The Art Show ABC listen

Nicholas Mangan is drawn to the stories behind some of our most contentious commodities: phosphate from Nauru, copper from Bougainville and cryptocurrency, which Nick compares to an ancient form of stone money from Yap, a Micronesian island. Nick takes the viewer into these histories through sculptural installations and intriguing films. His survey exhibition World Undone is now on at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.

My Thing is… GPS Art. ABC science reporter Belinda Smith makes art on the run, creating increasingly detailed pictures of animals on GPS maps, that she then matches with perfect puns, via her Inst account @animalpunruns. First broadcast May 2023.

A teapot made by the South Australian ceramic artist Bruce Nuske is a beautiful thing to behold: ornate, whimsical, exquisitely crafted –  and importantly, it can also pour a hot cup of tea… if you’d dare put it to use! Bruce's teapots and vessels are also steeped in a rich knowledge of the history of the arts and crafts movement. Listen to an interview with Bruce's collaborator, the late designer Khai Liew, from a previous episode of The Art Show, at 26 minutes.

Visnja Brdar's art motto is “The more nothing, the better”. She is one of this country’s most internationally successful graphic designers, the child of Croatian migrants who took her solo agency from Melbourne to New York,  head-first into the competitive world of international branding -- and she's the subject of the first significant art survey of a female graphic designer in Australia, Visnja Brdar: Design Exalted at MUMA.

Inner sanctum is the title of the 2024 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art. Rosa Ellen speaks with three of the artists taking part: Lawrence English, George Cooley, Ruha Fifita and curator Jose Da Silva.  The chamber music is ‘All Flesh is Fire’, sung by the Adelaide Chamber Singers, composed by Anne Cawrse, conducted by Christie Anderson, recorded by Jakub Gaudasinski.

Katy Hessel's podcast and bestselling book on the great women artists ride the wave of interest in a parallel cannon of art, where women have long been missing. So, what sparked her work correcting the record, and what has changed since she started? Katy is appearing at Sydney Writers Festival and other book events in Australia in May.

Ellen Dahl ventured out to a frozen archipelago in the Arctic Ocean to take photos. The striking images won her Australia's National Photography Prize. She speaks to Daniel about her motivations to show climate change in action, and the influence of her Sami heritage. Read about her win here.

My Thing is...  the ocean. They describe grief as being a wave - it can hit you when your back’s turned. Julia Ciccarone knows that. The Melbourne figurative painter also finds peace in the water, particularly the open sea. 

 

Australia's art resale royalty scheme was supposed to help artists (or their families) get a small percentage when paintings were re-sold at auction for big bucks, particularly Indigenous artists. But it hasn't gone according to plan. ABC national business reporter Emilia Terzon tells Daniel about her year-long investigation into what many says is an unjust state of affairs.

For four decades Judy Watson has been making layered, ethereal art about the most profound and difficult subjects in Australian art: truth-telling, violence and ecological destruction. From her beginnings with the famed Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative, to her monumental public artworks, Daniel speaks to Judy Watson at her largest survey show at the Queensland Art Gallery.

Interviewing visual artists is just one of the things that Jennifer Higgie has mastered in her decades-long career at the helm of Frieze magazine, as a writer, reviewer and podcast host. Daniel speaks with London-based Jennifer as her new podcast series for the National Gallery of Australia is released. Listen to Jennifer and Daniel's conversation about women artists and the spirit world.

In 2007, a group of 'new media' artists came together in India's largest city to form CAMP, a studio with a rooftop cinema. In early-2000s Mumbai, experimental digital media didn't fit into an existing art scene. CAMP founders Ashok Sukamaran and Shaina Anand tell Daniel how they started and why they remain fiercely non-commercial. Ashok and Shaina are in Australia for PHOTO 24 festival.

Larrakia artist Gary Lee has led a powerfully creative life including pioneering work in Indigenous queer sexual health during the AIDS epidemic. The new book Heat covers five decades of his photography, illustration, anthropology and curating. His latest exhibition is on at the Cross Art Projects in Sydney. First Broadcast August 2023.

Great conversations with visual artists, gallery and museum directors and curators.