Over the past decade, Ramesh Nithiyendran has become one of the most visible artists of his generation and one of the most hardworking with his signature emoji-like, wildly coloured and often multiple-limbed sculptures making their presence felt across the globe. Daniel drops in on Ramesh as he prepares to unveil his next big solo exhibition - including his magnum opus, a self-deity in bronze.

And the first in an occasional series If Not Critical, we meet art critic (and artist) Jack Wilkie-Jans. A trained political scientist, Jack’s critical writing explores the power of his country in the art of far north Queensland.

Sasha Huber is Swiss-Haitian… but she lives and works in Finland. She’s got a truly interdisciplinary practice - but she does have one particular medium, that’s quite unusual - in fact, it’s hard to imagine how she makes art from this non-art material. Her medium is the humble staple - not your desk type - she packs a semi-automatic staple gun like the ones tradies use.

Sasha's work can be seen at Crepusculum along with artist Petri Saarikko at Gallery Project8 in Melbourne until 14 September.

Freya Jobbins is an artist based in regional NSW. Her method of assemblage - the art of making three dimensional pieces from objects that have been discarded  - creates extraordinary and often disturbingly touchable sculptures are made from the flesh coloured parts of toy dolls.

Freya is set to have a solo exhibition at Penny Contemporary in Hobart in the new year.

It's Poetry Month and to celebrate Radio National is bringing you brand new poems commissioned by Red Room Poetry. Poet, playwright and dramaturge Dylan Van Den Berg's poem Red Face Man is his response to to Benjamin Duterrau's 1840 painting, “Mr Robinson's first interview with Timmy” 

A culture that flourished 3,500 years ago in Thailand. They made jewellery and ceramics, not war.  You may never have heard of Ban Chiang —That’s possibly because the objects that tell the story of this fascinating archaeological site are in limbo, caught between voracious collectors, tomb-raiding locals and undercover federal agents. Art historian Dr Melody Rod-ari tells Daniel the story. 

For four decades Judy Watson has been making layered, ethereal art about profound and difficult subjects: frontier violence, dispossession and ecological destruction. From her beginnings with the famed Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative, to lithographs and her monumental public artworks, Daniel speaks to Judy Watson at her largest survey show at the Queensland Art Gallery, ‘mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri: Judy Watson’. The stories in this episode were first broadcast in 2023 and March 2024.

Australian-born Polly Borland is best known for photographing kink sub cultures, Nick Cave and the late Queen, but she has also long been experimenting with the surreal. She tells Daniel about her shift to sculpture and her true feelings about photographing the late monarch. Plus, who was Janet Sobel? The unlikely abstract artist who used paint drips and splatters before Jackson Pollack 'furtively admired' her work.

In the 1960s Vivienne Binns scandalised critics with her joyfully sexual paintings of giant genitalia and Dada-inspired pop art. But instead of following her expected path, Binns abandoned painting and devoted herself to community art projects and the Feminist art movement. Plus, a spotlight on pioneering ceramic artist Thanakupi, from Napranum (Weipa). And a short history of the smile in western Art.

Paul Yore's colourful artworks riff off pop culture, queer identity, religion and politics. In 2014, he was embroiled in a censorship scandal that saw him charged with child pornography (later dropped) over images he used in a collage, part of an exhibition in honour of the Australian avant-garde artist Mike Brown. Paul talks to Daniel about the impact of the case and his new survey show, full of his trademark trash, sparkle, found objects -- and ‘obscenities’.Plus, the 'shark bra' that bit back and became an iconic piece of Australian feminist art. And a video artwork project split between art museums in Sydney and Birmingham, UK.

Kara Walker is one of America’s most significant living artists, known for cut-paper silhouettes and gigantic public sculptures, using the visual artefacts of slavery in nightmarish black and white scenes. Daniel speaks with Kara from her Brooklyn studio, for the National Gallery f Australia's Annual Lecture. Plus, pick up a pen and draw your plants! Our resident drawing instructor Lily Mae Martin says it's good for the soul. And Daniel visits the studio of Archibald Prize-winning painter Yvette Coppersmith.

