Russell Tovey

Shows

Episodes

  1. Holly Blakey

    Season 27, Episode 1

    Holly Blakey

    Season 27 begins! This new season is hosted by Robert Diament. Robert meets Holly Blakey, one of the foremost choreographers of her generation and one of the few female choreographers in the UK creating large-scale work. Her practice attends to the honest entanglements of embodied vulnerability, grief, and joy, always rooted in an intersectional feminist frame. Her live performance work has been presented at major cultural institutions Southbank Centre, Hales Gallery and Théâtre National de Chaillot. As a director and choreographer, she has collaborated with music stars including Robyn (for her new Sexistential album), Rosalía, Harry Styles, Celeste, and Florence + The Machine, alongside visual artists Linder Sterling, Jeremy Deller and Tai Shani,and with fashion houses such as Vivienne Westwood, Burberry and Dior, and in films including Urchin (2025) directed by Harris Dickinson and Harvest directed by Athina Tsangari, interweaving live and commercial contexts, much of her practice often plays on the relationship between these distinct but not wholly separable worlds. We explore her 2026 collaboration with the Rambert dance company, as well as a new collaboration with artist Tai Shani, her 2025 ambitious double bill (for the Southbank Centre) titled Phantom, and A Wound with Teeth, which took her choreography to a new level of intensity, intimacy and international visibility. Holly Blakey’s new full-length work Lo will premiere in 2026. Both works develop Blakey’s fascination with social and folk dance forms, which began with her use of line dance in the Cowpuncher series and continues into Phantom and Lo with exploration of collective responsibility and euphoria through this form. For the first time, they both begin from a highly personal place and are developed through close collaboration with the dancers, drawing on their own experiences of grief and estrangement on the one hand, and pleasure and self-assertion on the other. A Wound with Teeth: How can loss of memory be a site of potential? In this excerpt from the new full-length work, Lo, Blakey uses her own experience of forgetting to create a work that questions our ability to remember, and also to imagine and invent, at the border of the rational and the irrational. In a world that is sometimes terrifying and perverse, fighting for our own survival also means creating stories, and our own monsters and beasts. Phantom: Carried by ten dancers engaged in a choreography on the verge of ritual, Holly Blakey explores with tenderness, honesty and strength a particularly painful episode of her personal journey: her miscarriage. In collaboration with Emma Chopova and Laura Lowena, creators of the Chopova Lowena brand and on a composition by the musician Gwilym Gold. We also learn about her work in film including Harvest (2024) directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari, where the entire movie revolved around choregraphy and movement. Follow @HollyTBlakey and visit https://www.hollyblakey.co.uk/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    51 min
  2. Tracey Emin

    Season 27, Episode 6

    Tracey Emin

    Season 27 @TalkArt continues with TRACEY EMIN. Hosted by @RobertDiament.  An exclusive new interview recorded in Margate within Crossing Into Darkness, a group exhibition curated by Dame Tracey Emin including works by 21 international artists. Crossing Into Darkness brings together a group of artists whose works confront the darkness inherent in human experience, not as something to be feared but as a necessary threshold toward renewal. In times marked by upheaval and uncertainty, this journey feels both universal and deeply personal. Featuring works by David Altmejd, Georg Baselitz, Louise Bourgeois, Marlene Dumas, Tracey Emin, Laura Footes, Antony Gormley, Francisco Goya, Gilbert & George, Celia Hempton, Anselm Kiefer, Joline Kwakkenbos, Mark Manders, Danielle Mckinney, Lindsey Mendick, Juanita McNeely, Edvard Munch, Hermann Nitsch, Janice Nowinski, Anna Pakosz and Johnnie Shand Kydd. The title of the show is very self explanatory, especially for the times we are living in. But even so we have always had our own journeys. And I feel that we have to cross into darkness to find light. I’d like this show to be very emotionally immersive and people to feel the strength and vibrations within the works. I want people to know that art isn’t just something that you look at. That it has a deeper purpose and can penetrate all souls. I love the idea of people coming to Margate on the greyest of winter days with gale force winds and crashing waves to make the pilgrimage to see the show. – Dame Tracey Emin Follow @TraceyEminStudio Special thanks to @CarlFreedmanGallery This powerful group show runs until Sunday 12th April at Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate. Free entry, no booking required. Tracey Emin’s major solo exhibition A Second Life runs until Sunday 31st August 2026 at Tate Modern, London. Tickets available from Tate.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 9m
  3. Georg Wilson

