The Art Show

The histories our families share can be in the stories we tell, the food we eat, the objects that are passed down from one generation to the next. Finding our own place in those histories can be difficult, but it can also be exciting and crucial. How are Australian artists from the Asian diaspora creating their own stories? And how are they reckoning with the charged history of museum collections?

Leyla Stevens uses her camera as a tool to engage with interconnected webs of song, performance, and environmental reverence. In her work, deeply beautiful sequences of Balinese jungles are punctuated with the sonic intensity of cicadas and visions of shadow puppetry.

While referencing objects and materials specific to his Chinese heritage, Remy Faint considers big questions: What are the limits of painterly abstraction? How can painting be used to gesture towards cultural multiplicity? And how can you learn about yourself and your family through creating artworks?

The music in this episode is taken from Leyla Stevens' video work, PAHIT MANIS, night forest, which is on display at the Art Gallery of NSW

A time-travelling, multi-regional journey through the histories of ceramics that explores how contemporary artists are politicising this elemental medium.

Nell has said that “all my life is a practice", but what does that mean for the work she creates? And how has her latest piece, a quilt featuring work by 400 people, changed her perspective on collaboration?

Glenn Barkley looks back at the many histories of ceramics, shares his favourite skewer, and discusses the impact of the “Anglosphere mind virus.”

The self-portrait is perhaps the most ubiquitous image of the modern era, but how do contemporary artists use the portrait, not just to reflect themselves or their subject, but to shift our understanding of who we are and who we can be?

Atong Atem takes us into her practice of self-portraiture, exploring how the history of beautification has inspired her images, and why a love for interior design has been an important influence.

And acclaimed contemporary artist Joan Ross explains why fluorescent yellow became central to her work, and how she is reframing the colonial context of the portrait.

Those trees came back to me in my dreams is on at the National Portrait Gallery until February 2025

Public art comes with big price tags and excites popular opinion, but what does it actually take to produce such large work and how does art change our experience of the public sphere?

Justene Williams takes a chainsaw to her art and to the idea that women in public should be passive, with giant feminine statues that are inspired by the sheela na gig carvings of the middle ages

Lindy Lee discusses her major new work, Ouroboros, at the National Gallery of Australia. 

And for most artists, the idea of the audience climbing all over their work would be a nightmare, but for Mike Hewson, it's the whole point. Mike has created playgrounds across Australia that bring an artistic approach to the park and invite children and parents to accept a bit of risk into their lives.

Australian designer Marc Newson has helped to define the shape of our world today. But what are the artworks that inspired his approach and shaped his world?

NGV Curator Laurie Benson takes you into the history of Rodin's The Thinker and explores what happens when a work of art becomes a cultural phenomenon.

Jason Phu shares his latest Phuism.

And chef and restaurateur Kylie Kwong shares the deeply personal story of the artwork that watched over customers at her restaurant Lucky Kwong.

Tim Winton is one of Australia's greatest writers, but this year he found himself at the centre of the art world when Laura Jones' portrait took out the Archibald Prize. From his earliest experiences in a gallery to some of the earliest examples of art in Australia, Winton shares the work that's helped to shape his own keen observations of nature and our own place in it.

Two guards from the Art Gallery of NSW explain what it takes to keep the work safe and introduce us to their own favourite paintings.

And Lucienne Rickard discusses her new durational work, Wreck, and why she's chosen to erase her own art, leaving only ghostly shadows behind.

Adam Weinberg ran the Whitney Museum of American Art, one of New Yorks most iconic art spaces, for over 20 years. And he is a quintessential New Yorker.

More artful poetry from millennial slashie Jason Phu.

A peek into the studio of another real life artist partnership in the Blue Mountains of NSW, Claire Healey and Sean Cordeiro. They will be exhibiting shortly here, and in 2025 at The Tokyo Art Fair

One of the most salacious art scandals to hit the global art market is that of the Wildensteins. Author and journalist Rachel Corbett brings us her New York Times investigation of this secretive and flawed family dynasty that stretches back five generations.

Poet and sculptor Jason Phu with more of his artful silliness.

Plus the idea of artists, romantically partnered with other artists is a powerful narrative. Nabila Nordin and Nick Modrzewski join us from LA.

Curator and art writer Micheal Do is sitting in for Daniel Browning for the next five weeks.

Author Markus Zuzak takes us back to 2005, to a wintery day in Vienna where an artwork by a little known German/Austrian painter Werner Berg found and transported him. Micheal and Markus discuss art, writing and memoir - his latest book is Three Wild Dogs and The Truth.

Angelica Mesiti's arresting and monumental immersive piece The Rites of When startles and entrances Micheal Do at the Tank at the Art Gallery of NSW.

Poet, sculptor and painter Jason Phu presents one of his classic poetic Phu-isms 

And we visit a very tidy studio in Western Melbourne where artist Darren Wardle divulges his obsession: ruination.

Images left to right:

Detail from Werner Berg Vor Der Auferstehung (Before the Resurrection) (1965)

Detail from screenshot of Angelica Mesiti The Rites of When (2024)

Detail from Darren Wardle Slumlord (2016)

Cressida Campbell and Margaret Preston (1875-1963): two beloved printmakers inspired by Ukiyo-e, the Japanese woodcut genre whose influence swept through western art. Rosa speaks to Cressida and Geelong Gallery senior curator Lisa Sullivan about Ukiyo-e and Preston, for a new exhibition connecting all three printmaking styles.

Art History professor Roger Benjamin joins us to talk about the Gina Rinehart portrait drama. 

Khaled Sabsabi moves fluidly between the genres of music and visual art, but his art always has the same goal: to make meaningful work, to make society better. After many years of community development  work and thought-provoking installation artwork made from his studio in Western Sydney, Khaled was honoured with a 2023 Creative Australia award, and a residency at the prestigious American Academy in Rome.

This program first aired Wed 22 May 2024  

Helen Molesworth is a curator and writer who became widely known for her hit podcast Death of an Artist, about the artist Ana Mendieta, whose husband sculptor Carl Andre was charged then acquitted of her murder in the 1980s. Carl Andre died last week, and Helen has a book of collected art writing out: Open Questions: Thirty years of writing about art.

Daniel visits the backyard studio of Olana Janfa.  The Ethiopian-Norwegian artist started painting relatively recently but his distinct voice, drawn from his life as a refugee in Norway and migrant in Australia, is humour-filled, popular and incisive.

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 Brent Harris: Surrender & Catch, on at Tarra Warra Museum of Art.

This program first aired Wed 7 Feb 2024

This week it's The Art (Nouveau) Show! Flowers, peacocks and sensuous drapes. Bejewelled women entwined in billowing hair and that classic black outline, that turns the dreamy into the bold – the NEW. Despite what we may think about the arts and crafts that came out of Belgium, France and  Czechia at the turn of the nineteenth century, Art Nouveau was considered to be an ultra-modern aesthetic.

One artist who defined the style is Alphonse Mucha. We hear from Mucha's great-grandson Marcus Mucha and Mucha Foundation curator Tomoko Sato, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales exhibition Alphonse Mucha: Spirit of Art Nouveau.

In South Australia artists like Maude Vizard-Wholohan were part of a newly empowered generation of female art school graduates who produced Art Nouveau designs while living in the first Australian state where women could vote (and the third in the world). Rebecca Evans is curator of design and decorative arts at the Art Gallery of South Australia, and traces the legacy of these artists.

This first went to air Wed 19 Jun 2024  

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” 

The artist RONE was always attracted to street art's impermanence. He's since moved beyond street art and into large scale installations, involving space, sound, music, light and large scale art pieces, that breathe life into the rooms of decaying mansions and inside spaces. RONE's "Time" is on at AGWA Centenary Galleries in Western Australia

Dan visits artist Manda Lane in her Collingwood studio to see her beautiful and complex paper cut practice that came out of her background as a street artist. Manda has gone from making stencils to make two dimensional images to seeing the stencils as the art itself.

Ceramicist Vipoo Srivilasa’s work is beautiful, playful and highly technical…and he’s having a moment, featuring in several exhibitions this year including the MAKE Award, Generation Clay and re/JOY. His work is a beacon of light and happiness in dark times.

We swing by the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA) in Darwin, where artist Noli Rictor, a Pitjantjatjara man from Tjuntjuntjara in Western Australia, won the overall award for his work on canvas, Kamanti.