Edward Burtynsky is a Canadian-Ukrainian photographer who hangs out of helicopters to capture aerial scenes of rapid industrialisation and destruction, on Earth. So how does he pick his monumental subjects? And what has he witnessed over his 40-year career?

Plus, this week on The Drawing Board, Daniel and Lily Mae Martin talk about how to draw hands. Why can they be so hard to get right?!

And Australian sculptor Clayton Blake on making art for Burning Man in the Nevada desert -- just don't call it a festival!

Drew Berry is a biomedical animator, who brings to life microscopic molecular processes in vivid colour. He’s won an Emmy for his visualisation of DNA and been described as the ‘Steven Spielberg of molecular animation’.Plus, on The Drawing Board learn how to approach drawing perspective with instructor Lily Mae Martin. And Natalya Hughes shows Daniel around her exhibition The Interior, where the potent imagery of Sigmund Freud's famous case studies meet the furnishings of his consultation room.

One year on since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, we speak to Adelaide-based Hazara artist and poet Elyas Alavi and photographer and conceptual artist Rada Akbar, now living in France. Plus, do you want to start drawing (again)? Lily Mae Martin takes Daniel back to The Drawing Board, our new drawing segment.And enter the marine world of textile artist and weaver Aly de Groot.

Fifty years ago, a stunning glacial outwash lake in southwest lutruwita/Tasmania disappeared under an inundation of river water for a hydro-electric dam. A new exhibition looks at the profound loss felt for nature and what artists do with it. Plus, Rachel Griffiths on her first art love. And step inside the studio of Catherine Woo, who uses minerals and the elements to depict nature from an entirely different perspective.

Tennant Creek Brio is a collective of artists who met in a men’s art therapy group. Their latest show Shock and Ore is generating serious buzz. Plus, hear from the winners of this year's vibrant National Aboriginal and Islander Art Awards. And get a taste of the art marketplace where remote art centres rub shoulders with art lovers.

Singing stars, anti-apartheid activists, writers and mavericks are among the Southern African women honoured by visual artists in a new exhibition, And she was wearing trousers: a call to our heroines curated by Roberta Joy Rich and Naomi Velaphi.

Enter the studio of Michaye Boulter, a nipaluna/Hobart-based painter whose seascapes are unmistakably of southern Tasmania… but painted from her imagination, not from life.

Plus, Tom O’Hern on why it's ok to draw badly.

And Wiradjuri architect-slash-multidisciplinary artist Joel Sherwood Spring speaks to Daniel from Kassel in Germany, about his powerful architectural interventions and his practice.

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

Curator Petrit Abazi fled Kosovo as a child with his parents and now heads a contemporary art centre in Darwin. This month he’s returned to the city of his birth, Mitrovica, where Albanians and Serbs still live divided, to curate two artworks for the European art festival Manifesta 14. With Ukrainian-Australian artist Stanislava Pinchuk and endurance-swimmer and artist Piers GrevillePlus, we speak to the winner and judges of the Hadley's Art Prize, and ask: is landscape as a genre still fit for purpose?And Isa Segalovich takes Daniel on a short, fascinating history of eyebrows in art.

Bruce Munro is the hugely popular light installation artist who filled the foreground of Uluru with a Field of Light. He talks to Daniel about his career, new show and early encouragement from Kevin McCloud. Plus, how does a string of amethyst beads tell the story of an astonishing ancient maritime trade? And hear the story behind The King of Kowloon, Louis Lim's rollicking new podcast about an enigmatic Hong Kong street artist.

Can you separate the misogynist from the art? If you walk around the winter blockbuster The Picasso Century at the National Gallery of Victoria, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this wasn’t a live debate. Daniel speaks with Didier Ottinger from the Centre Pompidou, who hopes the exhibition he’s curated presents the 20th Century's most famous artist as a sensitive man defined by his friendships and rivalries and shaped by his extraordinary times. Art historian Ksenia Soboleva and writer Shannon Lee beg to differ. Plus, Snuff Puppets are renowned for their punk aesthetic and mission is to make art for everybody. Founder Andy Freer speaks to Daniel from the Polish city of Krakow, where the troupe is working with Ukrainian refugees and their rich folklore. And we meet Penelope Cain, whose work fuses art and science.