    Season 27, Episode 2

    Georg Wilson

    Talk Art season 27 continues with British painter GEORG WILSON!!! Hosted by Robert Diament. A spirit of place informs #GeorgWilson’s practice. Drawing inspiration from ancient English folklore, poetry and painting, the artist depicts bountiful landscapes that exceed the natural; devoid of human presence, they are instead inhabited by wildling creatures that live harmoniously with the land. Wilson’s world-building is enriched by her unique approach to texture and mark-making that unifies all surfaces, forms and beings. Painting with the seasons, Wilson’s work captures the cyclical rhythm of our existence, where birth meets growth, growth meets death and death awaits resurrection. Vibrant reds and bright greens shift to vivid yellows and deep browns as the seasons turn, and the land that was once overflowing with abundance is ready to lie dormant as the year comes to an end.  This new series of paintings explores the folklore and historic uses of uncultivated poisonous plants, species such as henbane, thorn-apple and nightshade that grow abundantly across the UK, that have long but frequently forgotten histories in both folk and modern medicine. Drawing on historic texts about poisonous flora, Wilson highlights the gradual erosion of plant knowledge in Britain, a process that began as early as the fifteenth century, following the enclosure of common land and the subsequent rise of industrialisation.  Against Nature, a solo exhibition of new works by Georg Wilson, runs at Pilar Corrias until 7th March on Savile Row, London, and Georg’s debut institutional exhibition The Earth Exhales runs until 1st March at Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh. 🔗 Follow @Georg.Kitty Thanks to @PilarCorriasGallery and @Jupiter.Artland 📻 Listen to Talk Art podcast, stream now: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    52 min
  4. Matthew Slotover (Live at Maison Estelle)

    Season 27, Episode 16

    Matthew Slotover (Live at Maison Estelle)

    New @TalkArt podcast episode! Season 27 finale! Robert meets Matthew Slotover OBE, legendary publisher and entrepreneur. This episode was recorded live from Maison Estelle in London. Matthew Slotover co-founded the art magazine Frieze in 1991 and grew into a major media and events company that has a focus on the art scene and since 2003 produces the annual Frieze Art Fair in London, later joined by fairs in New York, Los Angeles and Seoul. In 2021 he opened Toklas, a Mediterranean restaurant in London, and in 2022, he launched Fort Road Hotel in Margate. Matthew is currently chair of Turner Contemporary, Margate, and a board member of Sadlers Wells and the Walpole Group. He is a founding member of the Gallery Climate Coalition, and a founding board member of Murmur, an environmental charity dedicated to using the Arts to combat climate change. Matthew served as a trustee of the Arts Foundation until 2024. Follow @MSlotover Thanks for listening to Season 27. I will return soon for a whole new series!!!! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    57 min
  5. Against the Rules Presents: Cautionary Tales

    Season 1, Episode 9 Bonus

    Against the Rules Presents: Cautionary Tales

    A new show from Pushkin Industries: Cautionary Tales. We tell our children unsettling fairy tales to teach them valuable life lessons, but these Cautionary Tales are for the education of the grown ups – and they are all true. Tim Harford (Financial Times, BBC, author of “Messy” and “The Undercover Economist”) brings you stories of awful human error, tragic catastrophes, daring heists and hilarious fiascos. They'll delight you, scare you, but also make you wiser. Featuring original music and an award-winning cast including Alan Cumming and Archie Panjabi (The Good Wife), Toby Stephens (Die Another Day), Russell Tovey (Quantico) – and Malcolm Gladwell. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    37 min
  6. Isaac Julien

    Season 27, Episode 7

    Isaac Julien

    Robert meets Sir Isaac Julien at Victoria Miro gallery in London to explore 4 decades of making art. We also meet Julien’s long term collaborator Mark Nash to explore his major five-screen film installation All That Changes You. Metamorphosis, 2025 and new photographic works.  All That Changes You. Metamorphosis is a vivid, sweeping, visual poem about change, what it means to transform, to adapt and to survive. Commissioned to celebrate 500 years of Palazzo Te, Mantua, Italy (where it is currently on view) and exhibited here for the first time as a five-screen installation, Julien’s latest work moves between science fiction, philosophy, ecology and art, imagining new forms of life and identity beyond the human. All That Changes You. Metamorphosis draws inspiration from thinkers who explore how transformation shapes who we are and how we live, including writers Octavia Butler, Naomi Mitchison, Ursula K. Le Guin and philosopher Donna Haraway. Their ideas weave through the film’s layered images and lyrical dialogue. Two protagonists are at the heart of the film, played by internationally acclaimed actors Sheila Atim and Gwendoline Christie. Isaac Julien is as acclaimed for his fluent, arresting films as for his vibrant and inventive gallery installations. One of the objectives of his work is to break down the barriers that exist between different artistic disciplines, drawing from and commenting on film, dance, photography, music, theatre, painting and sculpture, and uniting them to construct a powerfully visual narrative. Julien came to prominence in the film world with his 1989 drama-documentary Looking for Langston, gaining a cult following with this poetic exploration of Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance. During the past three decades he has made work largely, though not exclusively, for galleries and museums, using multi-screen installations to express fractured narratives exploring memory and desire. Julien’s major film installations include Once Again . . . (Statues Never Die), 2022, commissioned by the Barnes Foundation in celebration of its centennial, an immersive five-screen installation exploring the relationship between Dr Albert C. Barnes, who was an early US collector and exhibitor of African material culture, and the famed philosopher and cultural critic Alain Locke, known as the ‘Father of the Harlem Renaissance’; Lessons of the Hour – Frederick Douglass, 2019, a meditation on the life, words, and actions of Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), the visionary African American abolitionist and freed slave, and on the issues of social justice that shaped his life’s work; Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement, 2019, reflecting on the iconic work and on the legacy of the visionary modernist architect and designer (1914–1992); PLAYTIME, 2014, which explores the dramatic and nuanced subject of financial capital; Ten Thousand Waves, 2010, exploring China's ancient past and rapidly transforming present through a series of interlocking narratives.  Mark Nash is an independent curator, film historian, and filmmaker with a specialisation in contemporary avant-garde and world cinema. He is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), where he founded the Isaac Julien Lab@with his partner and long-time collaborator, artist Sir Isaac Julien. He has a PhD from Middlesex University and an MA from Cambridge University.  Follow @IsaacJulien Isaac Julien’s major retrospective opens in Bergamo at gresart671 on 10th April 2026 and he will also showing a single screen version of All That Changes You. Metamorphosis at The Cosmic House in London from 22nd April, learn more here.  Special thanks to Victoria Miro gallery. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1 hr
  7. David Dawson