Plus, the woodcuts, and etchings of the master artist Albrecht Durer connect us with the material Renaissance world in Europe. Daniel speaks with Professor Jenny Spinks from Melbourne University.

Hiroshi Sugimoto's sublime black and white photographs capture subjects as diverse as polar bears and landscapes, to portraits of Princess Diana – but they're not what they seem. Called 'master of time', Sugimoto is also an architect, designing galleries and art installations around the world. Daniel speaks with him at his big exhibition at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art.

In lutruwita / Tasmania, three young artists share a city studio and depict the local landscape in very different styles.  All have entered a lucrative landscape painting prize, Hadley's Art Prize – and one has won it. Rosa meets Zoe Grey, Rosie Hastie and Harry Bowe.

Art historian Huey Copeland is hard at work on what he says will be “the first gender-balanced and racially integrated history of Western modernism”. Daniel speaks with Huey about the overlooked stories behind some of the best known paintings in the Western canon.

Australian cartoonist and illustrator Mandy Ord makes the mundane profound, with trademark wit and touching humour. She speaks with Rosa about her latest book Bulk Nuts.

In 2003 a group of US artists, evicted from their studios in Providence, Rhode Island, decided to set up a space in the very shopping mall that had forced them to leave. Secret Mall Apartment is a documentary film about the escapade and the conditions that led them to takeover the space.

Three women and three artists with three very different ways of looking at the world: Kelly Koumalatsos  has a book (Madjem Bambandila) that charts three and half decades of her art practice (including possum skin cloak making) that is always embedded in culture.

At 82, abstract painter Lesley Dumbrell has her first career survey at a major state gallery, Lesley Dumbrell: Thrum.

And Claudia Nicholson, who was adopted from Colombia as an infant, treats photos taken by other people like an archive of recovered memories. Daniel came to know her via an ephemeral and transformative performance work. You can see her latest work in Sydney: If the mountain is burning, let it burn.

She’s an artist whose medium is fashion. Dutch designer Iris van Herpen is an innovator, remaking high fashion to be wearable art - fabric is almost plastic in her hands, moulding and shaping it so that it becomes a sculptural form. The first designer to ever 3D print a dress, her atelier in Amsterdam is more like a problem-solving incubator. She trained with Alexander McQueen, and like him there’s a sense in her designs of female empowerment, even if it accords with socially acceptable femininity.

Australian artist and curator, Irene Barberis was mentored by the great American artist Sol LeWitt and got to work in his studio long after his death. She’s also the driving force behind a project to assess his far-reaching influence in contemporary art across the globe.

What does a historic bark painting from Arnhem Land have to do with manganese, the metal that makes lustrous gold and liquid black ceramic glazes? It’s one of the tangents in American interdisciplinary artist Candice Lin's first solo exhibition in Australia, along with cat-led tours, wolf’s urine and the sea cucumber, the aphrodisiac fished for hundreds of years in the waters of northern Australia.

Best known for his digital video, film and photographic output Daniel Crooks explains how he’s engineered robotic drawing machines to produce some of his latest work, and even 3D-mapped his own body to represent motion - a recurrent theme in his mostly screen-based practice.

Fashion is not a luxury; it’s a crucial part of the social fabric of many African countries. Capturing this diversity in an exhibition was the monumental task for Christine Checinska, the Senior Curator of African Textiles and Fashion at the Victoria & Albert Museum, UK. Africa Fashion is touring the world, bringing diverse voices from the African diaspora to the forefront. Among these voices is photographer Suleiman Thomas, whose portraits of the African Australian fashion community reflect the local scene’s unique style.

Many armed conflicts never penetrate the Western media bubble, leaving liberation struggles unnoticed. How do displaced artists living in asylum bring attention to these civil wars? A poignant example is the exhibition When Solidarity Is Not A Metaphor, a collateral experience at this year’s Venice Biennale. Join curator Natasa Petresin-Bachelez, along with artists Nge Lay from Myanmar and Saad Eltinay from Sudan, as they share their insights on how art can foster solidarity and raise awareness of underreported conflicts.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Cressida Campbell and Margaret Preston (1875-1963): two beloved printmakers inspired by Ukiyo-e, the Japanese woodcut genre whose influence swept through western art. Rosa speaks to Cressida and Geelong Gallery senior curator Lisa Sullivan about Ukiyo-e and Preston, for a new exhibition connecting all three printmaking styles.

Art History professor Roger Benjamin joins us to talk about the Gina Rinehart portrait drama. 

Khaled Sabsabi moves fluidly between the genres of music and visual art, but his art always has the same goal: to make meaningful work, to make society better. After many years of community development  work and thought-provoking installation artwork made from his studio in Western Sydney, Khaled was honoured with a 2023 Creative Australia award, and a residency at the prestigious American Academy in Rome.

Daniel meets the British filmmaker and artist Sir John Akomfrah, who is representing the UK at the Venice Biennale with his work Listening All Night to Rain.

Mentors can have many guises. For Miriwoong artist Jan Griffiths, Tiwi artist Johnathon World Peace Bush and Gomeroi Yinarr  artist Sophie Honess, they each chose someone who could offer them artistic guidance as well as cultural knowledge. The resulting works were commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria for a show called My Country.

Producer Stacy Gougoulis visits the home studio of children's book illustrator Zeno Sworder, whose book My Strange Shrinking Parents was a hit of 2023.

Damien Linnane was serving a prison sentence when he took up art as mental health therapy, going on to edit the magazines for prisoners Paper Chained  and working on a PhD. Damien is the curator of a new art exhibition at Boom Gate Gallery at Sydney's Long Bay gaol, showing art from people incarcerated around the world.

My Thing...is using art to talk about gambling harm. All his life,  Nelson Nghe has seen up close the harm caused by gambling on poker machines, or 'tiger machine' in Chinese language. It's cost members of his family and his wider community a lot -- even homes. Nelson explores this in his powerful installation artwork I Bet You, on display at The Institute for Australian and Chinese Arts and Culture (IAC).

Triple J's Stacy Gougoulis visits an exhibition of the late Gunditjmara, Yorta Yorta and Barkindji artist Josh Muir, who died at age 33 in 2022. In his neon street art-style prints and projections, Muir spoke a visual  language that shone bright and bold. Stacy speaks with Josh's partner Shanaya Sheriden and Koorie Heritage Trust curator Tom Mosby.

Saudi-Palestinian artist Dana Awartani studied at a famously conceptual art school, before learning traditional Islamic crafts and principles, like sacred geometry. Now Dana is exploring the destruction of build heritage in the Arab world, most recently the devastated city of Gaza. Her work is being shown at Adelaide's Samstag Museum of Art and at the Venice Biennale.

Rosa visits the Melbourne studio of ceramic artist Georgia Harvey. Taking influences from Mesopotamian art and our cross-cultural obsession with lions, Georgia tells us about her 'cauldron' of inspiration.

Artist Anna Park was first exposed to American culture through Disney. By the time her family migrated from Korea to Utah, USA, she was a keen observer and prodigiously talented drawer. Anna's satirical and masterful charcoal drawings capturing online life, are the focus of Look, Look. Anna Park, at the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

Archie Moore has won the top honour at one of the world's most prestigious and oldest art festivals – the Venice Biennale--  for a monumental work showing thousands of years of family lineage, and invoking lives lost under the colonial state.

Monsignor Alberto Rocca is an Italian priest and art curator who has a singular job: accompanying pages from Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus, to the other side of the world. This Codex is the largest collection of Leonardo's drawings and notes, made up of thousand pages.  After spending so much time with Leonardo's works  as curator of the Ambrosiana Library in Milan, Rocca has some theories about the Renaissance polymath.

'Unshakable destiny' was how democracy and self-rule was supposed to manifest for the people of Hong Kong, according to the last British Governor. Nikki Lam has been working on a trilogy of art films about that promise, as personal tragedy and the impact of the city's new laws alter her relationship to her homeland. The unshakable destiny is on at the Centre for Contemporary Photography.

Nicholas Mangan is drawn to the stories behind some of our most contentious commodities: phosphate from Nauru, copper from Bougainville and cryptocurrency, which Nick compares to an ancient form of stone money from Yap, a Micronesian island. Nick takes the viewer into these histories through sculptural installations and intriguing films. His survey exhibition World Undone is now on at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.

My Thing is… GPS Art. ABC science reporter Belinda Smith makes art on the run, creating increasingly detailed pictures of animals on GPS maps, that she then matches with perfect puns, via her Inst account @animalpunruns. First broadcast May 2023.

