Talk Art – Details, episodes & analysis

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

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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.

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We meet Tom Rasmussen to explore their new album Live Wire. We discuss their love of art, collaborations with artists Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings, Shon Faye and Travis Alabanza, their love for Rene Matić, writing new songs with Romy and Self Esteem and what it was like being photographed by the legendary Tim Walker on both album covers. This episode was recorded in Los Angeles while Tom put the final touches to the Live Wire album.

“Live Wire (Globe Town Records 2024) was written over a year where the last thing I wanted to talk about was violence, or what it meant to be queer. I’ve done it so much, I wanted to think about and feel about what it meant if I could live beyond that. This album is about happinness, the bittersweetness time passing, trying to live when the world is falling down both inside and out. In terms of the production, we wanted to create songs where vastness and intimacy existed in the same place like on Body, Heart, Mind; or where there was so much space for the feelings of the listener — like on There’s A Lot To Be Happy About. Other songs like Song For M and Never Look Back, with Romy, are songs which start in a dream like space and aim never to take you out of it.”

Tom's debut album Body Building (Globe Town Records 2023) fused dark dance music with an aesthetic and live performance that takes influence from their past life in drag. Born and raised in Lancashire, Tom moved to London where they fell into the world of drag, performing everywhere from the Royal Opera House to Glastonbury.

Although their drag alter ego Crystal was distinct for singing live, it wasn’t until Rasmussen started writing their own music that their performance persona began to change, revealing more of themselves. Thus came their debut album Body Building, an album that pierces the skin with its falsetto vocals and moments of queer euphoria punctuated by acoustic instrumentation.

Having already toured with Rina Sawayama and Self Esteem, Tom Rasmussen has already made waves with audiences across the UK. Especially with their single Dysphoria, the inimitably catchy, powerful yet poignant ode to their experience with their body.

Follow @TomRasmussen on Instagram.

Live Wire, is OUT NOW via Globe Town Records and includes collaborations with Romy and Self Esteeem.

Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/album/2e2BL8KVYFFPve2vtCmO4l

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We meet living legend DUANE MICHALS (b. 1932, McKeesport, PA) one of the GREATEST photographic innovators of the last century, widely known for his work with series, multiple exposures, and text. For more than 60 years he has pushed photography and art to new dimensions. Without doubt, so many contemporary artists have been inspired by, and have directly referenced, the groundbreaking work of Duane Michals - he has truly shifted the way we think about art forever!!! Duane Michals is an artist who has been much imitated, highly influential and endlessly re-inventive. He celebrated his 91st birthday the week before this episode was recorded, so a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Duane!!!

Michals first made significant, creative strides in the field of photography during the 1960s. In an era heavily influenced by photojournalism, Michals manipulated the medium to communicate narratives. The sequences, for which he is widely known, appropriate cinema’s frame-by-frame format. Michals has also incorporated text as a key component in his works. Rather than serving a didactic or explanatory function, his handwritten text adds another dimension to the images’ meaning and gives voice to Michals’ singular musings, which are poetic, tragic, and humorous, often all at once.

Over the past five decades, Michals’ work has been exhibited in the United States and abroad. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, hosted Michals’ first solo exhibition (1970). In 2019, The Morgan Library and Museum in New York exhibited a career retrospective of Michals' work The Illusions of the Photographer: Duane Michals at the Morgan. More recently, he had one-person shows at the Odakyu Museum, Tokyo (1999), and at the International Center of Photography, New York (2005). In 2008, Michals celebrated his 50th anniversary as a photographer with a retrospective exhibition at the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, Greece, and the Scavi Scaligeri in Verona, Italy.

Michals's work belongs to numerous permanent collections in the U.S. and abroad, including the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Michals's archive is housed at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.

Michals received a BA from the University of Denver in 1953 and worked as a graphic designer until his involvement with photography deepened in the late 1950s. He currently lives and works in New York City, USA.

Follow @TheDuaneMichals on Instagram.

Views more than 50 recent short films at Duane's Vimeo channel: https://vimeo.com/duanemichals

Learn more at DC Gallery: https://www.dcmooregallery.com/artists/duane-michals

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Paula Siebra is a Brazilian painter born in Fortaleza, Ceará, in 1998. The artist focuses on images related to everyday life and scenes of intimacy using Brazilian northeastern culture as her starting point. Her paintings emerge from the exploration of established themes such as portraits, landscapes and still lifes. These motifs, throughout her research, acquire a peculiar aspect: a certain simplification in the contours, added to a reduction in the contrast between chromatic tones, polarizing reality and reverie – as if the artist were daydreaming about ordinary life.

In addition to following a straightforward continuum from tradition, her paintings relate to an inherent visualness of her native land of Ceará and the Brazilian Northeast as a whole. She is particularly close to with folk art, since her interests encompass the synthetic form of clay objects, laces and other textile works such as crochet and embroidery, as well as the geometric and colorful architectural features of traditional houses. Surrounding villages, household objects and anonymous faces are elements of the landscape in which the artist is immersed, appearing as if clothed by a light mist that covers everything - alternately concealing or revealing them.