    Season 27, Episode 10

    David Dawson

    Robert meets painter David Dawson to discuss his new large scale landscape paintings, part of an ongoing body of work created en plein air in the artist's county of Montgomeryshire, Mid Wales. From April 25 – October 11, ‘Land, Sky, Light’ is a solo exhibition at Gainsborough’s House featuring fifteen of David Dawson’s (b. 1960) recent large-scale paintings of his native Welsh countryside.  Having left Wales for London where he was a student at the Chelsea School of Art and later becoming a model and assistant to Lucian Freud, these paintings represent an artist returning to their childhood home to explore the nature and solitude of its surroundings. The canvases possess a deeply autobiographical nature, being representative of Dawson's formative childhood years in the country side, and his continued experiences of solitude and connection. Initially painted outdoors during each season of the year, the artist continues to work on them in his London studio to then complete them back in the countryside. About this creative process, which can take years, the artist states:  “Painting to me is about the reality of being in the land and making marks that correlate to me reacting to that experience. You paint what you think you know. When I’m in the land, I always get surprised by what I see, even if I thought I knew the landscape in which I grew up so well. That’s why I need to be there, en plein air. Painting to me is very much about being in the presence of the land”.   Forcing the artist to be alone in the fields, exposed to the elements, Dawson’s canvases are deeply autobiographical as they connect him to his formative years growing up in the countryside, when the artist learned about solitude.   Dawson describes his practice in almost meditative terms: painting the Welsh landscape and its waterfalls, “being in the presence of the land”, becomes a way of getting rid of his ego, to reach a feeling of connection and communion with nature.  Follow @DavidEliDawson and @GainsboroughsHouse David is represented by @GalleriaLorcanONeill Visit the exhibition: https://gainsborough.org/event/land-sky-light-new-landscapes-by-david-dawson/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    54 min
  8. Mariane Ibrahim

    Season 27, Episode 13

    Mariane Ibrahim

    Robert meets Mariane Ibrahim, leading gallerist and curator, whose mission is dedicated to the elevation and advocacy of diverse global artistic practices, with a particular spotlight on Africa and the diaspora. We explore her galleries in three cities: Mexico City, Paris and Chicago, and the artists she has championed over the past 15 years. Currently representing artists from across the world, Ibrrahim is driven towards expanding the confines of the creative landscape. Ibrahim’s program compels her to act as something of an ambassador for nuance and complexity in an art world still prone to generalisation. While several of the emerging artists she represents hail from African countries or are members of the African diaspora, Ibrahim emphasises that they – and by extension, her gallery – have much more to offer than simplistic regional or heritage based labels could ever contain. Mariane Ibrahim Gallery is a highly influential contemporary art gallery that focuses on supporting and championing artists from the African diaspora and diverse global backgrounds. Founded in 2012 by Somali-French art dealer Mariane Ibrahim, the gallery has experienced a phenomenal international expansion, establishing a presence across three different continents. Follow @MarianeIbrahimGallery Visit: https://marianeibrahim.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    50 min
  9. Collier Schorr

    Season 27, Episode 5

    Collier Schorr

    Talk Art Season 27 continues with COLLIER SCHORR. Over four decades, Collier Schorr has used photography to scrutinise the conditions and realities of contemporary subjectivity and what it means to visually represent a body - and a self. Motivated, in part, by an underlying search for alternatives to the desirous heterosexual gaze; her work has remained focused on several key themes including beauty, desire, selfhood, and masculinity and its discontents. Schorr’s early work was made in the 1980s and 1990s in New York and Germany, during the coalescence of postmodernism and identity politics.  Her work from that period navigated the tension between documentary and fiction, and tested out the capacity of photography to unveil desire and repression, explore taboo identities, and highlight the contradictions inherent in subjectivity, especially in relation to gender norms. In more recent times, the artist has incorporated dance into her practice predominantly through adapting Chantal Ackerman’s film, ‘Je Tu Il Elle’ (1975), into a full-length filmed ballet performance featuring Schorr as Ackerman and a core group of professional dancers collaborating to create a multi-channel video installation. Schorr’s new exhibition in Paris is now open. ‘Problems and other stories’ brings together photographs, collages, notes, drawings and video produced over the past seven years that reconsider who an artwork is for, the multitude of places people belong and the way Schorr encounters different worlds. The title is drawn from John Updike’s collection of short stories written over the 1970s. For Schorr, the ‘problem’ opens out into a place of resistance and exploration, rather than a limitation or constraint. Runs until 4th April at Modern Art, Paris. Follow @CollierSchorrStudio Visit: https://www.modernart.net/en/exhibitions/collier-schorr-2026 Special thanks to @StuartShaveModernArt & @303Gallery  Listen to Talk Art podcast, stream now: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 15m
  10. Anton Corbijn