A teapot made by the South Australian ceramic artist Bruce Nuske is a beautiful thing to behold: ornate, whimsical, exquisitely crafted –  and importantly, it can also pour a hot cup of tea… if you’d dare put it to use! Bruce's teapots and vessels are also steeped in a rich knowledge of the history of the arts and crafts movement. Listen to an interview with Bruce's collaborator, the late designer Khai Liew, from a previous episode of The Art Show, at 26 minutes.

Visnja Brdar's art motto is “The more nothing, the better”. She is one of this country’s most internationally successful graphic designers, the child of Croatian migrants who took her solo agency from Melbourne to New York,  head-first into the competitive world of international branding -- and she's the subject of the first significant art survey of a female graphic designer in Australia, Visnja Brdar: Design Exalted at MUMA.

Inner sanctum is the title of the 2024 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art. Rosa Ellen speaks with three of the artists taking part: Lawrence English, George Cooley, Ruha Fifita and curator Jose Da Silva.  The chamber music is ‘All Flesh is Fire’, sung by the Adelaide Chamber Singers, composed by Anne Cawrse, conducted by Christie Anderson, recorded by Jakub Gaudasinski.

Katy Hessel's podcast and bestselling book on the great women artists ride the wave of interest in a parallel cannon of art, where women have long been missing. So, what sparked her work correcting the record, and what has changed since she started? Katy is appearing at Sydney Writers Festival and other book events in Australia in May.

Ellen Dahl ventured out to a frozen archipelago in the Arctic Ocean to take photos. The striking images won her Australia's National Photography Prize. She speaks to Daniel about her motivations to show climate change in action, and the influence of her Sami heritage. Read about her win here.

My Thing is...  the ocean. They describe grief as being a wave - it can hit you when your back’s turned. Julia Ciccarone knows that. The Melbourne figurative painter also finds peace in the water, particularly the open sea. 

Australia's art resale royalty scheme was supposed to help artists (or their families) get a small percentage when paintings were re-sold at auction for big bucks, particularly Indigenous artists. But it hasn't gone according to plan. ABC national business reporter Emilia Terzon tells Daniel about her year-long investigation into what many says is an unjust state of affairs.

For four decades Judy Watson has been making layered, ethereal art about the most profound and difficult subjects in Australian art: truth-telling, violence and ecological destruction. From her beginnings with the famed Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative, to her monumental public artworks, Daniel speaks to Judy Watson at her largest survey show at the Queensland Art Gallery.

Interviewing visual artists is just one of the things that Jennifer Higgie has mastered in her decades-long career at the helm of Frieze magazine, as a writer, reviewer and podcast host. Daniel speaks with London-based Jennifer as her new podcast series for the National Gallery of Australia is released. Listen to Jennifer and Daniel's conversation about women artists and the spirit world.

In 2007, a group of 'new media' artists came together in India's largest city to form CAMP, a studio with a rooftop cinema. In early-2000s Mumbai, experimental digital media didn't fit into an existing art scene. CAMP founders Ashok Sukamaran and Shaina Anand tell Daniel how they started and why they remain fiercely non-commercial. Ashok and Shaina are in Australia for PHOTO 24 festival.

Larrakia artist Gary Lee has led a powerfully creative life including pioneering work in Indigenous queer sexual health during the AIDS epidemic. The new book Heat covers five decades of his photography, illustration, anthropology and curating. His latest exhibition is on at the Cross Art Projects in Sydney. First Broadcast August 2023.

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

We meet the Maori artist who’s single-handedly reviving the lost cultural tradition of barkcloth making. As a right-wing conservative government winds back the prevalence of Maori culture and the teaching of Te Reo Maori, Nikau Hindin is collaborating with artists from across the Great Ocean for the Biennale of Sydney. She explains the complexities and risks in trying to breathe new life into a cultural practice after more than a century.

My Art Crush …is Lavinia Fontana. National Gallery of Victoria curator Laurie Benson has long been fascinated by Europe's first professional female artist, 16th C. Baroque master Lavinia Fontana. First broadcast February 2022.

Nik Pantazopoulos has been revisiting all the significant doors in his life. The artist started the exercise alongside  therapy, digging through his memories to capture the flyscreen door of his childhood home, to the intriguing stall door of a train station toilet and the blue door of a cottage on Mykonos. They all represent thresholds in his life. The body of work, Elevation, is on at the 2024 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art. 

Maria Madeira escaped the Indonesian invasion of Timor Leste in 1975, to end up in a refugee camp in Portugal. In 2005 she returned as the first artist to hold a solo exhibition there, ever. Now the artist, who came to Australia in 1983, is representing Timor Leste at the Venice Biennale.

A fountain of drool, the realities of catheter bags and people 'seeing but pretending not to see': Yucky is an exhibition developed by artist Sam Petersen that confronts ideas of 'yuckiness' and other prejudices faced by people living with disabilities, those who are chronically ill or neurodivergent. Producer Anita Barraud speaks with Sam, Danni Zuvela, Makeda Duong, Josh Campton and Lorcan Hopper. A transcript of this story is on the Transcript tab above.

Emeka Ogboh used years of field recordings to create layered soundscapes of his hometown, Lagos in Nigeria. When he moved to Berlin, he added music and combined the sounds of both global cities in critically acclaimed albums. Now Emeka is in nipaluna / Hobart for Mona Foma, where he's making work with the locals – including 2023 Tasmanian of the Year John Kamara.

My Thing is... the chickenosaurus. As a teenager, JESWRI took to tagging to 'disrupt' the omnipresent advertising in his inner-city neighbourhood. But unlike many of his mates, JESWRI turned his graffiti into a career that's led to gallery commissions, community murals of Indigenous heroes and –ironically– advertising. The 'chickenosaurus' is his latest art project for Not Natural at the Science Gallery Melbourne.

Artist-inventor Jessie French has turned dried algae into a plastic product that perhaps could one day replace one of the more toxic plastic products around. Jessie's Melbourne studio is unlike a lab in that most of her experiments have resulted in beautiful artworks – sheets of colourful, transparent biopolymer.

So, you're given the keys to Australia's largest visual art festival, what next? Romanian-born curator Cosmin Costinas and Colombian Inti Guerrero are the co-directors of the Sydney Biennale. The art power couple tell us how they got to know Australian art and how they selected 116 artists from dozens of countries to showcase a world of contemporary art in this year's Biennale Ten Thousand Suns.

My Thing is... the 'olla'. Ceramic artist Richilde Flavell has been inspired by the ancient plant watering jug, the olla, to make artworks about motherhood and the body. Her exhibition Ok! Motherhood is on at Yarilla Arts and Museum in Coffs Harbour.

This year marks 100 years of Surrealism! Much more than just Salvador Dalí's melting clocks, Surrealism was a revolutionary set of ideas and aesthetics that formed in the aftermath of the trauma of WWI. Robert Zeller is a contemporary Surrealist painter and author of New Surrealism: The Uncanny in Contemporary Painting.

Helen Molesworth is a curator and writer who became widely known for her hit podcast Death of an Artist, about the artist Ana Mendieta, whose husband sculptor Carl Andre was charged then acquitted of her murder in the 1980s. Carl Andre died last week, and Helen has a book of collected art writing out: Open Questions: Thirty years of writing about art.

Daniel visits the backyard studio of Olana Janfa.  The Ethiopian-Norwegian artist started painting relatively recently but his distinct voice, drawn from his life as a refugee in Norway and migrant in Australia, is humour-filled, popular and incisive.

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 Brent Harris: Surrender & Catch, on at Tarra Warra Museum of Art.

When you see a David Shrigley picture – at worst, you’ll chuckle, at best you’ll laugh out loud every time you think of it (which is sometimes years later.) The Shrigley universe is filled with badly drawn hands, everyday disappointment, and simple pleasures. In short, it’s sublimely silly and pretty dark. Daniel speaks with the British artist during his Australian visit for the National Gallery of Victoria's Triennial.

We meet up with Australian artist Daniel Boyd, fresh from his first major solo exhibition in Europe and who’s just shown his work at the New York gallery that represents some high-flying international artists.

And hear from Diana Al-Hadid, the Syrian-born US sculptor who's made stunning artworks in response to two 15th C. paintings owned by the National Gallery of Victoria – audience favourite The Garden of Love and a religious painting by Hans Memling.

Tacita Dean is one of the UK's most acclaimed artists, best known for working with 16mm analogue film. Daniel speaks with her about recent work on important living artists, and her huge, mesmerising chalk drawings, from her exhibition at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art.