Paula Siebra (1998, Fortaleza, Brazil) lives and works in Fortaleza, Brazil).

Follow @Paula_Siebra on Instagram and her gallery @MendesWoodDM

Visit: https://mendeswooddm.com/en/artist/paula-siebra

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We meet legendary artist MIKE NELSON!!!

Nelson’s installations take the viewer on enthralling journeys into fictive worlds that eerily echo our own.

Constructed with materials scavenged from salvage yards, junk shops, auctions and flea markets, the immersive installations have a startling life-like quality.

Weaving references to science fiction, failed political movements, dark histories and countercultures, they touch on alternative ways of living and thinking: lost belief systems, interrupted histories and cultures that resist inclusion in an increasingly homogenised and globalised world.

Utterly transforming the spaces of the Hayward Gallery, the exhibition features sculptural works and new versions of key large-scale installations, many of which are shown here for the first time since their original presentations.

Nelson represented Great Britain at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011 and has shown in leading galleries around the world. He has also been featured in numerous international exhibitions, including the 13th Biennale of Sydney, the 8th Istanbul Biennial and the 13th Lyon Biennale.

Follow @HaywardGallery

Visit Mike's major solo exhibition EXTINCTION BECKONS at Hayward Gallery, runs until 7th May 2023: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/art-exhibitions/mike-nelson-extinction-beckons

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We meet Péjú Oshin, a British-Nigerian curator, writer and lecturer born and raised in London. Her work sits at the intersection of art, style & culture with a keen interest in liminal theory and diasporic narratives. Core to her practice is working with visual artists, brands and people globally.

Since starting her career working in arts & culture in 2015, Péjú has worked broadly in engaging audiences through public programming, exhibitions, and outdoor art projects in a number of cultural spaces and institutions with a history of supporting artists at various stages of their careers. Péjú is the curator of the forthcoming Gagosain exhibition Rites of Passage which brings together nineteen artists with shared histories of migration.

Her previous work and projects include managing the delivery of the Workshop Artists in Residence programme, curating live performance Stillness: We Invoke the Black to Rest (2020), Beyond Boundaries (2021), Late at Tate Britain: Life Between Islands (2021), Late at Tate Britain: Hew Locke (2022) and in-person and online programming at Tate. Leading Barbican’s first Young Curators Group (2019-2020) and delivering a number of public-facing events at Wellcome Collection in response to exhibitions such as Living with Buildings and Being Human.

As a writer, Péjú has written texts for artists which have been used in exhibitions and solo presentations of artists internationally. She has also been commissioned to write for various platforms and published her first collection of poetry and prose Between Words & Space (2021) which explores performativity, a fear of vulnerability both in public and private spheres and relationships in their varying complexities through the nuances of culture, liminality and where we find home.

In 2021 Péjú was shortlisted for the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list in the Arts & Culture category and nominated and selected for one of fifteen memberships to AWITA sponsored by Martin Millers Gin, the Adara Foundation and Hauser & Wirth (2021).

Péjú currently works at @Gagosian as Associate Director (2022 - present), is an Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins. She previously worked at Tate (2018-2022) most recently as Curator: Young People’s Programmes.

Follow @PejuOshin on Instagram

Visit: www.pejuoshin.com and https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2023/rites-of-passage/

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Welcome to this very special edition of Talk Art brought to you by "The Recharge in Nature Project", a three-year collaboration between National Parks UK and BMW. Our guest for today is the extremely talented Hannah Lees, a Margate-based artist whose art is deeply influenced by the beauty of nature, its landscapes, discarded treasures and sustainability.

Hannah's artistic vision aligns seamlessly with The Recharge in Nature Project's mission, which aims to promote nature restoration, biodiversity, wellbeing, and accessibility. This initiative seeks to improve the electric vehicle charging infrastructure in and around our National Parks, making it more convenient for visitors to use an electric car while exploring the great outdoors. In this episode we delve into Hannah's work, her personal background, and the inspiration behind her creations.

Hannah Lees’ work encompasses painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, textiles, ceramics, internet art, performance, writing, sound and video.

Lees investigates ideas of cycles: constancy and mortality; the sense that things come to an end and the potential for new beginnings.

This constancy, be it in religion, science, history or in organic matter, is visible in her practice through her attempts to make sense of and recognise traces of life.

Through appreciating this, her work is focused towards an understanding of the essential nature of the materials she uses.

Visit: https://www.hannahlees.com/

Follows @hannahjlees

Hannah Lees' solo show 'Not now not anymore' opens at Roland Ross, 11.03.23 - 29.05.23

Preview: 11.03.23 2-5pm Follow: @rolyross

To discover more about the Recharge in Nature Project, visit bmw.co.uk/NationalParks

"...Not really now, not anymore... For what does the phrase point to 

if not a fatal temporality? No now, not any more, not really. Does this 

mean that the present has eroded, disappeared - no now any more?

