Talk Art
David Hoyle
We meet the inimitable, spectacular, all-star David Hoyle!!!! We explore Hoyle’s prolific output from the stage to the screen to the canvas. Performance as art, art as performance! Cabaret maverick and gender defying revolutionary, the much loved David Hoyle continues to educate, enlighten and entertain in equal measure. A true national treasure. A chance to immerse yourself in Hoyle’s world, get to know the Manchester artist as we discuss his work that includes paintings, slogan works and of course, riotous, avant-garde live performance. As a cabaret star, actor and visual artist, Hoyle’s infamous alter-ego ‘The Divine David’ transported him from radical alternative settings in the '80s to the studios of Channel 4 in the '90s. For the last four decades, Hoyle has queered the boundaries between live art, performance, theatre and cabaret – conquering nightlife around the world and working extensively in film and TV. His recent retrospective Please Feel Free to Ignore My Work at Manchester's Aviva Studios powerfully shared the key themes that run through Hoyle’s output: gender, mental health, AIDS, revolution, decadence and the effects of capitalism. Tracing his career from the '80s to the present day, this body of work asks how and why we value our art and artists. Ever the outsider, David Hoyle opens the door to his outrageous and moving world. Come on in, we’ll pop the kettle on. Follow @DavidHoyleUniversal Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
28 3月 2025 - 58 min 27 s
Anne Rothenstein
New @TalkArt podcast! We meet artist @AnneRothenstein whose enigmatic paintings are frequently characterised by a dreamlike quality. Mysterious figures often populate her flattened landscapes and interiors. The artist draws inspiration from found imagery, personal experience and memory, working instinctively to communicate atmosphere and psychological tension. Rothenstein’s scenes are rendered with sinuous lines and a distinctive palette built up of thin washes of oil. Often painting directly on wood panel, the artist allows grain to blend with figure and landscape. Speaking of her artistic process, Rothenstein says, “My reasons, or intentions, when making a particular painting are quite mysterious to me. The spark is always lit from an existing image, a photograph or another painting, and I often don’t discover why that image leaped out at me or what it is I’m exploring until the work is finished. Sometimes I never find out. It is almost entirely intuitive. Finding a rhythm, searching for balance, alert to missteps, to what is happening, to changes of direction. I am telling myself a story much of the time and asking questions. Who is this, where is this place, what is going on? This is what I think of as the noise of a painting. And of course, what I am trying to reach is the silence … There is a wonderful Philip Guston quote: “if you’re really painting YOU walk out.” That is what I mean by reaching the silence.” Rothenstein is self-taught and lives and works in London. Born in 1949, the daughter of the late Michael Rothenstein and Duffy Ayres, she grew up in a lively and distinguished community of artists in the Essex village of Great Bardfield. Following a foundation course at Camberwell School of Art in the mid-1960s, Rothenstein worked as an actress for over a decade before gradually returning to painting. Rothenstein’s recent solo exhibitions include Charleston, Sussex (2024) and Stephen Friedman Gallery, New York (2024). Other solo shows include Stephen Friedman Gallery, London (2022) and Beaux Arts Gallery, London (2021). A two-person exhibition by Rothenstein and Irina Zatulovskaya took place at Pushkin House, London in 2018. 🔗 Follow @AnneRothenstein 🖼️ Visit #AnneRothenstein ’s solo show which runs until 12th April 2025 at @StephenFriedmanGallery , 5-6 Cork Street, London. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
21 3月 2025 - 01 h 02 min 06 s
JulianKnxx