My Thing is... getting squished. Actor and choreographer Smac McCreanor went viral for her Hydraulic Press Girl videos, imitating household objects getting crushed by a hydraulic press.  Now she's in the art gallery -- featuring in the National Gallery of Victoria's Triennial.

In parts of Mexico, a high price is being paid for the world's insatiable appetite for avocados. Artist Fernando Leposse investigates the ecological and social costs of the industry in his art project Conflict Avocadoes.

Naomi Hobson grew up on some of the most beautiful country on the continent, Cape York Peninsula in far north Queensland, and is named after the hoop pine that grows there. Her southern  Kaantju and Umpila culture has always been a driving force in her art, from bold expressive paintings to ceramics and photography. Her series Adolescent Wonderland features teenagers in her small community of Coen, displaying their humour, creativity and brilliance. First aired March 2023.

My Thing is ...the Persian poet Hafez. Artist Ali Tahayori always returns to the lyrical poetry of the master Hafez for inspiration in both life and art. Ali works with sparkling hand-cut mirrors that reference the traditional Iranian craft of Āine-Kāri. Through light and mirror, he explores transcendent moments and what it means to be queer and diasporic. First aired February 2023.

The 2023 Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam was the largest ever assembled of the artist's works. Gregor Weber is a curator and Vermeer biographer and tells producer Rosa Ellen about where Vermeer might have got hold of a camera obscura to achieve his brilliant illusion of perspective. First aired May 2023.

Painter Prudence Flint has a career spanning 35 years, best known for enigmatic pictures of female protagonists in surreal domestic scenes. Despite a serious local following, her paintings have proved much more popular overseas, and she only produces around eight a year. All situate the viewer in an intriguing psychological space -- but does the painter ever feel too exposed?

A Beginner’s guide to art openings. The art exhibition opening is a rite of passage for artists and art lovers alike, but it can be an intimidating and exclusive social affair. Artists Ming Liew and Thitibodee Rungteerawattananon made a pact to break into the Melbourne art scene by attending as many art openings as they could together, culminating in an art film about the project, by Ming. Rosa tags along to one gallery to see how it’s done. Charles Lai runs a public calendar of the city's visual arts events. First aired July 2023.

Humpty Doo is a red-dirt, mango-growing, beer-swilling town on the border of greater Darwin and the bush. Photographer Liss Fenwick grew up there and has captured its unique character in a powerful photo series called Humpty Doom, photographed over 10 years. First aired May 2023.

Daniel speaks with the pioneering US photographer, activist and UCLA Professor Catherine Opie, whose early portraits of her genderqueer community challenged homophobia and moral panic during the heightened atmosphere of the AIDS epidemic. Catherine has gone to become one of America's foremost contemporary fine art photographers. Binding Ties is the first survey of her work in Australia.

My Thing is… improvising music to art. Musician Rosie Westbrook is hired by galleries and sometimes artists themselves, to walk around and improvise instrumental music in response to the artworks. Her latest album is Always the Sea.

Episode first aired April 2023.

When did artists begin doing ‘residencies’? From the patronage system of Renaissance Italy, to artists’ colonies of the 19th Century and the decades-long stint of an artist-in-residence at the NYC Sanitation Department,  researcher Amaara Raheem tells us the history and ideas behind the Artist-in-Residence. Producer Lisa Divissi catches up with the artist-in-residence of Melbourne’s Footscray Railway Station, David Wells. And artists Nicole Barakat, Nikki Lam and Gegee Ayurzana share messages from their studios-away-from-home.

In the 19th Century Rosa Bonheur was one of the most popular artists in Europe, inspiring public statues, royal visits and even dolls sold in her likeness. Rosa painted  animal portraits, but was equally known for her unconventional life, from wearing pants and keeping a lion, to living with her female companion. Author Catherine Hewitt explains why she was so celebrated, and how she slid from view. Her book is Art is a Tyrant.

Jerry Saltz  is the Pulitzer prize-winning art critic for New York Magazine. Before he turned his hand to writing at the age of 40, he drove long-haul trucks and was a failed visual artist. Jerry reckons the gatekeepers of the art world have effectively 'effed off' and now anyone can —and must— take part. Jerry Saltz's latest book of essays is Art is Life. First broadcast January 2023.

Many great artists have claimed to communicate with the spirit world, especially in the heyday of Theosophy and Spiritualism — so why is it shied away from in art history? 

And why did it attract so many women, like the early Abstract artist Hilma Af Klint and the Victorian medium Georgiana Houghton? Now Jennifer Higgie has written The Other Side: A journey into women, art and the spirit world. Featuring the art practices and radical lives of artists like Pamela Colman Smith, who illustrated the tarot deck, to Modernist artists Suzanne Duchamp and Agnes Pelton. First broadcast February 2023.

On our final show of the year, we look at the work and career of the great Emily Kam Kngwarray. A senior Anmatyerr woman from Utopia who took up painting in her 70s, Kngwarray is arguably the most significant contemporary artist from Australia to emerge in the twentieth century. Daniel speaks with Hetti Perkins, the co-curator of a summer blockbuster showcasing Kngwarray's work on at the National Gallery of Australia, as well as art historian Stephen Gilchrist. 

That's a wrap, 2023! Daniel is joined by guests Sasha Grishin, Gabriella Coslovich and Anna Emina El Samad to discuss  favourite art exhibitions of 2023, the recent performance that led artist Mike Parr to be dropped by his gallerist Anna Schwartz, and the rise of AI in art.

In the middle of a rarefied gallery or in a busy city square, a bronze statue of a woman looms in front of you. But this figure isn’t on a plinth or striking a heroic pose: she’s an ordinary modern woman, looking at her phone with a calm detachment.

It’s said the monument Reaching Out is only the third public statue in Britain of a Black woman. The artist behind it is Thomas J Price - one of the country’s leading contemporary artists, who takes on the problem of colonial monuments and representation in British museums and art galleries by creating contemporary icons of modern Britain. Two of his statues are at the National Gallery of Victoria's Triennial.

My Thing is... art as activism. It's looking to be the hottest year in human history. As world leaders negotiate a way forward at COP28, 18-year-old climate activist and artist Niranjana Ghosh has been thinking about the gendered impacts of the climate crisis. And how it's often girls in disaster-prone regions who miss out on school and opportunities, in order to help their families survive.

Daniel wanders through a dark and tangled wood at the Queensland Art Gallery (QAGOMA), to find out why Fairy Tales have been such an enduring theme for artists across the centuries. Curator Amanda Slack-Smith introduces him to some surprising artworks and theories. US artist and Wiccan, Trulee Hall, takes him into her Witch House installation, which is not for the faint hearted.

Lee Miller cut a glamorous figure among the Bohemian art circles of Paris. As a fashion model she captured the eye and heart of Man Ray; as a gifted photographer she rivalled his artistic vision, photographing their world with Surrealist wit and a feminist conviction. Lee's career lasted 16 years up until her time as a photojournalist in Nazi occupied Europe, when the horrors of the Holocaust led her to quit photography. Antony Penrose is Lee Miller’s only child and in charge of her archive which, incredibly, he only discovered after her death. Surrealist Lee Miller is on at the Heide Museum of Modern Art in Victoria.

Daniel takes a tour of an exhibition designed to evoke the sounds and feel of a Fijian family home -- only fragmented, the same way that memory works. Artist Salote Tawale has partially recreated a real-life fishing raft and house in an installation that mixes paintings, sculpture, and video karaoke at Carriageworks in Sydney.

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

Motherhood, childhood wounds and Freudian nightmares preoccupied the great sculptor Louise Bourgeois, who was especially iconic to younger followers in the latter part of her life. One of them was Philip Larratt-Smith, who became her literary archivist. He talks to Daniel about the importance of psychoanalysis on the artist. A new exhibition of Louise Bourgeois is on at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. 

My thing is... the 'souvenirs' of consumerism. Artist Joyce Lubotzky takes plastic things from the rubbish and puts them in the art gallery. It's part of a tradition of artists asking viewers to reconsider consumer waste as something permanent, not transitory. (Like a bit of trash talk? Listen to our special episode on art made from rubbish.)

The National Gallery of Victoria recently purchased 27 boomerangs from the 24-year-old artist Keemon Williams, an emerging talent whose bold, empowered, queer portraits exemplify black joy. 

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.