    Season 27, Episode 12

    Anton Corbijn

    Robert meets legendary photographer ANTON CORBIJN to discuss his major retrospective opening this weekend in Berlin at Fotografiska museum. The story of Anton Corbijn begins in the quiet corners of a small Dutch island, where he grew up as the son of a vicar. For a young Corbijn, music was an escape, a passion that consumed him. His camera soon became both a tool and a companion, a way to channel his fascination with music and, perhaps more importantly, a means to navigate his own shyness. When Corbijn moved to London in 1979, the city was electric with the energy of bands like The Clash, The Jam, and Joy Division. Within ten days of arriving in England, he managed to photograph Joy Division claiming he was on assignment for a major Dutch magazine, even though he hadn’t been officially commissioned. Now, having celebrated his 70th birthday last year, Corbijn looks back on over five decades of work that spans photography, music videos, and film. Corbijn, Anton celebrates his 50-year career and revisits his extensive body of work. Here, you will encounter nearly 150 pieces: iconic portraits of legends like Depeche Mode, Tom Waits, U2, the Rolling Stones, Martin Scorsese, and Marlene Dumas, as well as German icons Nina Hagen, Herbert Grönemeyer, Einstürzende Neubauten and Wim Wenders. His signature black-and-white grainy aesthetic became a defining visual language in his work. A polymath in photography, music videos, feature films, graphic design, and commercials, Dutchman Anton Corbijn is perhaps best known for immortalizing some of the greatest artists of our time. His iconic portraits of musicians, directors, and artists, such as Joy Division, Depeche Mode, Tom Waits, U2, the Rolling Stones, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, Gerhard Richter, Ai Weiwei, Marlene Dumas among others, are praised for the way they capture the soul and charisma of his subjects. Effortlessly moving in the early 80s from photography into music videos, Corbijn has since made over 80 promos for people like U2, Johnny Cash, Arcade Fire, Depeche Mode, Nirvana, Metallica, Nick Cave, Coldplay, and The Killers. He is the Artistic Director behind the visual output of Depeche Mode. For U2 he has done the principal promotion and sleeve photography for four decades. In 2006 Corbijn started working on his first feature film Control about the life, and death, of Ian Curtis, Joy Division’s lead singer. The film won many awards worldwide, including 5 BIFAs and the Camera d’Or Special Mention at Cannes Film Festival 2007. Corbijn has since made The American starring George Clooney (2010), A Most Wanted Man, based on the novel by John Le Carré and featuring the late Philip Seymour Hoffman (2014), and Life, about James Dean and photographer Dennis Stock, which stars Robert Pattinson and Dane DeHaan (2015). In 2023, Corbijn released his first feature documentary Squaring The Circle about the iconic album art design studio Hipgnosis. In 2025, he directed his fifth feature film titled Switzerland starring Helen Mirren. Follow: @AntonCorbijn4Real Visit the exhibition: @Fotografiska.Berlin Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    56 min
  11. Joan Snyder