We meet poet, artist and filmmaker Julianknxx. We explore themes within his work of inheritance, loss and belonging as he crosses the boundaries between written word, music and visual art. Sierra Leonian artist Julianknxx uses his personal history as a prism to deconstruct dominant perspectives on African art, history, and culture. Rich with symbolism, his work conveys the Black experience of defining and redefining the self, rejecting labels to form new collective narratives. Offering song and music as forms of resistance, the exhibition invokes new understandings of what it means to be caught between, and to be of, multiple places. Choirs and musicians from cities across Europe give voice to a single refrain: ‘We are what’s left of us’, transforming the Curve into a collaborative space of communication. As the philosopher Édouard Glissant has written: ‘you can change with the Other while being yourself, you are not one, you are multiple, and you are yourself.’ Julianknxx’s work merges his poetic practice with films and performance; he engages in a form of existential inquiry that at once seeks to find ways of expressing the ineffable realities of human experiences while examining the structures through which we live. In casting his own practice as a ‘living archive’ or an ‘history from below’, Julianknxx draws on West African traditions of oral history to reframe how we construct both local and global perspectives. He does this through a body of work that challenges fixed ideas of identity and unravels linear Western historical and socio-political narratives, attempting to reconcile how it feels to exist primarily in liminal spaces. Follow @JulianKnxx Visit #JulianKnxx’s two new exhibitions @BuroStedelijk, Amsterdam until 24th April and @CAMGulbenkian, Lisbon until 2nd June 2025. Listen to Talk Art: @Spotify or @ApplePodcasts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
14 3月 2025 - 01 h 03 min 38 s
Shon Faye
We meet bestselling writer Shon Faye to discuss her new book Love In Exile and artists she admires: Nan Goldin, The Bloomsbury Group, Bernini, Michelangelo, Pedro Almodóvar's Bad Education and performers including Tom Rasmussen, Madonna and David Hoyle. Shon Faye grew up quietly obsessed with the feeling that love was not for her. Not just romantic love: the secret fear of her own unworthiness penetrated every aspect and corner of her life. It was a fear that would erupt in destructive, counterfeit versions of the real love she craved: addictions and short-lived romances that were either euphoric and fantastical, or excruciatingly painful and unhinged, often both. Faye’s experience of the world as a trans woman, who grew up visibly queer, exacerbated her fears. But, as she confronted her damaging ideas about love and lovelessness, she came to realize that this sense of exclusion is symptomatic of a much larger problem in our culture. Love, she argues, is as much a collective question as a personal one. Yet our collective ideals of love have developed in a society which is itself profoundly sick and loveless; in which consumer capitalism sells us ever new, engrossing fantasies of becoming more loved or lovable. In this highly politicized terrain, boundaries are purposefully drawn to keep some in and to keep others out. Those who exist outside them are ignored, denigrated, exiled. In Love in Exile , Shon Faye shows love is much greater than the narrow ideals we have been taught to crave so desperately that we are willing to bend and break ourselves to fit them. Wise, funny, unsparing, and suffused with a radical clarity, this is a book of and for our times: for seeing and knowing love, in whatever form it takes, is the meaning of life itself. Shon Faye is author of the acclaimed bestseller The Transgender Issue . Her work has been published in, among others, the Guardian , Independent , British Vogue and VICE . Born in Bristol, she now lives in London. As Frieze magazine recently wrote: Shon Faye is one of the most celebrated non-fiction authors in the UK, rising to fame for her discerning prose on culture, relationships and class. Her first book, The Transgender Issue (2021), a provocative treatise on gender identity debates in the UK, was part of her rise to fame. Not only did Faye offer a detailed survey of queer history, but she also indicated why trans-liberation is connected to liberation for all. Her new book of essays, Love in Exile (2025), explores the existential and social challenges of courtship and heartache. Rather than focus solely on the discrimination that many transgender people face, however, the text is a literary memoir that interrogates how ancient and present-day writers conceptualize and dissect love. As a Vogue contributor with her advice column ‘Dear Shon’ (2022–ongoing), host of the podcast Call Me Mother (2021–ongoing) and author of Dazed Confused Magazine’s ‘Future of Sex’ series (2022–ongoing), she addresses the topic of romance with honesty and poise. Follow @Shon.Faye on Instagram Buy Love in Exile, published by Pengiun. You can also follow @TalkArt for images of all artworks discussed in today's episode. Thanks for listening! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