Richard Bell is one of the few individual artists curated into Documenta 15, the highly-anticipated global survey of contemporary art. This year, for the first time, it’s been dominated by artists and collectives from the Global South. But the historic takeover has been eclipsed by a media storm ignited by what appears to be a Jewish caricature in a mural painted by Indonesian artist group Taring Padi, since taken down. 

Queensland-born sculptor Sebastian di Mauro who now calls Delaware home, discusses his obsession with materiality and his new exhibition featuring appliquéd army blankets based on the arcane imagery on American dollar notes. 

And we discover the little-known painter Edward Brezinski who lived on the fringes of the hyperactive 1980s New York art scene that produced Jean Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. His desperate bid for fame is charted in the new documentary Make Me Famous which also offers a fascinating insight into the ecosystem of the art business.

A conversation with artist Daniel Boyd whose work has focussed on reframing Eurocentric images from Australia's past. Plus, Sally Ryan discusses her latest commission, a giant oil painting of Jesus, Mary and Joseph for St Mary’s cathedral in Sydney. She says it's her hardest painting yet. And, returning artefacts taken from Kunwinjku and Gagadju artists in Arnhem Land in the early 1900s.

Have you ever walked through an epic entanglement of red cotton thread, by the artist Chiharu Shiota? The Japanese installation and performance artist takes Daniel through The Soul Trembles, an exhibition highlighting 25 years of her practice. Including the time she undertook a nude workshop with Marina Abramovic, mistaking her for the textile sculptor Magdalena Abakanowitcz. Plus, Daniel speaks with performance artist Wura-Natasha Ogunji, who came to Sydney to lead a public endurance performance in which a group of women haul water kegs through the streets. It was first performed in Lagos, Nigeria in 2011.From the sky, to the moon and the neon of electric globes, light is art’s most essential element. Tate UK has a huge collection of works that speak to the evolution of light, from natural source to fluorescent tubes. More than 70 of them are on show at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI).

Why artist and curator David Sequeira doesn't believe in just a 'pop of colour'. How a colour-blind artist adapted to colours he couldn't perceive. And how glasses that allow colour-deficient people to see the full spectrum of colours, work.Plus, Daniel chats to V&A curator Catlin Langford about her book on the mania for Autochrome, an early colour photography process invented by the Lumière brothers.

We start the show at the Parade for the Moon in Melbourne's Chinatown, part of the city's RISING festival.Then Daniel speaks with tattoo and visual artist eX-de-Medici about her intense and detailed watercolours that interrogate violent power structures.

And step inside the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where Daniel catches up with Australian artist Angelica Mesiti, who teaches there.

Daniel chats with artist brothers Abdul-Rahman and Abdul Abdullah, who are close in life but not so much in their art. However, thorny issues unite them in Land Abounds, their new joint exhibition.

Hear how Filipino sculptor Leeroy New builds his large-scale sci-fi installations made from 100% recycled materials. He's in Australia for Melbourne's RISING festival.

And how did an 1897 painting by the Wurundjeri clan leader William Barak, end up at a Sotheby's auction house in New York? Last week Wurundjeri people successfully bid for the works.

The American artist Kiki Smith talks about tapestry and her long career.My Art Crush: painter and printmaker Kirtika Kain makes tactile work about the oppression  and unrecorded history of Dalit people.Step inside the Palais de Tokyo (in Paris), Europe's largest centre for contemporary art, for a tour of the exhibition Reclaim The Earth.

Big-name conceptual artist - four words you don’t often hear together. But Jeremy Deller is one - he’s a household name in Britain, but a few years back he sparked controversy here when he made giant wax candles of Rupert Murdoch and son Lachlan, and let them burn. The Turner Prize-winning artist also orchestrates mass public spectacles that bridge the worlds of contemporary art and pop culture.

Daniel catches up with Archibald Prize winner Laura Jones, who painted author Tim Winton. Painter and sitter share a passion for WA's Ningaloo reef and its survival amid climate crisis. Unusually, Laura's own portrait is also on display  –  she entered it in the concurrent Sulman Prize, on at the Art Gallery of NSW. 