    Season 26, Episode 2

    Joan Snyder

    For six decades American artist Joan Snyder has reimagined the narrative potential of abstraction through her paintings, drawings and prints. She first garnered widespread recognition in the early 1970s with her Stroke paintings that dissect the most fundamental of painterly gestures: the brushstroke. Fuelling abstraction with autobiography, she consciously worked against the male-dominated conventions of Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism and Colour Field painting, which were prevalent in the New York art scene into which she emerged. ‘I wanted more in painting, not less,’ she says. ‘I wanted to tell a story, have a beginning, a middle, an end... to do something else, something much more intense, personal and complex.’ Building a vocabulary of recurring personal motifs – from roses and breasts, to ponds and mud, totems, screaming faces, grapes, scrawled words, cherry trees and moons, pumpkins and sunflowers – she pushes the formal possibilities of paint while developing a complex materiality through an additive process of collaged materials. Snyder’s rigorous interrogation of abstraction is underpinned by her feminist outlook, as she centres ‘the essence of feelings of a female body’ to carve out new terrain in contemporary American painting. Love from an Abstract Artist is an exhibition spanning over six decades of American artist Joan Snyder’s work on paper. Featuring nearly 50 new and historical works, dating from the mid-1960s to the present day, it bears witness to the important position drawing has always held in Snyder’s practice. Often diaristic and autobiographical, these varied works encompass Snyder’s grids, symbols, landscapes and strokes, and incorporate collaged materials including fabric, rope, berries, herbs and hand-pressed paper pulp, among others. Snyder has continually expanded the possibilities of drawing. Her works on paper are, as the American critic and art historian Faye Hirsch writes, ‘independent and self-sufficient objects’. Love from an Abstract Artist follows the artist’s first solo exhibition, Body & Soul, at Thaddaeus Ropac in London in 2024. Snyder is recognised for developing a new, distinctly embodied language of abstract painting at a time when legacies of Abstract Expressionism loomed large and Minimalism espoused new conditions of sterility and mechanical facture in American art. In this male-dominated climate, she dissected the ‘anatomy’ of painting to its constituent parts and, in the mid-1970s, began adding personal motifs to her work such as bodies and breasts, vulvas and hearts, totems and fields of flowers. ‘It seemed to me that in order to go forward, I had to push back hard,’ she reflects. ‘To again embrace ideas that were at the very foundation of all my thinking about painting – about structure, about application, about meaning, about materials.’ The earliest works in the exhibition including Stripes/Mounds and Green Strokes (both 1968) reveal how drawing offered the artist a framework, outside of painting, through which to deconstruct its most fundamental elements. ‘My drawings are the skeletons upon which I plan to add muscle and bones and flesh,’ she has said. Presenting a series of reduced marks – blobs, lines, stripes and strokes – these works contain the pictorial discoveries that would catalyse one of the artist’s major bodies of work, the Stroke paintings. Joan Snyder: Love from an Abstract Artist is now open at Thaddaeus Ropac, until 4 October 2025, 37 Dover Street London W1S 4NJ. Follow @Joan_Snyder_Art and @ThaddeusRopac on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    52 min
  12. Catherine Chinatree

    Season 27, Episode 3

    Catherine Chinatree

    Catherine Chinatree is a socially engaged multi-disciplinary artist based in Margate. She works in various contexts, including in the public realm. Her work focuses on the idea of shared “reality,” with an emphasis on identity, dualism, and cultural fluidity. This exploration is supported by research in anthropology, social surrealism, and human behaviour. Being of Welsh, Caribbean and Irish descent, she is deeply rooted in hybrid culture and seeks inspiration from the outside world of everyday life, our daily activities, symbolism, rituals, and the people she meets. Chinatree’s recent series of works invites the viewers on a visual journey through the realms of personal and subcultures exploring ideas of youth, class, memory and nostalgia, it highlights optimism & transformative moments that can alter society.   Chinatree aims to evoke a palette that reflects the bass-heavy underground movement, artificial lighting and a sense of the unknown going hand in hand with the uncertainty of teenage years. At that time, pioneers of a new music genre looked to the future, with nods to outer space, and ideas of otherworldly beings, all of which are reflected in this work.  The Crystallisation of the urban experience is layered and sampled, reconnecting it with the present. Working-class youth - black, brown and white united to dance is a testament to sound system culture and the creation of a new reality reflecting urban Britain, black roots & experimental sounds.  With close ties to Leicester, Chinatree’s hometown, the work is supported by research and recordings from original attendees, event organisers, the venue’s history and future plans. Blending new footage, lived experiences and digital memories. Described by many as one of the darkest raves attended “Some shadow demon business”, the work illuminates its legacy.  Catherine Chinatree studied at Wimbledon College of Arts, graduating with a Masters in Fine Art. She was awarded the Ferdynand Zweig Arts travel Scholarship award, and set up a collaborative engagement project between the UK and Havana, Cuba. She has been shortlisted for the Mercury Music Arts Prize, Nasty Woman NYC and The Griffin x Elephant New Graduates Arts Prize. She completed an artist residency with Elephant Magazine and has been sponsored by Liquitex Paints. She was commissioned by Artquest for their 20th anniversary, which was subsequently displayed at UAL in Holborn, London. Recently she was commissioned by Artist Globe for The World Reimagined project, which is on permanent show at the World Museum in Liverpool. She created a mural for Rise Up Residency Mural in Margate and as part of the Commemorative Installation Campaign, created a Tapestry for the UK Covid-19 Inquiry. She recently co created a billboard Artwork with Kent Refugee action network, and is a panelist for Artcry, supporting artists to make work in response to social and political events. Follow @CatherineChinatree on Instagram. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 8m
  13. Edmund de Waal