My Thing is... Black Histories. Prince made 'Purple Rain' famous, but five years later in 1989, a group of Cape Town anti-apartheid protesters claimed it for themselves when police fired water cannons at them, dyed purple. The Purple Rain Protest is one event in southern African resistance that's inspired artist Roberta Joy Rich in her latest work, The Purple Shall Govern.

Meet the designers behind DNJ Paper, a textile research project and clothing label making garments out of paper! Rosa meets Daphne Mohajer va Pesaran and Jake Nakashima-Edwards, who want to address the social, aesthetic and environmental dilemmas of fashion and textiles.

Vasily Kandinsky was a pioneer of abstract painting, writing influential theories on spirituality and colour. But for all his correspondence, his inner life can be hidden to art historians, the Guggenheim's Megan Fontanella tells Daniel. And with the discovery of earlier abstract painters like Hilma Af Klint and Georgiana Houghton, does labelling Kandinsky 'the first' still apply? Daniel speaks to Megan on the new eve of an exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW.

Inside the Victorian Spiritualist Union in north Melbourne, sits the largest collection of artworks by Georgiana Houghton. Her ecstatic, abstract paintings of spirit messages and visions from the 1860s are truly remarkable. Daniel speaks with Rev Lorraine Lee Tet and Jeff Stewart about the collection and their own beliefs about her art.  

The town of New Norcia in WA is a monastery in the bush, home to a community of Benedictine monks and a treasure chest of 17th and 16th c. European religious art -- all of which was stolen in a brazen heist in 1986. It's an art crime that RN's Marc Fennell set out to unpack with art historian and fraud expert Dr Pamela James in a new SBS TV series.

My Thing is… The Resilience Coat. Rowena and Angela Foong, from the label High Tea with Mrs Woo, have designed a coat for all bodies, all trends and all of life's upheavals, complete with an in-built repair kit. It's been shortlisted for a national craft award.

The mining town of Broken Hill might still be best known for Pro Hart and his 'Brush men of the bush' but Barkindji artists David Doyle and Krystle Evans are part of a thriving contemporary art scene influenced by Barkindji stories and art practices. Producer Rosa Ellen visits their respective studios after the Referendum for Indigenous recognition an Indigenous voice to Parliament, where the Parkes electorate recorded the highest 'No' vote in NSW.

Catherine Sarah Young is an artist working with science to talk about the climate crisis. Most recently, she's making art about petrichor -- the smell of recent rain emanating from the earth, and what it might be like when fire and flood obliterate it... or what petrichor smells like on Mars! Catherine is the Art Show's ABC RN Top 5 resident.

When James Tylor discovered the laborious but beautiful 19th C. photography method of daguerreotype, he found a medium that expressed the darkness of historical memory. Drawing on his Kaurna heritage, James explores the ravages of colonial intrusion on landscape and language, through beauty and craftmanship.

Daniel meets the painter Nadine Christensen in her backyard studio and learns why the ordinary - from house flies to front gates, cranes, and acrylic paint -- are worthy of examination on canvas.

US artist Lonnie Holley is a prolific maker of things - whether it’s his assemblages of found objects or the fluid, jazz-style improvisations of his music. He’s one of those polymath creative spirits who don’t separate one artform from the other. But his life of improvisational creativity wasn’t a certainty for Lonnie, who was born 73 years ago in the Jim Crow era in a hotbed of racial politics in America’s Deep South. 

Classicist Mary Beard examines art inspired by the lives and excesses of the Caesars, who wielded power in cruel and immoral ways. They established a visual propaganda machine - minting themselves in coins, sculpture, paintings, mosaics, and even baked goods! Their art historical legacy is however contemporary and omnipresent. First broadcast November 2022.

We start this week's episode on a lapping city harbour where Quandamooka artist Megan Cope has prepared 85,000 oyster shells for her monumental artwork Whispers for the 50th anniversary of the Sydney Opera House —  before that, it's where Gadigal people gathered for thousands of years.

Tarek Atoui is attuned to the sounds of harbours -- from Sydney to Beirut, Porto to Singapore, the Lebanese sound artist records the many frequencies and sounds that make up the bodies of water around which cities thrive.

My Thing is... The Master's Pupil.  What would it be like to see the world through the eyes of the Impressionist master Claude Monet? The story of Monet’s failing eyesight is a slice of art history that inspired indie game developer Pat Naoum to create his hand-painted video game.

Daniel meets up with Nicole Barakat, an Australian artist on residence in Paris, who found inspiration in the stories of the Lebanese diaspora, connected to an old cedar tree growing in the city.

How important is the 'social license' provided by arts events to fossil fuel companies? How significant is the money provided to art festivals by those companies? A recent study examines the current involvement of coal, gas, and oil corporations in arts sponsorship in Australia. Daniel speaks with the report's co-author Dr Adam Karg, Anna Weekes from a group that spearheaded a campaign to end fossil fuel funding of the Darwin Festival, and filmmaker Alex Kelly.

My Thing is... nuclear test sites. Before the film Oppenheimer drew attention to Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico, photographer Brett Leigh Dicks was there. The Australian-born artist has spent a lifetime photographing the deserted towns and landscapes of former nuclear testing grounds, including in Australia.

Spencer Tunick has been asking people to take their kit off for his mass nude photographs for decades, and Australians are among his most enthusiastic volunteers. But is it Art? Daniel chats to Spencer about the 'people power' behind his ambitious projects.

How do the much-talked about principles of care ethics apply to visual arts? Whether it be the treatment of others in the commercial art world, the trope of the lone male genius, or the practices of contemporary artists navigating political and environmental crisis. Jacqueline Millner has co-edited the book Care Ethics and Art and joins Daniel in convo with artist Jesse Boylan.

Social societies make the happiest, so why don’t more artists join artist collectives? Even better, a festival of artists’ collectives? Producer Rosa Ellen speaks with some involved in the Collective Polyphony Festival: the environmentally concerned Seaweed Appreciation Society International and the exciting Filipinx/o  Saluhan Collective.

Newell Harry is one of those people that finds the connections, the invisible networks and chance encounters - that link us all. In his exhibition Esperanto Newell makes use of found objects and sourced materials alongside his own original artworks. The story it weaves is full of cross-cultural connections --from South Africa, where his family fled Apartheid, to Oceania. But also driven by moments of serendipity and linguistic twists and turns.

My Thing is... the colour wheel. Jim Moginie is best known for being the guitarist and songwriter of Midnight Oil, but his electric guitar opus The Colour Wheel is an epic composition inspired by colour itself, and is experienced alongside an immersive, colourful light projection.  

The new ABC iview doco The Whiteley Art Scandal tells the riveting story of one of the biggest art fraud cases in Australian history.  In 2009, car salesman turned art dealer, Steve Nasteski, buys what he believes to be a genuine painting by Australian artist Brett Whiteley. But when suspicions are raised about its authenticity, a chain of events leads to a sensational trial. Producer Ivan O'Mahoney speaks with Daniel.

Newell Harry is one of those people that finds the connections, the invisible networks and chance encounters - that link us all. In his exhibition Esperanto Newell makes use of found objects and sourced materials alongside his own original artworks. The story it weaves is full of cross-cultural connections --from South Africa, where his family fled Apartheid, to Oceania. But also driven by moments of serendipity and linguistic twists and turns.

My Thing is... the colour wheel. Jim Moginie is best known for being the guitarist and songwriter of Midnight Oil, but his electric guitar opus The Colour Wheel is an epic composition inspired by colour itself, and is experienced alongside an immersive, colourful light projection.  

The new ABC iview doco The Whiteley Art Scandal tells the riveting story of one of the biggest art fraud cases in Australian history.  In 2009, car salesman turned art dealer, Steve Nasteski, buys what he believes to be a genuine painting by Australian artist Brett Whiteley. But when suspicions are raised about its authenticity, a chain of events leads to a sensational trial. Producer Ivan O'Mahoney speaks with Daniel.

Newell Harry is one of those people that finds the connections, the invisible networks and chance encounters - that link us all. In his exhibition Esperanto Newell makes use of found objects and sourced materials alongside his own original artworks. The story it weaves is full of cross-cultural connections --from South Africa, where his family fled Apartheid, to Oceania. But also driven by moments of serendipity and linguistic twists and turns.

My Thing is... the colour wheel. Jim Moginie is best known for being the guitarist and songwriter of Midnight Oil, but his electric guitar opus The Colour Wheel is an epic composition inspired by colour itself, and is experienced alongside an immersive, colourful light projection.  

