Ebenezer Obey 'The Only Condition to Save Nigeria' Josh O'Connor Kate Bush Okwui Okpokwasili Sade Adu ART FICTIONS MUSIC Griffin Knipe  ART FICTIONS LOGO Joanna Quinn

    1h 17m
  5. 07/26/2025

    Mayhem Soup and Collaborative Patterning (LAUREN GODFREY)

    Guest artist LAUREN GODFREY joins JILLIAN KNIPE to discuss her work via 'Heartburn' by Nora Ephron. Published in 1983, it tells a recipe rich story of Rachel Samstat and her husband Mark's marriage breakdown as a result of his affair with Thelma Rice. BUY US A COFFEE! SUPPORT US ON PATREON! Lauren and Jillian's conversation encompasses misogyny, kreploch soup, fat phobia, hot sass, slaying haters, brilliant naivety, acerbic wit, catching glimpses, high drama and potatoes as a signpost for the progress and decline of relationships. Also: losing the plot, aubergine as icon, minutiae of life, mid pregnancy betrayal, magnifying tiny moments, passing on recipes through generations, mapping of time and place through food, flood of linguistic lyricism, the power of choosing clothes, menu choice as an identity market and distilling culture into a witty sentence.   LAUREN GODFREY @laurengodfreystudio laurengodfrey.co.uk 'Pattern Portraits podcast' 'Group Hat' 'What We Wore' GET IN TOUCH with us by EMAIL artfictionspodcast@gmail.com ARTISTS CURATORS Adam Boyd Anni Albers Anthea Hamilton Bethan Laura Wood Bruce MacLean Capability Brown Cinzia Ruggeri Dr George Vasey 'Harrow March 31st 2005...' George Richardson Gunta Stöltzl Holly Graham JB Blunk Jennie Moncur Luke Burton Marcus Coates 'Nature Calendar' Maria Zahle Martin Parr Mary Godfrey Nadia Hebson Patrick Heron Rosalind Nashashibi Rosie Gibbens Tacita Dean 'Kodak 2006' BOOKS AUTHORS WRITERS AA Gill Asako Yuzuki 'Butter' Bob Woodwood Carl Bernstein Carmen Callil David Batchelor David Sedaris JD Salinger 'The Catcher in the Rye' 'Franny and Zooey' John Updike Lena Dunham Lennie Goodings 'Virago founder Carmen Callil was a powerhouse who changed the publishing world for the better' The Guardian 18 Oct 2022 Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast 'Crying in H Mart' Miranda July 'All Fours' Nora Ephron 'Forget the Hamsters' The Guardian 6 Nov 2004 Phillip Roth Raven Smith 'Men' 'Trivial Pursuits' Salena Barry Tank Magazine 'Pancake Day' Vanessa Murrell Virago Books Modern Classics ART INSTITUTIONS Bauhaus Coal Drops Yard De La Warr Pavillion Design Museum Gasworks Goldsmiths CCA Harewood House Trust ICA Kingsgate Project Space Krupa Gallery The Memphis Group New Contemporaries Vital Arts at Newham Hospital FILM Anijam animation initiative Cher 'Ghostbusters' 'Julie and Julia' Meg Ryan Meryl Streep 'Sex and the City' Silkwood Stanley Tucci 'Taste: My Life Through Food' When Harry Met Sally Woody Allen CHEFS Elizabeth David Julia Childs ORGANISATIONS Taylors of Harrogate Selfridges NOTED PEOPLE James Callaghan Margaret Thatcher Margaret Ann Jay, Baroness Jay of Paddington Maria Montessori Melanie Klein CREDITS Griffin Knipe - music Joanna Quinn of Beryl Productions - logo

    1h 16m
  6. 07/01/2025

    Unfathomable Creatures and Bridging Realities (MARCUS COATES)

    Guest artist MARCUS COATES joins JILLIAN KNIPE to discuss his work via 'Welsh Incident' by Robert Graves. Published in 1929, this short poem is a retelling of an overhead conversation about "un-Welsh" creatures emerging from the sea. BUY US A COFFEE! SUPPORT US ON PATREON! Marcus and Jillian's conversation encompasses longing, empathy, humour, grasping, death, wolves, psychosis, parenting, migration, birds, badgers, unknowability, parenting, morality, predators, blindfolding, eagles, immigration and a willingness to be uplifted. Also: feeling inadequate, religious conformity, instinctive behaviours, war experiences, emptying yourself, the mundane, sounding pathetic, false destinations, exploitation of care, limitations of language, modes of relating, suspension of disbelief, de-centring of humanity, failure of the imagination, the ripple effect of artworks, plaster on a broken leg, stark realities of survival, travelling in the mind, proliferation of domestic cats, and the human need to buy in, to belong, to believe. MARCUS COATES @marcus_coates_ 'Conference of the Birds' katemacgarry.com/artworks/9111-marcus-coates-conference-for-the-birds-2019/ 'The Trip' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEAuRv0xv8M 'The Directors' artangel.org.uk/project/the-directors/ whatsgoingon.org.uk 'Sunbird for Palestine' bookworks.org.uk/publishing/shop/palestine-sunbird/ 'Dawn Chorous' www.youtube.com/watch?v=zF1uihdcZmY 'The Last of its Kind' workplace.art/exhibitions/the-last-of-its-kind 'Nature Calendar' katemacgarry.com/artworks/10446-marcus-coates-nature-calendar-2022/ 'Finfolk' COLLABORATORS Helen Macdonald 'H is for Hawk' Jeff Samples ARTISTS & PERFORMERS Brian Catling Fiona Curran 'Your Sweetest Empire is to Please' Helen Chadwick Marylin Munroe Richard Ayodeji Ikhide Richard Burton Thomas Bewick AUTHORS & BOOKS Anna Burns 'The Milkman' Flann O'Brien 'The Third Policeman' Robert Graves 'Welsh Incident' GALLERIES & ART ORGS Artangel Freize Art Fair Kate MacGarry Royal Academy The Serpentine FILM 'The Boy and the Heron' Hayao Miyazake for Studio Ghibli RESEARCH ARTICLE theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/12/why-birdsong-matters-more-than-you-think       .

    1h 29m
  7. 12/06/2023

    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

    1h 29m

Ratings & Reviews

About

ART FICTIONS is a monthly, contemporary art meets literature programme, created by artist Jillian Knipe. Each guest artist selects a piece of fiction, which we both explore, then use as a lens through which to view their artwork. We delve into the book‘s themes, context and characters, which opens up and steers a rich conversation about the artist‘s practice. The podcast bounces back and forth between art and text, all the while focussing on the ideas which govern both. It is a way of talking alongside art, rather than directly at it, getting close and personal with the origins of artistic ideas. Hosting is shared amongst a small group of artists, critics and curators, and artists are selected based on each host's area of specific interest.  Support via PATREON or BUY ME A COFFEE and follow Art Fictions on Instagram for images of works and links.

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