7 3月 2025 - 01 h 22 min 02 s
Vanessa Raw
We meet painter Vanessa Raw to discuss her solo show at the Rubell Museum Miami, where she was the 2024 Artist-in-Residence. Vanessa Raw: This is How the Light Gets In marks her first exhibition in the United States, as well as her first institutional show. In these newly commissioned, large-scale works, Raw’s distinctive layered brushwork and expressive use of colour depict a dream-like, all-female world—an earthly paradise where the natural world is benevolent and sentient, and where female desire is central. A former triathlete, Raw’s practiced mastery of her own body transfers to her work on canvas. Her figures are tranquil and at ease but have agency. They revel in the company of each other and in the landscape that is lush and soft and ripe with colour—paradise found. In 2022 Raw took a radical new direction with her work, shifting from traditional portraiture tropes to paint imagined, same-sex, intimate scenes of women in confected landscapes. Surrounded by flowers and trees, sometimes accompanied by fauna too, these suspended moments of blissful intense connections show naked, energised bodies part-merged with each other and the landscapes they are in. Using a heighten palette Raw conveys the intensity of the moment, as well positioning the paintings in the realm of the imaginary. Likewise, the dream-like fluidity of some areas of mark making suggest an altered state of consciousness, a deep human connectivity occurring simultaneously on a physical and spiritual plane. Photographs taken on her daily runs through local nature areas, an activity undertaken with therapeutical escapist intention, are used as source material for her background landscapes binding their confection to meaningful actualities, pulling into the paintings the remembered feeling of oneness with nature. Raw works in a semi-naturalistic style, with an intense focus on the textures of the human form. Her large scale paintings are an eclectic variety of tonal compositions, vibrant and stimulating. Some of her more explicit pieces show the human body engaged in sexual acts or reaching the point of orgasm, whilst others in a more subtle manner showcase the innate sexuality of the feminine form. Born in 1984 in Hexham, England, Raw lives and works in Margate, UK. Vanessa Raw: This is How the Light Gets In is now open in Miami at Rubell Museum. Visit: https://rubellmuseum.org/2024-vanessa-raw Follow @VanessaRaw_ and @RubellMuseum Vanessa Raw is represented by Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate . Special thanks to the Don, Mera and Jason Rubell, and Juan Roselione-Valadez at the Rubell Museum, Carl Freedman @CarlFreedmanGallery and Elissa Cray @TKEStudios . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
28 2月 2025 - 56 min 08 s
Peter Berlin
We meet legendary artist Peter Berlin from his home in San Francisco. Peter Berlin (born Armin Hagen Freiherr von Hoyningen-Huene) is a photographer, artist, filmmaker, clothing designer, model, and gay icon. Berlin started taking self-portraits of himself in the 1970s. By modifying his clothes, choosing various props and settings, and sometimes using double-exposure to create a second image, Berlin would photograph himself in ways that create a hyper-sexualized, overtly masculine image. We explore Mariposa Gallery's inaugural Los Angeles exhibition featuring the groundbreaking photography, art, and personal artifacts of Peter Berlin, an artist who transformed queer self-representation and male eroticism in the 1970s and beyond. The exhibition set to open at 526 N. Western Avenue—in the heart of the Melrose Hill gallery district— is curated by actor and host of Talk Art, Russell Tovey, and will showcase Berlin’s iconic self-portraits, unique painted photographs, and items from his personal archive including his own clothing designed by Berlin during his years as a self-styled gay icon. This is the first ever exhibition of Berlin’s work in Los Angeles. The exhibition offers visitors a rare view into the life and work of an artist whose influence on LGBTQ+ aesthetics endures. Berlin, born Armin Hagen Freiherr von Hoyningen Huene in 1942, gained notoriety for his daring and meticulously crafted self-portraits, often taken in public spaces across Berlin, Paris, New York, and San Francisco. These images capture Berlin in his skin-tight costumes and signature pageboy haircut, boldly challenging the boundaries of masculinity and public identity. Berlin’s focus on “cruising as career” drew him to create self-portraits that explored male sexuality and