The new ABC iview doco The Whiteley Art Scandal tells the riveting story of one of the biggest art fraud cases in Australian history.  In 2009, car salesman turned art dealer, Steve Nasteski, buys what he believes to be a genuine painting by Australian artist Brett Whiteley. But when suspicions are raised about its authenticity, a chain of events leads to a sensational trial. Producer Ivan O'Mahoney speaks with Daniel.

Hoda Afshar is a photo media artist known for examining people denied a voice, or those risking everything for freedom, or truth. At the same time, Hoda is  is also concerned with the politics of traditional documentary photography, and centres the humanity of her subjects. From her portraits of refugees detained on Manus Island, to immortalising whistleblowers as classical Greek statues and a series inspired by Iran's feminist uprising. Hoda's  first major solo exhibition at an Australian institution A Curve is a Broken Line features her photography and film from the past decade. She speaks to Daniel at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

My Thing is … my mother. Kate Dorrough is a Sydney-based artist who moves between painting on canvas and hand-built ceramic forms. Her latest exhibition is a conversation across time with her mother, artist Heather Dorrough, who died in 2018

Sancintya Mohini Simpson and Shivanjani Lal are two artists whose great-grandparents were taken from India by the British as indentured labourers - Sancintya’s to South Africa, and Shivanjani’s to Fiji. Each investigates this legacy through different art practices but both are dealing with histories that have been erased from the colonial-era archives. Sancintya's exhibition ām / ammā / mā maram  is on at Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA).

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.

At the heart is an exploration of race, sexuality and gender, and a critique of white supremacy. Could the black-humoured delivery of the message get lost on Australian audiences? Hopefully not – two of her works, Your World is About to Change and a film, Testimony: Narrative of a Negress Burdened by Good Intentions – have been acquired by the National Gallery of Australia. Daniel was in conversation with Kara Walker for the NGA’s Annual Lecture in 2022. First broadcast September 2022.

My Thing is… anti-fashion. Kiel Rogers fell into haute couture after doing TAFE work experience at the WA Ballet. He's since travelled the world and worked with some of the best, dressing Billie Eilish and Lady Gaga along way. Now back on home soil, Rogers returned to his punk roots with his streetwear label Garbage TV. First broadcast April 2023.

Rosa visits the studio of Filipino Australian artist Mark Valenzuela. Raised in army camps across Mindanao, Valenzuela found his way to art and used it to challenge authority and state violence. His sculptural installations are a surreal and poetic take on the military, animist beliefs and living in two worlds. A monograph is published by Wakefield Press. First broadcast May 2023.

There's an enduring appetite for novels about artists and their muses. Australian writers Kylie Needham (Girl in a Pink Dress) and Edwina Preston (Bad Art Mother) have written books centred on women artists who are navigating ambition, doubt, and freedom in art scenes where men wield the power and where women are routinely cast as muses rather than as creators. Recorded for RN's Big Weekend of Books 2023.

Larrakia artist Gary Lee has led a powerfully creative life including pioneering work in Indigenous queer sexual health during the AIDS epidemic. The new book Heat covers five decades of his photography, illustration, anthropology and curating. It's accompanied by the show Midling that is as much a visual memoir as gallery exhibition.

My Thing is…book covers. W.H. Chong is known in the publishing trade for his innovative and artistic fiction covers. He is design director at Text Publishing and a founding member of the Australian Book Designers Association. First broadcast August 2021.

A life-size sculpted tree complete with parrots and a wandering dog won the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Art Awards (NATSIAA). Every element has ceremonial significance, says Thu' and Apalech artist Keith Wikmunea, from Western Cape York.  Brenda L Croft's 19th Century-style photograph tells a multi-layered story of family bonds and forced child removal. While Anne Nginyangka Thompson's ceramics contain a message about Anangu self determination and the everyday consequences  of colonisation. 

Mexican-Canadian media artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is inspired by the  19th century computer pioneer Charles Babbage, who believed the air surrounding us to be a ‘vast library’ containing every sound and word spoken. His artwork Atmospheric Memory uses technology to turn vibrations in the atmosphere into something viewers can see, hear and even touch.

Finnish artist Tove Jansson lived a richly unconventional life as a visual artist and writer and is best known as the creator of the troll characters, The Moomins. The Moomins were a hit children's book, cartoon strip, tv show and eventually theme park. The biggest exhibition of Jansson work will show in Paris in September 2023. Her biographer Prof Boel Westin talks about her bohemian life and enduring legacy.

Filmmaker Adéla Komrzý spent a week filming the gruelling entrance exams for Czechia's most prestigious art school in her doco Art Talent Show. With wry humour, the film shows the efforts of prospective students and teachers and asks -- how do you judge talent?

What goes into framing an artwork? Mark Chapman, founder of Chapman & Bailey, walks producer Lisa Divissi through the art of the picture frame. From ornate gilded frames of the 19th C. whose prototypes the company keeps under wraps, to the challenge of creating frames that are both invisible and enhancing. 

Since 2008 CoUNTess has been commenting and reporting on art institutions, prizes and journalism, exposing the unequal gender representation in the Australian visual arts sector. A new book about the pioneering blog and later, data project Countess Report, started by Elvis Richardson has been co-written by Melinda Rackham.

Using the current of water as a metaphor for family memories, history and existential threats such as climate change, Gail Mabo along with Dominic White and Lisa Waup, are installing works for Current, at the McClelland sculpture park south-east of Melbourne.

Mayco Naing was born in Myanmar in 1984, and grew up in an atmosphere of political repression and fear. Her path to becoming a professional photographer was more practical than many: she worked in a Yangon photo studio for ten years. Now she is an artist in exile, fleeing after the 2021 military coup, where she documented months of barricades in Yangon's neighbourhoods.  

In 1989 photographer Anne Zahalka recreated a well-known painting of stylised, muscular white Australians frolicking on the beach, into a multi-ethnic tableau of an Australia that was more recognisable to her. Deconstructing the identity of the characters in famous Australian artworks is just one strand of her four-decade career. Anne talks to Rosa about using old-school museum dioramas to imagine climate crisis scenarios, and her immigrant Jewish mother’s story of survival.

My Thing is…the community reading room. Fijian-Australian artist Torika Bolatagici started her own reading room, an archive of books and ephemera about the creative practices of First Nations, Black and global Indigenous artists of colour, which people can use for free.

Needlepoint artist Jessie Deane stitches intricate scenes of Melbourne’s western suburbs. She’s loving the Big Build, an infrastructure project which is causing a headache for train commuters, but is a thrill for an artist who specialises in industrial landscapes. Jessie shares an artistic bond with her great aunt, the British textile artist Evelyn Wyld.

Badiucao is a Chinese-Australian political cartoonist and artist who makes work primarily about China's human rights record and role in international politics. But with a rising profile has come a loss of anonymity, reported intimidation and attempts to have international exhibitions of his work closed. He talks to Rosa about Chinese government censorship, cartooning, his art heroes and his filmmaking lineage.

My Thing is… the Sydney Harbour cocktail cabinet. Woodworker Michael Gill has been making his magnum opus, a huge Art Deco-inspired cocktail cabinet capturing the many details of Sydney Harbour in native timbers, for 30 years. Now it’s complete and looking for a home.

Anna Emina El Samad  is a curator, writer and educator whose frustration with cultural gatekeeping and the barriers faced by artists of colour, led her to start Art Club, a regular gathering of artists to discuss their work and form connections. The community is focused on experimentation and dismantling traditional notions of art. Rosa meets Emina at her studio at a former supermarket in inner Melbourne. Her new podcast Art Club with Anna Emina is out soon.

Painter Prudence Flint has a career spanning 35 years, best known for enigmatic pictures of female protagonists in surreal domestic scenes. Despite a serious local following, her paintings have proved much more popular overseas, and she only produces around eight a year. All situate the viewer in an interesting psychological space.

A Beginner’s guide to art openings. The art exhibition opening is a rite of passage for artists and art lovers alike, but it can be an intimidating and exclusive social affair. Artists Ming Liew and Thitibodee Rungteerawattananon made a pact to break into the Melbourne art scene by attending as many art openings as they could together, culminating in an art film about the project, by Ming. Rosa tags along to one gallery to see how it’s done. Charles Lai runs a public calendar of the city's visual arts events.