    Season 26, Episode 12

    Edmund de Waal

    New @TalkArt podcast episode! We meet legendary artist, potter and author @EdmunddeWaal at his studio in South London!! We explore more than 40 years of making pots, and learn about the first major exhibition of acclaimed Danish ceramicist Axel Salto (1889 – 1961), considered one of the greatest masters of 20th-century ceramic art. This epic new show curated by #EdmunddeWaal (b.1964, Nottingham) is now open at the Hepworth Wakefield, including a major new installation by de Waal reflecting on Salto’s enduring influence. Salto was a radical polymathic figure who crossed boundaries from one discipline to another, producing an extraordinary body of ceramic work alongside paintings, wood- cuts, drawings, book illustration and textiles. Salto is internationally renowned for his highly individual and expressive stoneware inspired by organic forms, characterised by budding, sprouting and fluted surface textures that appear to ripple and burst with life. In his own visual art and literary works, Edmund de Waal uses objects as vehicles for human narrative, emotion, and history. His installations of handmade porcelain vessels, often contained in minimalist structures, investigate themes of diaspora, memory, and materiality. De Waal’s sculptural practice, writing, and art historical research are deeply intertwined, as he works across mediums and collaborates with museums, poets, performers, musicians, and other visual artists, both living and deceased. Much of de Waal’s work is concerned with collecting and collections—how objects are kept together, lost, stolen, or dispersed.  His ceramics and writing expand upon conceptual and physical dialogues among minimalism, architecture, and sound, imbuing them with a sense of quiet calm. Manifest across de Waal’s practice is a distinct aesthetic philosophy that puts the hand, the sense of touch, and thus the human above all else. His work is about connecting people by reviving and telling stories that matter. Playing with Fire: Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto  is now open and runs until 4th May 2026 at Hepworth Wakefield. Follow @EdmundDeWaal and @HepworthWakefield on Instagram. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 11m
  14. Nicolas Deshayes

    Season 27, Episode 4

    Nicolas Deshayes

    Talk Art Season 27 continues with sculptor Nicolas Deshayes whose works explore the form and materiality of bodies and what happens below their surfaces. Hosted by Robert Diament. Process, or processing, is the impetus for Deshayes’ sculptures, which manage to convey states of liquid, hardness, hot, cold, and mechanically produced objects and systems. Vital processes of ingestion, and circulation, are evoked by elegantly utilitarian forms. Deshayes’ surfaces are consistently impermeable – recalling the architecture of public amenities. Using predominantly casting methods with bronze, iron, or earthenware, Deshayes tends to seek out artisans and factories who specialise in techniques of production; their historical lineages and geographical particularities converging within his conceptualisation of the work as it develops. Extreme heat is used in these casting processes commonly and the materials rely on changes in temperature in order to come alive. But molten metal rapidly hardens into a solid form, its movement as if suspended in time. Deshayes has recently rendered some of these sculptures functional again, plumbing hot water around a room, or pumping water into public ponds. In his 2016 installation Thames Water, he recast the gallery as an organism by installing a series of interconnected radiators, in doing so concretising an analogy of the body and its systems to the plumbed and networked city. It is in these works that we are reminded of how their organic forms are not only reminiscent of the bodies of humans, but also of domestic, civic and biological circulatory systems. Nicolas Deshayes was born in Nancy, France, in 1983, and lives and works in Dover.  Follow: @NicolasDeshayes Pillow Talk, a joint exhibition with Nicolas Deshayes & Paloma Proudfoot, runs at @QuenchGallery in Margate until 22nd March 2026. Thanks to Stuart Shave Modern Art. Learn more: https://www.modernart.net/en/artists/nicolas-deshayes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 6m
  15. Nick Willing on Paula Rego

    Season 27, Episode 9

    Nick Willing on Paula Rego

    Robert meets Nick Willing at the studio of his mother Paula Rego (1935–2022) to discuss a major exhibition of drawings and works on paper by Rego, opening this week at Victoria Miro in London.  The most comprehensive exhibition of Rego’s drawings to date, Story Line features works from the 1950s until the artist’s death, shining new light on Rego’s evolving use of line in media from pen and ink to pastel, conté, charcoal and pencil, and how it was driven by her unique approach to storytelling throughout her life. The exhibition is accompanied by a new book written by the artist’s son, Nick Willing. ‘When you write your story… invention comes when you do a drawing. As you are drawing something, it very often turns into something else, and you can go with it. It develops in a completely different way, it’s organic and it’s done with the hand. The hand makes it change and so on.’ – Paula Rego, The White Review, 2011 Paula Rego considered herself first and foremost a ‘drawrer’ (her word). From political protest to personal introspection, activism to domestic power games, subversive humour to challenging family relationships, it was through drawing that she understood herself and the world around her, discovering ways of expressing complex ideas through a single image. As Nick Willing comments, ‘A Rego drawing is never just one thing, but many feelings working together to reveal the truth. They not only helped her understand the world but can also help us understand it too.’Driven by her distinctive approach to storytelling, this exhibition demonstrates how Rego adapted her line to emphasise the emotional nuance of the stories she told, and how her drawing techniques also reflected her interior emotional narrative. The works reveal the unique development of an artist whose visual storytelling, drawn from a wide variety of sources, spoke directly to us about the essential human traits of desire, loss, violence and power. The works on show vary from intimate drawings which have never been exhibited before to studies for some of Rego’s most recognisable paintings. These are accompanied by notes, letters, sketchbooks, photographs and other archival material from throughout Rego’s life – among myriad rarities is a drawing Rego made when she was nine years old of her grandmother, while the exhibition concludes with works including a drawing she made of her own granddaughter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 15m
  16. Lucy Wood on Gwen John

