The Gallery Companion – Details, episodes & analysis

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com

In this week’s episode I am talking about lines -- the ones that you can see and the invisible ones that you can only feel. It’s a subject that the geographer Maxim Samson discusses in his recently published book, Invisible Lines, which is an exploration of the hidden geographies that affect the way we exist in and move through our physical environments. These are lines that we experience and sense, consciously and subconsciously acting on them.

I talk about these ideas in relation to the work of the New York-based artist Mika Rottenberg, whose film Cosmic Generator (2017) explores ideas about the movement and restriction of goods and people, and the visible and invisible divisions that are constructed to separate us.

And I discuss the charcoal portraits of the British artist Frank Auerbach, whose practice of drawing the faces of his sitters and rubbing them out repeatedly in his quest to represent the truth suggests to me another kind of invisible boundary in space — that separation between two people that we can feel and sense but we can’t see.

If you’d like to access the full podcast you can subscribe to it on my Substack publication at thegallerycompanion.com. A subscription gets you a podcast and email from me every Sunday and access to a lovely community of artists and art lovers from around the world.

The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents.

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about the practice of looking closely at things. It started when one of my readers sent me some wonderful writing and drawings that her boys had done in response to an exhibition in London that I reviewed a few weeks ago.

With a brief to write what they thought about the artworks, my young friends spent over an hour deeply engrossed in looking closely at them. The critical thinking and stretching of imagination evident in both boys’ observations made me think once again about how valuable art is for children’s learning. The benefits spill over in every direction, not only in the process of making art but also in thinking about it. Kids learn to identify patterns and structures, think about scale and perspective, describe and question, imagine and analyse. Then there’s the social and emotional learning that goes on.

The practice of looking closely, of slow contemplation, is the opposite of what is going on for the majority of children nowadays, according to the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, whose new book The Anxious Generation explores what he calls the ‘Great Re-Wiring of Childhood’. One of the compelling arguments he makes is about how current levels of smartphone usage are likely to have a detrimental impact on the development of young brains.

In this week’s episode I talk about all of this, and I discuss the work of two British artists, Tiffany Arntson and Rackstraw Downes, whose practice is all about looking closely.

If you’d like to access the full podcast you can subscribe to it on my Substack publication at thegallerycompanion.com. A subscription gets you a podcast and email from me every Sunday and access to a lovely community of artists and art lovers from around the world.

The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents.

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. In this episode I discuss what happens when creatives get stuck and can't finish a piece of work. I explore ideas about what you can control in the process, and how chance, timing and patience factor in to what you can't control. There are wise words from the American artists Pope L and John Baldessari, and an interesting artwork of a clock face by the painter Josephine Halvorson.

The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents.

To see the images and watch the videos discussed in the podcast visit www.thegallerycompanion.com. This is where you can subscribe to The Gallery Companion email list, which goes out to accompany each new podcast episode, and is packed full of links to more info. That's where you can share your thoughts and join the conversation too.

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. In this episode I discuss the recently opened exhibition on art and the feminist movement in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s at Tate gallery in London, including work by See Red Women's Workshop, Jill Posener and other British artists from this period. I talk about the value of protest / activist art, and why it's important that we record and collect this type of work. And I consider the relevance and popularity of this kind of exhibition which weaves together a rich story of the visual arts with social history.

The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents.

To see the images and watch the videos discussed in the podcast visit www.thegallerycompanion.com. This is where you can subscribe to The Gallery Companion email list, which goes out to accompany each new podcast episode, and is packed full of links to more info. That's where you can share your thoughts and join the conversation too.

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. In this episode I reflect on how important the setting is to our understanding and experience of artworks, and the responses we can feel in our bodies when artworks actively occupy space. I discuss the retrospective of the British artist Sarah Lucas at Tate Britain, the amazing installation Behind the Red Moon by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui at Tate Modern, and a dreamy little exhibition I saw by Korean artist Chun Kwang Young in Venice last year.

The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents.

To see the images and watch the videos discussed in the podcast visit www.thegallerycompanion.com. This is where you can subscribe to The Gallery Companion email list, which goes out to accompany each new podcast episode, and is packed full of links to more info. That's where you can share your thoughts and join the conversation too.

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. In this episode, I talk about the dangers of AI and the recent political responses to the regulation of these new technologies. I discuss Yuval Noah Harari's book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016) which suggests that the end of human history is nearly upon us. I consider a sculptural installation by the polish artist Alicja Kwade, who explores ideas about time, perception and what our reality is. And I look at the paintings of Connor McIntyre, which respond to the physical and conceptual systems underpinning our knowledge and experience of the world.

The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents.

To see the images and watch the videos discussed in the podcast visit www.thegallerycompanion.com. This is where you can subscribe to The Gallery Companion email list, which goes out to accompany each new podcast episode, and is packed full of links to more info. That's where you can share your thoughts and join the conversation too.

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. In this episode, I talk about Naomi Klein's new book Doppelganger, which takes the reader on a journey into conspiracy culture. I consider the power of storytelling in the spread of misinformation, and I think about the work of artists who interrogate the media and who question how power circulates in our world including the great Barbara Kruger, the photographer Cassandra Zampini and the South African artist William Kentridge.

The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents.

To see the images and watch the videos discussed in the podcast visit www.thegallerycompanion.com. This is where you can subscribe to The Gallery Companion email list, which goes out to accompany each new podcast episode, and is packed full of links to more info. That's where you can share your thoughts and join the conversation too.

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. In this first episode of the second series, I consider the value of art for those who create it, and the ways in which artists talk about their process of making. I look at the work of abstract painter Maryanne Hawes, whose process of walking and then painting is integral to her practice; the Swedish artist Anna Bjergen, who describes the freedom with which she allows herself to explore in her paintings as 'magic'; and the British painter Jenny Saville, who talks about the creative tension of 'laying down a problem'.

The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents.

To see the images and watch the videos discussed in the podcast visit www.thegallerycompanion.com. This is where you can subscribe to The Gallery Companion email list, which goes out to accompany each new podcast episode, and is packed full of links to more info. That's where you can share your thoughts and join the conversation too.

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. In this episode I give a brief overview of some of the subjects I'll be exploring in the second season of The Gallery Companion podcast: nature and rewilding, the post-human future, conspiracy theories, the invisibility of older women, inequality and social mobility, understanding the world through touch and more...

The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents.

To see the images and watch the videos discussed in the podcast visit www.thegallerycompanion.com. This is where you can subscribe to The Gallery Companion email list, which goes out to accompany each new podcast episode, and is packed full of links to more info. That's where you can share your thoughts and join the conversation too.

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. This episode explores how artists have represented ideas about civil unrest and rioting. I discuss the recent protests about police brutality and harassment in the Parisian suburbs that quickly escalated into violence. And I consider recent academic research on what riots can tell us about what's going wrong in society and what we need to put right. I look at the work of three contemporary artists: the French street artist JR, whose collaborative work with young suburban Parisians has been challenging entrenched perceptions; the British film-maker John Akomfrah, whose 1986 documentary Handsworth Songs about the Birmingham race riots was a record of resistance and solidarity; and the American painter Faith Ringgold, whose American People Series #20 shows how we are all interconnected and must strive together for equality. Plus wise words from Martin Luther King Jr.

The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents.

To see the images and watch the videos discussed in the podcast visit www.thegallerycompanion.com. This is where you can subscribe to The Gallery Companion email list, which goes out every fortnight to accompany each new podcast episode, and is packed full of links to more info. That's where you can share your thoughts and join the conversation too.