Enter the studio of... Ema Shin. A printmaker who turned to tapestry and embroidery when motherhood and the pandemic required her to work from home, Japanese artist Ema Shin's red embroidered organs and 3D human hearts are beautiful to look at, and deeply personal-political in meaning. Her exhibition is currently showing at Ararat Gallery TAMA. First broadcast May 2022. 

Maree Clarke is a key figure in the reclamation and revival of South East Australian Indigenous art, over a three-decade career. For Between Waves at the Australian Centre of Contemporary Art (ACCA), she’s created a wall of multicolour microscopic images of river reeds, that once grew on the wetlands where ACCA now stands, on Wuruendjeri Woi Wurrung land. She's one of ten artists from South East nations that curator Jessica Clark has commissioned to explore the "shapeshifting ecologies within, beyond, and between what can be seen".

Rosa visits the home studio of performance artist Ida Sophia. Ida's film recording of Witness, her emotionally intense durational performance of a staged water baptism, won one of Australia’s richest art prizes, the Ramsay Art Prize. Ida trained with the Marina Abramovic Institute and explains the background work that goes into her performances.

Frida Kahlo is one of the most recognised artists in history, but it’s easy to forget that in her own lifetime, Frida wasn’t well known for her painting. The exhibition Frida & Diego: Love and Revolution frames iconic Kahlo self-portraits alongside lesser-known works from key Mexican modernists, including her husband, muralist Diego Rivera. Magda Carranza is a curator of the Gelman Collection, where some of Kahlo’s most famous works reside.

When did artists begin doing ‘residencies’? From the patronage system of Renaissance Italy, to artists’ colonies of the 19th Century and the decades-long stint of an artist-in-residence at the NYC Sanitation Department,  researcher Amaara Raheem tells us the history and ideas behind the Artist-in-Residence. Producer Lisa Divissi catches up with the artist-in-residence of Melbourne’s Footscray Railway Station, David Wells. And artists Nicole Barakat, Nikki Lam and Gegee Ayurzana share messages from their studios-away-from-home.

Artist Johnathon World Peace Bush paints global figureheads and Catholic icons (and occasionally British royalty) with Tiwi body art designs, in huge, vivid portraits in ochre. Reflecting on his own family history, the impact of colonial crime, and a complex relationship to Catholicism. Fellow Tiwi artist Walter Brooks talks Rosa through the four ancestral beings that are key to the Tiwi creation story and to culture: Japarra, Wai-ai, Purukupali and Jinani. All feature heavily in the figurative wood-carving tradition he works in.

Gunditjmara artist Hayley Millar Baker sets her latest film work at the witching hour, when the spirit world and physical overlap. Hayley previously worked in black and white photography, exploring the psychic scars of frontier violence and dispossession. Ghosts have always been present in Hayley’s work – and in her life. She’s part of the acclaimed new exhibition Shadow Spirit, on at at Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station.

Marc Chagall is the quintessential 20th Century European artist. Born into an orthodox Russian Jewish Family, Chagall found his way to Paris and became an Avant Garde artist with a romantic, humanist and deeply spiritual style all his own. Unusually, he ended up designing works for Christian churches. Chagall at the Jewish Museum of Australia looks at Chagall’s printmaking, poetry and public art commissions through a Jewish lens. Rosa speaks with curator Jade Niklai.

Enter the studio of nipaluna/Hobart-based artist Catherine Woo, whose textural landscape paintings using natural minerals and elemental forces, show nature from a completely different perspective. First broadcast August 2022.

Pierre Bonnard was a key artist in a movement that came after Impressionism: Les Nabis. Influenced by the flat colour and decorative elements of Japanese wood prints and Gauguin’s pure colours, Bonnard forged a style that was both radical and beautiful. Curator of the NGV’s winter blockbuster, Ted Gott and Musee d’Orsay’s Isabelle Cahn, discuss Bonnard’s life and long relationship with his wife and muse Marthe de Meligny.

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. 

When art student Marikit Santiago saw a self-portrait in the Archibald prize of a white Australian man surrounded by Filipino iconography, she felt a pang of guilt. In her own paintings, she’d never explored her own culture. Marikit is now a prized painter whose work has won the Sulman Prize and been shortlisted for the Archibald. Her rich figurative paintings delve into dual identities, migration, motherhood, and religion. 

Daniel Browning travels to London's Tate Modern, to speak with artist Richard Bell about his ongoing installation Embassy, inspired by the original Aboriginal Tent Embassy pitched in 1972. Embassy offers a space for dialogue about the continuing struggle for Aboriginal land rights.

Rosa visits the studio of designer and experimental woodturner Makiko Ryujin, who torches her creations until they're charred and transformed into new forms.

When great artists pass, how do you ensure their legacy and work are protected and remembered? When artist and gay activist David McDiarmid died in 1995 he left his friend Sally Gray in charge of his creative legacy. She chats with Rosa about David's art, her guardianship of it, and what it was like to make art during the height of the AIDS crisis.

Artist Louise Zhang uses a multi-hued palette and traditional Chinese symbols to explore  the horror genre, spiritual beliefs and her own cultural history, on her own terms. Louise's latest exhibition is No dust left in the lilies. 

My Thing is… Frying Pan. The frying pan is a new recording studio built around an iconic mixing desk that once lived at Abbey Road Studios, London from 1958 to 1980. Now it has a permanent home at MONA in lutruwita/Tasmania.  Chris Townend is the sound engineer behind it.

Sundanese artist Zico Albaiquni paints in bright technicolour that speaks to both the politics of colour in Indonesia, and the Mooi Indie genre, where idealised landscapes were used by Dutch colonialists to ‘sell’ a version of Indonesia , minus its inhabitants.

Indian conceptual artist Mithu Sen talks about the idea of 'radical hospitality' and how she pokes fun at the art world's hierarchies. Plus,  science reporter Belinda Smith explains why she creates GPS art on the run. And painter Danelle Bergstrom on a journey to Sweden that altered the course of her life and art.

Mark Valenzuela makes magical sculptural installations based on a military upbringing and living in two worlds - Australia and the Philippines. Plus, we hear from the curator of the Rijksmuseum's blockbuster Vermeer show. And Liss Fenwick photographs her Top End hometown, Humpty Doo.

Julia Gutman won Australia's most prestigious painting prize for a portrait sewn with fabric. She chats to guest host Rosa Ellen about her winning work and the gendered view of textiles and craft. Plus, meet sculptor Renee So and delve into the secret life of Clarice Beckett, the modernist master almost lost to history.

The Portrait of Mai (Omai) by Sir Joshua Reynolds depicts a youthful Polynesian man who visited England in the 1770s and spent time on James Cook’s third voyage. The work has been the subject of UK government export bans, a feverish fundraising campaign, millions in donations and some panhandling by Britain’s elites, in a desperate bid to keep it on British soil. Daniel speaks with Professor Kate Fullagar, who’s written a book about the Raiatean subject of the painting Mai, and artist Reynolds, as well as Associate Professor Peter Brunt, about what Mai represents and how the historical context of the painting has been denied or ignored in the discussion. Rosa tours the vast Western Treatment Plant, where sewage and Art collide. The plant holds vital infrastructure that made the colonial city of Melbourne sanitary and liveable, and continues to do so. The plant’s history and critical purpose is up for exploration in a public art exhibition called Treatment III. Artists interviewed: Fiona Hillary and Edwina Stevens.

Charmaine Papertalk Green writes poetry inspired by individual paintings of the late Nyoongar artist Shane Pickett. The ancient Greeks called this genre 'ekphrasis'. Plus, sculptor Heather B. Swann takes a different perspective on the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan, putting the female Leda at the psychological centre of the story.

Daniel speaks with the pioneering US photographer, activist and UCLA Professor Catherine Opie, whose early portraits of her genderqueer community challenged homophobia and moral panic during the heightened atmosphere of the AIDS epidemic. Catherine has gone to become one of America's foremost contemporary fine art photographers. Binding Ties is the first survey of her work in Australia. Plus, meet a musician who improvises music to artworks she encounters at galleries and artists' studios.

Environmental artist Janet Laurence tells us the story behind her latest exhibition, based on life-changing trips to Antarctica and Iceland. Plus, fashion designer Kiel Rogers on why a sense of being 'anti-fashion' drives him. And what's happening with Melbourne's Nicholas Building? A plan to buy back the iconic artists' hub is now on hold, while the last remaining artist-run gallery in the building says it can't afford the rent. 

It’s  a bit like the art world State of Origin: two rival cities go head to head with big exhibitions showcasing the best of Australian contemporary art and design. The prize? Your attention, column inches, buzz and kudos. Daniel takes a tour of Melbourne Now and The National, held across Sydney's major galleries..