queer expression, which appeared on the covers of numerous gay publications, cementing his image as an international gay sex symbol. The exhibition will also feature selections from Berlin’s ’70s and ’80s media presence, capturing the evolution of gay aesthetics in this era. "Peter Berlin, the fearless and enigmatic, otherworldly icon of 1970s cruise culture, created work that resonates around the world—sparkling, searing, and blazing with vitality. His images burn with eternal desire, offering us the ultimate permission to stare. It’s a privilege to share his groundbreaking art with new and familiar audiences alike. Peter Berlin remains a profoundly significant yet often overlooked figure in the history of art." - Russell Tovey Berlin’s influence extended to film, including Nights in Black Leather (1973) and That Boy (1974), both now cult classics. A recent 2019 monograph on his work, Icon, Artist, Photosexual, highlights his impact, featuring insights from Michael Bullock, Evan Moffitt, and Ted Stansfield, each celebrating Berlin’s singular contribution to queer art and culture. Mariposa Gallery invites the public to step into Berlin’s world and experience the legacy of an artist who, through bold self-exploration and defiant artistry, redefined eroticism and individuality in the queer community. Materials on loan from the Peter Berlin Collection courtesy of Armin Hagen von Hoyningen-Huene and with guidance from Gerard Koskovich, the historian and dealer offering the collection for institutional acquisition. For more information, visit www.abaa.org/booksellers/details/gerard-koskovich-queer-antiquarian-books. Follow @PeterBerlinSF and @Mariposa.Drive Visit: https://www.mariposa.gallery/berlin Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
21 2月 2025 - 01 h 11 min 37 s
Mickalene Thomas
New @TalkArt podcast! We meet leading artist Mickalene Thomas to explore her major solo show in London’s Hayward Gallery . SEASON 24 BEGINS!!!! Happy Valentine’s Day! Our gift to you is Episode 1 of Season 24!!!! 'All About Love' presents two decades of work by the internationally celebrated artist and pioneering portraitist Mickalene Thomas (born 1971, USA). Thomas is renowned for her large-scale paintings of Black women radically luxuriating and in repose, adorned with vivid patterns and ravishing, brilliant rhinestones, as well as her innovative use of collage techniques. Thomas’ depictions of women from her circle of friends, family, lovers and models are loving, celebratory and glamorous, with her alluring and self-assured muses exuding comfort and pleasure. References to the history of European painting abound in Thomas’ work (including to Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso). Her subjects confidently claim space within this male-dominated art history from which Black and LGBTQIA+ people have largely been excluded. Featuring paintings, photographs, collages and installations, All About Love transforms the Hayward Gallery with bespoke wallpapers, textiles and furnishings nostalgically evoking the artist’s 1970s childhood. Thomas’ art is steeped in contemporary feminist literature, and the exhibition title pays loving homage to the late American author and activist bell hooks. #MickaleneThomas’ vibrant, large-scale portraits of Black women at rest reclaim space and representation in art history, celebrating love and radical repose. Mickalene Thomas: All About Love is now open and runs until 5th May 2025. Learn more on Instagram: @Hayward.Gallery or by visiting: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/mickalene-thomas-all-about-love/ 🔗 Follow: @MickaleneThomas Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
14 2月 2025 - 01 h 17 min 12 s
Carsten Höller (New Year's Day Special Episode)
We meet artist Carsten Höller for some perceptual playtime to celebrate New Year's Day! We explore Höller’s collection of odd tasks and mischievous game-play. Carsten Höller invites readers to disrupt their daily lives with 336 mind-expanding diversions. They can be played alone, in pairs or in teams, in the street, in bed, on a train, wherever. No props or materials are needed. Just one body, all senses and a willingness to try something new, that’s possibly conceptually or physically challenging, but guaranteed to entertain and to widen the player’s horizons. Some games are more obviously daring than others – unexpectedly shouting ‘bang!’ when your driver’s reversing into a parking space is sure to elicit a reaction – but that’s absolutely the point. Other games involve covertly dropping strange phrases