    Season 27, Episode 8

    Lucy Wood on Gwen John

    @TalkArt continues with an in-depth interview on the work of GWEN JOHN with curator @Lucy.C.Wood to explore a major exhibition Gwen John: Strange Beauties at the National Museum Cardiff. Hosted by @RobertDiament. This once-in-a-generation exhibition brings together over 200 oil paintings, drawings and watercolours from public and private collections across the world with rarely seen works on paper from the artist’s studio collection to celebrate her 150th birthday. Born in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, in 1876, Gwen John trained at the Slade School of Art in London and was one of the first British women to receive a formal art education. She later moved to Paris, where she became part of its vibrant artistic community, forging an independent path in a male-dominated art world. Gwen John is one of Wales' most extraordinary artists. She saw the world differently — quietly, attentively, and with extraordinary depth. That difference shaped everything: her subjects, her method, her colours, her words, her work.  It is the most comprehensive retrospective of the artist's work in over forty years. It tells Gwen’s story — revealing new ways of seeing her life and art and celebrating an artist whose vision still feels strikingly modern today. This is an invitation — to see the world through Gwen’s eyes — to slow down, look closer and discover the wonder in her work. Unmissable — for both newcomers and devoted admirers alike. Listen to Talk Art podcast, stream now: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts! Lucy Wood is Senior Curator of Art at Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales. She is co-curator of Gwen John: Strange Beauties (2026) and co-editor of the accompanying monograph with Rachel Stratton, Yale Center for British Art. Follow @MuseumWales Visit: https://museum.wales/cardiff/whatson/12640/Gwen-John-Strange-Beauties/ #GwenJohn  Exhibition organised by Amgueddfa Cymru in partnership with National Galleries of Scotland, National Museum of Women in the Arts, and Yale Center for British Art. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    56 min
  17. Kathryn Ferguson

    Season 27, Episode 14

    Kathryn Ferguson

    Robert meets Belfast-born Kathryn Ferguson, an Emmy and BAFTA nominated, BIFA and IFTA winning director whose innovative and boundary-pushing documentary work has screened globally. We explore art as activism and how film has the power to reveal, and amplify, untold stories. Kathryn studied at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art, and in 2022 was awarded the inaugural BFI & Chanel Award for Creative Audacity.  In 2018, Kathryn's short documentary Taking the Waters about Margate’s open water swimming premiered at Sheffield Doc Fest, and was long-listed for a BAFTA. Then, in 2021, Kathryn worked with Passion Pictures on the short Space to Be for The Guardian's acclaimed documentary series.  After a decade of short-form work centred on identity, gender politics, and community, Kathryn recently completed her debut feature documentary Nothing Compares - which takes as its subject Sinéad O'Connor's artistry and activism. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2022 then toured the international festival circuit, where it picked up multiple awards, before hitting cinemas in October 2022. It has received over thirty award nominations internationally, including Emmy, Critics Choice, IDA, and PGA Awards, and was awarded winner of Best Feature Documentary at BIFA 2022 and IFTA 2023. Nothing Compares is now available to watch on Showtime and Sky.  Her second feature, Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes (Universal), was released in US cinemas in 2024.  In 2024 she also co-founded Tara Films with producer Eleanor Emptage; their latest, Blue Road - The Edna O'Brien Story, premiered at TIFF 2024, and the company is currently developing a slate of non-fiction and drama projects. Alongside her film work, Ferguson has directed campaigns for Nike, Selfridges, Amnesty International, and Air France, and collaborated with artists such as Lady Gaga and Neneh Cherry.  Nostalgie, Kathryn's first drama short starring Aiden Gillen, about a faded 80's pop star, has recently been nominated for a BAFTA and won Best Short Film at the IFTAs 2026. The film is available to watch on Channel 4.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 7m
  18. Luis Felber - Attawalpa

    Season 27, Episode 15

    Luis Felber - Attawalpa

    Robert meets Luis Felber, a London based South-American multi-instrumentalist best known as Attawalpa. His meticulous production, melodies and honest lyrics evoke the future as much as the past. We explore his love of art and growing up with an artist mother Alma Laura de Felber, a prominent Peruvian painter and artist. The Lima-born painter makes colorful, emotionally resonant oil paintings often explore themes of identity, the feminine, and human connection. Born in Winchester, England, Felber spent his earliest years in Peru and Chile before moving back to Britain at age 7. At 17, he skipped university and began pursuing a career in music, playing guitar with several different bands and co-founding influential club night and record label Young Turks. Felber actively incorporates his creative roots into his projects. His mother's art has been featured in his work, and he frequently collaborates with his wife, Lena Dunham including on the soundtrack for her film Catherine Called Birdy and by co-creating and scoring the Netflix comedy series Too Much. Recording and performing under the name Attawalpa (his middle name, after the 16th-century Incan ruler Atahualpa), his albums Experience and Presence are both available now on vinyl and at all streaming platforms. Follow: @Attawalpa Visit: https://attawalpa.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 1m
  19. Chantal Joffe