Are we in the time of the always-already, where the future has been 

written; in which case it is not the future not really"

p91, Mark Fisher "The Weird And The Eerie" 2016 Pub. Repeater Books, London, UK

Please join us for the opening of Not Now Not Anymore at 174-176 

Hither Green Lane where Hannah Lees will present a series of new 

tablet works that combine beach combed objects with the elements of 

mica dust and rust converted iron powder, to create a kind of alchemy, 

embedded in plaster forms that are reminiscent of ancient artefacts. 

The works alternate between exploring circularity and linearity, 

at times following a process by which objects are permanently 

transformed and reactivated as painterly abstractions.

Roland Ross | 174-176 Hither Green Lane, London SE13 6QB

By appointment only Fri-Sat 12-4pm

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Talk Art EXCLUSIVE! We meet Hollywood icon SHARON STONE!!! In this feature length special episode, we discover Sharon's obsession with painting, her current debut solo exhibition 'Shedding' at Allouche Gallery in Los Angeles and her lifelong passion for art. We learn about her journey collecting art, her close friendships with artists including Robert Rauschenberg and her love of museums. But most of all, we reveal Sharon’s LOVE for MARGATE, Turner and @turnercontemporary!!!!!

Stone has a diverse range of creative projects - writing, producing, acting, activism and painting. Sharon Stone’s paintings are predominately abstract, meditative landscapes. Yet occasionally figurative elements appear within her colourful abstractions. Dream worlds, nostalgia, imagined landscapes, views of idyllic nature. Motifs recur including an ominous moon. 

Sharon Stone is best known for her acting roles in Basic Instinct, Casino, Total Recall, The Specialist, Catwoman and more recently Ryan Murphy's Ratched. She is the recipient of various accolades including an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and an Academy Award nomination. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1995 and was named Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in France in 2005 (Commander in 2021). She has been honoured with a Nobel Peace Summit Award, a Harvard Humanitarian Award, a Human Rights Campaign Humanitarian Award and an Einstein Spirit Award. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her family.

Follow @SharonStone

Visit @AlloucheGallery and https://allouchegallery.com/exhibitions-la

Sharon Stone 'Shedding' runs until 31st March at Allouche Gallery, Los Angeles.

Read Sharon's extraordinary memoir 'The Beauty of Living Twice', published by Allen & Unwin. Order from Waterstone's in UK.

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Talk Art special episode!! We meet awesome artist RYCA to explore his new collaboration with Stella Artois Unfiltered to reimagine an iconic pub sign as a nude artwork to raise awareness and support for pubs struggling with rising energy bills!!!

RYCA is one of 11 contemporary artists who’s original artworks will be sold at online auction, with all profits going to Hospitality Action.

'The Pub Renaissance', a new art collection curated by Stella Artois, features work from renowned artists including Reuben Dangoor and Heath Kane.

The campaign is in direct response to the threat facing pubs across the country. Amid the cost of living crisis, many are struggling to pay their bills as energy prices continue to skyrocket - latest data from charity, Hospitality Action, has revealed applications for financial support are up by almost a third (29 per cent) on the previous year.

The nude signs are available for online auction for a limited time only at The Auction Collective. All profits will be donated to Hospitality Action to assist pubs with rising energy bills and Stella Artois will match funds raised, up to £50,000.

Inspired by the recent launch of Stella Artois Unfiltered, the eleven-piece collection celebrates the beauty of living life 'au naturel' - just like the naturally unfiltered beer itself.

The cheeky series includes ‘The Cricketers’ reimagined by Reuben Dangoor to star a batsman with a strategically placed bat, a new view of 'Queen Victoria' by Samuel Rees-Price, and a brand-new portrait of HRH King Charles for 'The Kings Head' by Heath Kane. Spanning a variety of signs from across the UK, the full collection includes:

● Reuben Dangoor x The Cricketers

● Bernadette Timko x Duke of Wellington

● Emma Wesley x The Bricklayers Arms

● Becki Gill x Britannia

● Samuel Rees Price x Queen Victoria  

● Alice Tye x The Plough

● Mattia Guarnera x Horse & Jockey

● Natasha Klutch x George & Dragon

● RYCA x Robin Hood

● Enigma x The Cannon

● Heath Kane x King’s Head

The original works will be sold via The Auction Collective, with online auction closing on 5th April. 

So... Buy nude art. Help pubs.

Follow

@RYCA_Artist #StellaPubSigns #ad #RYCA

Learn more by visiting

@StellaArtoisUK

Ryan Callanan (a.k.a. RYCA, born 1981) draws on his disparate experiences in 3D design, commercial printing, and street art to make paintings, prints, hand-etched signs, and sculptures that riff on pop culture. Common themes include Star Wars, 1980s acid house culture, song lyrics, and art historical figures such as Johannes Vermeer and Andy Warhol. RYCA has exhibited extensively in London and has had shows in Brighton, New York, Miami, and Hong Kong.

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