into conversation, executing somersaults (without practice), or plucking hairs from your opponent’s head while they stay poker-faced. Höller’s scientific professional background informs his keenness to create what he calls Influential Environments. He wants to tease the brain while testing its limitations, through activity and passivity, agency and inertia. He conceived his first game with a group of friends in 1992, during a tedious dinner after an exhibition opening. Since then, he has collected and invented ideas, inspired by friends, life, the Surrealists, and Arthur Rimbaud. All games are illustrated with commissioned or pre-existing artworks and photographs. We find portraits by Inez van Lamsweerde Vinoodh Matadin, August Sander, and Nan Goldin next to paintings by Salvador Dalí ; snapshots of Joseph Beuys plus son and Donna Haraway plus dog next to appointed pieces by Christine Sun Kim and Anri Sala; film stills by Chantal Akerman, extracts from Shakespeare as well as treasures from Höller’s personal archive—and his mother’s. Edited by Stefanie Hessler and Hans Ulrich Obrist, this book encourages readers to engage in playful yet cerebral experiments that will leave them with a sense of wonder, disorientation, and a subtle smirk on their face. As an artist, Carsten Höller conducts radical experiments. His “Influential Environments” explore alternative scenarios, reimagining possibilities for human behavior and interaction and have been shown in major installations and solo exhibitions internationally over the last two decades. In 2022, he opened his restaurant Brutalisten in Stockholm and presented the third iteration of The Double Club in Los Angeles in 2024. Born in 1961 in Brussels to German parents, Höller currently lives and works in Stockholm and Biriwa, Ghana. Follow @Carsten.Holler on Instagram. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
1 1月 2025 - 59 min 03 s
Russell T Davies (Christmas Special Episode)
It's the Talk Art CHRISTMAS SPECIAL EPISODE!! Holiday Surprise!!! We meet Russell T Davies OBE, one of the UK’s foremost writers of television drama and television producer. Davies was Head Writer, Showrunner and Executive Producer of Doctor Who when it returned in 2005 and has written many of the new series’ most memorable episodes. He was awarded an OBE in 2008 for services to drama. Born in Swansea, Wales, Davies had aspirations as a comic artist before focusing on being a playwright and screenwriter. We discuss his passion for comic strips and cartoons from Peanuts Snoopy, Asterix and his childhood passion for drawing which has continued throughout his whole life. Davies other notable works include creating the series Queer as Folk (1999–2000), Bob Rose (2001), The Second Coming (2003), Casanova (2005), Doctor Who spin-offs Torchwood (2006–2011) and The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007–2011), Cucumber (2015), A Very English Scandal (2018), Years and Years (2019), It's a Sin (2021) and Nolly (2023). Follow @RussellTDavies63 HAPPY HOLIDAYS everyone!!! Thanks for listening us for the past 6 years. We will return on New Year's Day with another iconic guest. Until then, have a magical Christmas. Love Russell Robert Xx Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
24 12月 2024 - 01 h 11 min 19 s
Joelle Taylor
We meet legendary poet Joelle Taylor. Joelle Taylor is the author of 4 collections of poetry. Her most recent collection C+NTO Othered Poems won the 2021 T.S Eliot Prize, and the 2022 Polari Book Prize for LGBT authors. C+NTO is currently being adapted for theatre with a view to touring. She is a co- curator and host of Out-Spoken Live at the Southbank Centre, and tours her work nationally and internationally in a diverse range of venues, from Australia to Brazil. She is also a Poetry Fellow of University of East Anglia and the curator of the Koestler Awards 2023. She has judged several poetry and literary prizes including Jerwood Fellowship, the Forward Prize, and the Ondaatje Prize. Her novel of interconnecting stories The Night Alphabet will be published by Riverrun in Spring of 2024. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the 2022 Saboteur Spoken Word Artist of the Year. Her most recent acting role was in Blue by Derek Jarman, which was directed by Neil Bartlett and featured Russell Tovey, Jay Bernard, and Travis Alabanza. Blue sold out its run across the UK and more dates are expected for the future. Follow @JTaylorTrash Visit: https://joelletaylor.co.uk/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
6 12月 2024 - 01 h 14 min 30 s