Brent Harris' psychologically-driven artworks are often described as haunting and even ‘brooding’. So, if you haven’t ever seen his paintings– would it surprise you to know they’re also colourful and cartoonish? More Betty Boop than Edvard Munch’s The Scream. He takes producer Rosa Ellen through his studio, in preparation for his survey show, which is soon to tour  the Art Gallery of South Australia.

How often does a political artwork fall into the national spotlight during a federal election? Hear from Archibald portrait prize winner Blak Douglas.Plus, an Italian art exhibition that puts NFT juggernaut Beeple alongside European masters and Australia's Richard Bell.

And enter the studio of weaver, printmaker and textile artist Ema Shin.

Greetings from the 22nd La Biennale di Venezia, in Italy!

The Venice Biennale is known as the Olympics of the art world, complete with golden awards, stunning achievement and sometimes, disappointment. This year has seen more female artists, Black artists and minority cultures representing national pavilions than even before. Take a tour with Daniel around the storied pavilions and canals of the world’s most prestigious art event, speaking with participants, former Australian representatives and punters.

What do artists think about when making huge public art? Lindy Lee is making the most expensive work commissioned by the NGA, and Judy Watson's bara will grace Sydney's harbour with a giant Gadigal fish hook.Then, the US art lab addressing the problem of confederate monuments to racist causes... and Indigenous artists Julie Gough, Nicholas Galanin and Yhonnie Scarce on Australia's own colonial memorialising.

Rebecca Belmore is one of Canada's most important artists and is now having her first Australian solo show.Plus, visit Sally Smart's studio, inspired by one of the most influential dance companies of the twentieth century.

And Yuki Kihara's Venice Biennale entry Paradise Camp, where the artist reimagines tropes used by Paul Gauguin and Samoan tourism brochures, with a Fa’afafine cast.

Marco Fusinato is representing Australia at the 2022 Venice Biennale with work for 'monstrous times'.Plus, artworks that tell queer stories selected from the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, for NGV Queer.And who was Lala Deen Dayal? The pioneering Indian photographer who documented a vast nation.

Victor Ehikhamenor is one of Nigeria’s most prominent artists and calls for the Benin bronzes, the looted cultural treasures of Edo State, to be repatriated. So what did he do when he was asked to make an artwork in response to the memorial to the 19th C. British leader of the looting?Plus, South Australian artist Helen Fuller turns her hand to unconventional ceramic pots -- and an original way to exhibit them.And why tropical fruit, low-cost bejewelling and a Thai auteur inspire artist Nathan Beard.

David Noonan makes intriguing black-and-white collage of people in often liminal states. But despite their evocative drama, his pictures don't tell a story.Plus, Hoda Afshar's photographic project Speak the Wind, about people in the Persian Gulf who believe that humans can be possessed by the wind.And spotlight on the Australian artist and feminist Erica McGilchrist, whose painting series in the 1950s was based on her experiences teaching art at a mental hospital.

Ian Strange uses entire houses -slated for demolition- as his canvas, exploring the symbolism of 'home' through eras of unaffordability and urban development.Plus, meet Irish artist Sean Lynch onsite at his new public artwork in inner-city Melbourne.Sera Waters uses old English needlework techniques and crafts to examine the legacy of her settler forbears.And celebrating the work of feminist artist Frances Phoenix, whose doilies and embroidery packed a punch to the patriarchy.

Colombian artist Carolina Caycedo gives voice to rivers dammed for huge hydroelectric projects.What happens when the art world turns its back on Russia's major contemporary art museum?And Dennis Golding shares memories of 'the Block', using treasured iron lace from Redfern's terrace houses.

Aunty Elaine Russell has legendary status in her home town of Sydney. She was an artist and storyteller who inspired many, and whose work has been acquired by a number of Australia's major galleries and museums.

We remember the life of the iconic artist Destiny Deacon, with curator Natalie King, and a cast of friends who sent us voice memos. She was the first artist to creatively reuse Aboriginal kitsch - and to make it the stuff of high art. A cultural icon, she was an outlier - a quirk of the artworld - whose strikingly original vision and prolific output found her an international audience.