    Season 26, Episode 10

    Chantal Joffe

    Russell and Robert meet leading artist Chantal Joffe in her East London studio. We explore I Remember, Chantal Joffe’s fourteenth solo exhibition for Victoria Miro gallery. I Remember takes its title from Joe Brainard’s iconic memoir and is inspired by the late American writer’s poetic prompts that evoke the atmosphere and time of memories. Joffe’s paintings attempt to capture the fleeting yet enduring nature of memory and how it shapes our sense of self. This evocative new series of large-scale paintings explores themes of memory, nostalgia and personal history to offer a reflective and deeply personal journey into the artist’s childhood and family life. The exhibition is accompanied by a new text, entitled Time Transmission, by Olivia Laing. ‘Joe Brainard’s book always makes me list for myself the things I remember and the atmosphere and time that they conjure. These paintings are a sort of memoir of my childhood and of my family, an attempt at a kind of time travel. When I am making them, it’s almost as if I am existing in that past.’ – Chantal Joffe Chantal Joffe’s paintings are always attentive to narratives about connection, perception and representation, alerting us to the endless intricacies of bodily expression, the complexities of emotion and attachment, and how these change over time. This evocative new series explores themes of memory, nostalgia and personal history to offer a reflective and deeply personal journey into the artist’s childhood and family life. A new book published by MACK to coincide with this new show, Painting Writing Texting chronicles the friendship between Chantal Joffe and writer Olivia Laing, which began in 2016 when Joffe approached Laing to ask if they would sit for a portrait. From this unexpected encounter, the two embarked on an expansive and ranging collaboration, fuelled by conversations about art, books, and their shared attempts to understand the world. Combining ten essays by Laing with a sequence of paintings by Joffe, Painting Writing Texting explores the strange and risky process by which everyday life is converted into art. Born in 1969, Chantal Joffe lives and works in London. She holds an MA from the Royal College of Art and was awarded the Royal Academy Wollaston Prize in 2006. Chantal Joffe brings insight and integrity, as well as psychological and emotional depth, to the genre of figurative art. Defined by its clarity, honesty and empathetic warmth, her work is attuned to our awareness as both observers and observed beings, bold and expressive in style yet always questioning, nuanced and emotionally rich. A primary focus throughout Joffe’s career has been on the women and children in her life, captured at various stages of their own lives. Joffe has talked about her paintings in terms of transitions, those associated with growing and ageing, as well as her attempts to mark a life’s milestones. The complex relationship between mother and child over time has been a significant theme, while self-portraiture, which Joffe considers ‘a way of thinking about time passing’, remains one of the cornerstones of her art. Whether drawing inspiration from art history, popular culture or personal experiences, Joffe’s paintings are always attentive to narratives about connection, perception and representation. They alert us to the endless intricacies of bodily expression and the myriad ways in which we reveal ourselves and communicate emotion, consciously or otherwise, even in the most private of moments. Chantal Joffe: I Remember runs until 17th January 2026 at Victoria Miro, Wharf Road. Follow @VictoriaMiroGallery Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 7m
  20. David Dawson (on Lucian Freud)

    Season 3, Episode 11

    David Dawson (on Lucian Freud)

    Russell & Robert meet artist David Dawson for a private, after-hours tour of 'Lucian Freud: The Self-portraits', the breathtaking new exhibition he has curated at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. We discuss being assistant/head of studio for the last 20 years of Freud's life, Leigh Bowery, going to Taboo nightclub, Freud's early drawings and paintings inspired by surrealism, his grandfather Sigmund Freud and how Freud got all his information for his paintings from looking. We explore Freud's friendships with Francis Bacon and Frank Auerbach, what it's like to be a nude model for Freud's paintings - Dawson was subject in 7 paintings and 1 etching - and discover how Freud protected his own privacy and his unparalleled discipline of painting 7 days a week, every day of the year! We learn about David's own painting of urban landscapes and also his photography including timeless portraits of Freud. Follow David on Instagram @davidelidawson and see images of all artworks discussed in this episode @talkart. Special thanks to Alexandra Bradley at the RA @royalacademyarts. We strongly recommend visiting this exhibition. 'Lucian Freud: The Self-portraits' runs until 26 January 2020 and is in the RA's smaller, Sackler Wing of galleries and they expect demand to be high. To ensure the best possible experience, all visitors (including Friends of RA) must book a timed ticket to see this show. In a world first, more than 50 paintings, prints and drawings are brought together by this modern master of British art. One of the most celebrated portraitists of our time, Lucian Freud is also one of very few 20th century artists who portrayed themselves with such consistency. Spanning nearly seven decades, his self-portraits give a fascinating insight into both his psyche and his development as a painter – from his earliest portrait, painted in 1939, to his final one executed 64 years later. They trace the fascinating evolution from the linear graphic works of his early career to the fleshier, painterly style he became synonymous with. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1 hr
Russell Tovey on Apple