Plus, a studio visit with Alexander Brown, an artist who gave up interior design to focus on sculpture made from only recycled material – and minimal intervention. He's part of an exhibition about Aluminium at Craft Victoria.

British filmmaker and installation artist Isaac Julien on his latest works: a spellbinding interpretation of Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi and a portrait of 19th C. abolitionist Fredrick Douglass. Plus, Heather B. Swann's potent retelling of the Greek myth 'Leda and the swan', where Leda is at the centre of the story.And why you should know the name Thanakupi -- the pioneering ceramic artist from the Thaynakwith language group in western Cape York, whose legacy looms large.

Jennifer Herd is a Mbarbarrum artist and founding member of Brisbane's proppaNOW art collective.

Floods have ravaged art galleries and studios in northern New South Wales. We hear from a gallery director and artist Megan Cope.Plus Ukrainian-Australian artist Stanislava Pinchuk.And a spotlight on the bold modernist printmaker Ethel Spowers.

Dianne Jones is a provocative photo-media artist who manipulates images from colonial art to give prominence to Indigenous people.

The goddess of love has reigned supreme through Western art, but her roots are darker, more ancient and shape-shifting than you'd expect.Historian and TV presenter Prof Bettany Hughes joins Daniel to tell the surprising history of Venus/Aphrodite.Plus, a seascape painter who lives on a yacht, and step into the studio of Yul Scarf, who uses ceramics, old bricks and the revived tech of QR codes, to explore questions of colonialism.

Laurel Nannup is a Noongar artist and elder who grew up near Pinjara in Western Australia. As part of the Stolen Generation she was taken from her mother at the age of 8 and sent to the Wanderling Mission.

Who makes up “the canon” in Art today? A new book picks 50 artists from around the world, and across centuries, to take a meaningful snapshot of art masters.Plus, a curator on 16th C. artist Lavinia Fontana, Europe's first female professional painter.And Atong Atem's panoramic collage that charts 10 years of life, family and art.

Julie Gough is a Trawlwoolway artist whose practice often refers to her family's experiences as Tasmanian Aboriginal people and is held in many private collections and major galleries in Australia.

Patricia Piccinini is Australia’s foremost artist exploring the relationship between humanity and technology, and the ethical tensions it inspires in the viewer.Plus, introducing our new segment My Art Crush. Jess Cochrane on the impact of Édouard Manet's Olympia on her work.And Thea Anamara Perkins on family legacy and NFTs.

Julie Dowling is considered one of Australia's greatest exponents of the family portrait, but always with an Indigenous focus.

Kimberley Moulten, an adjunct curator at  Britain's Tate gallery, specialising in First Nations art and Kate ten Buuren, a Taungurung curator, walk us through the public installation Blak Infinite for Melbourne's winter arts festival, RISING.

The artist Destiny Deacon, who passed away last week, first coined 'Blak' to reclaim a word often weaponised against Aboriginal people in Australia. Rosa speaks with the Art Show's own Daniel Browning, who knew Destiny, about the artist's influential work and daring humour. Work mentioned include Whitey's Watching  and Eva Johnson -- Portrait .

In the 1930s Grace Crowley taught at a private painting school and met Ralph Balson, a house painter. The two struck up a lifelong painting practice that moved into 'pure abstraction', together playing an important role in the art movement in Australia. We look at their work and still-undefined relationship with curator Beckett Rozentals, for a new exhibition placing them side by side.

Vivienne Binns shocked critics in the 1960s with her joyful paintings of giant genitalia and Dada-inspired assemblages. Now aged 81, she looks back at a vast arts practice that has never stopped questioning: what is art, and what do we want to say with it? Plus, Jazmina Cininas' magical take on a DIY folk instrument that conjures Pagan myths and Lithuanian folk lore.

Know My Name Series Two: interviews with Indigenous women artists from the ABC archives. In this episode meet Fiona Foley, a Badtjala artist from K'gari in Queensland

How does mindfulness stimulate artists? Meet the artists and curators of a new exhibition exploring mindfulness and meditation, called Presence of Mind.Plus, meet Gulnara Samoilova, founder of the global project Women Street Photographers.