On this highlights episode of the show, Daniel speaks to guests Sally Scales and Nici Cumpston about the meteoric rise of the Pitjantjatjara artist Betty Muffler. Betty is a ngangkari (a traditional doctor) — a fact intrinsic to her work. Plus, we visit the studio of miniaturist Natasha Bieniek and speak to author Claire Roberts about the influence of China on the painter Ian Fairweather.

2023 is going to be the year of AI art. If you’ve been playing around with text-to-image apps like DALL-E 2 or Stable Diffusion, you know how remarkable the technology is and how fast it’s moving. UNSW AI Institute's Prof Toby Walsh talks about the history of artificial intelligence and art, artist Kim Leutwyler on the experience of having your artwork used to ‘train’ AI (without consent) and Rodolfo Ocampo sees a new type of hybrid artist emerging, as well as certain artforms completely transformed by AI. Plus, how does a 3D animator and digital native feel about the direction AI is set to play in the creative industries? 

What can a new Andy Warhol exhibition teach us about social media and the cult of celebrity? Plus, an artist spends a year working at a 1930s Georgian mansion in Adelaide, making artwork about its ecological footprint and storied art collection.

Hoda Afshar on the impact of protest art and photography in the Women, Life, Freedom uprising in Iran. Plus, the unconventional life of 19th Century painter Rosa Bonheur, and painter Marikit Santiago on ambition, conflicting identities and banana leaves.

On this episode, two artists and two very different takes on place and belonging. Callum Morton focuses on the built environment and Naomi Hobson is deeply embedded in the natural landscape.

Dylan Mooney's work celebrates young Black characters embodying queer love. And he does it in a bold, heartfelt graphic style that is proving irresistibly popular with audiences. Plus, Ali Tahayori on the poet Hafez, and creating art about queerness and otherness, through kaleidoscopic mirrors.

Jennifer Higgie talks about her new book on women artists and the spirit world. Plus, Daniel visits the largest collection of artworks by the Victorian medium Georgiana Houghton, held at a spiritualist church.

2023 is going to be the year of AI art. If you’ve been playing around with text-to-image apps like DALL-E 2 or Stable Diffusion, you know how remarkable the technology is and how fast it’s moving. UNSW AI Institute's Prof Toby Walsh talks about the history of artificial intelligence and art, artist Kim Leutwyler on the experience of having your artwork used to ‘train’ AI (without consent) and Rodolfo Ocampo sees a new type of hybrid artist emerging, as well as certain artforms completely transformed by AI. Plus, how does a 3D animator and digital native feel about the direction AI is set to play in the creative industries? 

Five years ago, Texta Queen was riding high with a mid-career survey show, that should have marked a significant  achievement for the artist. Instead, it resulted in a kind of burnout with the whole system. It led the artist to find new ways to have a career independent of the gallery system and build towards a residency project for other queer, disabled and BIPOC artists, called They Swarm. 

Jerry Saltz  is the Pulitzer prize-winning art critic for New York Magazine. Before he turned his hand to writing at the age of 40, he drove long-haul trucks and was a failed visual artist. Jerry reckons the gatekeepers of the art world have effectively 'effed off' and now anyone can —and must— take part. Jerry Saltz's latest book of essays is Art is Life.

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

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

Enter the eclectic studio and thought-provoking work of the Wiradjuri installation artist Karla Dickens. Plus, we look at ‘wild clay', the DIY-trend for gathering your own. But before you pull on gumboots and pick up a shovel – what are the ethics of digging up your own clay? 

Edward Burtynsky is a Canadian-Ukrainian photographer who captures human activity on Earth that's normally too big to perceive, except through aerial photography.

Cressida Campbell is best known for beautiful scenes of domestic interiors and still life arrangements, achieved through an intriguing technique. Kind of a cross between painting and printmaking. She is now the subject of a big solo show. Plus we visit the big new Sydney Modern Project.

Classicist Mary Beard examines art inspired by the lives and excesses of the Caesars, who wielded power in cruel and immoral ways.

You know the Japanese superstar artist Yayoi Kusama for her polka dots and infinity mirror rooms, and giant spotted pumpkins.

A trash-talking episode of The Art Show. We live on a planet choking on post-consumer waste and single-use plastics, so is it any wonder that more and more artists are using it as a serious material?

Dame Barbara Hepworth is a revered figure in British art, who has never had a dedicated solo show in Australia.

Her abstract sculptures echo the coastal landscape where she lived, and the human body. She wanted viewers to touch her artwork and move around it, and she rejected the pristine art gallery. For Barbara Hepworth: In Equilibrium, Lesley Harding and Kendrah Morgan chat to Daniel about curating 40 of Hepworth’s works for the Heide Museum of Modern Art.

My Thing is... auto fiction. In her latest work, filmmaker and visual artist Pilar Mata Dupont attempts to distil and reconcile personal accounts of her family’s  memories of 20th-century Argentina and its painful political divisions. Las Hormigas is on at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA).

Kieren Karritpul creates larger-than-life paintings, drawings and textiles that explore the cultural and spiritual dimensions of the handmade fish traps and nets made by women in his family. Based at Nauiyu in the Daly River region of the Top End, Kieren speaks to producer Rosa Ellen from his exhibition at Tolarno Galleries in Melbourne.

We meet a member of Taring Padi, the Indonesian artists' collective at the centre of an art controversy at Documenta 15, the prestigious art show held every five years in Germany. In 2022 the show was plagued by accusations of antisemitism, but the Indonesian artists say the ensuing maelstrom prevented meaningful dialogue. Featuring Alex Supertono from Taring Padi, art historian Terry Smith and academic Wulan Dirgantoro.

Bertie Blackman had a free-range childhood growing up in a famous Australian art family. But there were dark points, as the title of her memoir Bohemian Negligence suggests. She talks to Daniel about her father Charles Blackman's alcoholism, and writing about the sexual abuse she suffered, committed by a family friend.

British filmmaker Phil Grabsky is responsible for a prolific number of documentaries about famous artists, often in collaboration with large museums. Plus, Julia Gutman on 'painting with fabric' and finding a relatable muse. And Leila Jeffreys' inimitable bird portraits seem to reach into the avian soul. 

We look at the love story between two of modern art's greats: Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns... but is it visible in their work? Plus, meet Patrick Pound: the artist who's lovingly collected 60-thousand photographs for his fascinating photographic arrangements. And for My Art Crush, curator Prof Natalie King on why seeing Botticelli's the Birth of Venus led her to switch a law degree for art.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Enter the eclectic studio and thought-provoking work of the Wiradjuri installation artist Karla Dickens.Plus, is the Aboriginal flag, now freed from copyright restrictions, a work of art?And the 'wild clay' movement, where potters dig their own.

How has social media giant Instagram changed how we experience art? Experts, artists and critics weigh in on the photo sharing platform, an evolution that's allowed artists to build careers outside of the gallery system, while drastically changing our consumption of art.

Anne Wallace paints film-like scenes of intimacy and psychological tension that speak to iso life and the female gaze.Plus, the found photo archive that documents China's embrace of capitalism.

The rediscovery of Hilma af Klint's abstract paintings has taken the art world by storm, but what meaning can we find in her powerful, mysterious work? Plus, artist and designer W.H. Chong on the secret behind the perfect book cover.And head into the bush with immersive landscape painter Mary Tonkin.

Performance art tests the limits of the body and the gallery space. Fiona Kelly McGregor's latest book relives its bracing ascendancy in Sydney's queer and underground scene, and the well-known and lesser-known artists who lived and breathed it.Plus, performance artists Justin Shoulder and Stelarc. And, how do art galleries preserve performance art?

What if the use of white in classical sculpture was just a construct? For the ancient Greeks and Romans, sculptures were brightly-coloured affairs, clad in vivid red gowns with red lips, and pink or olive skin. Now scholars and artists want us to see that, too.

Franklin Sirmans is the curator of Family: Visions of a Shared Humanity, an exhibition of video works by renowned Black American, British and Canadian artists, including Arthur Jafa and Garrett Bradley.Plus, 'hyper-surreal' sculpture made with fake food.And enter the studio of Darwin plein air painter Max Bowden  as she works through the Top End’s Build Up season.  

The enduring power of Jeffrey Smart's urban wastelands, and his comparatively beautiful life in Tuscany, as told by the late artist's partner Ermes De Zan.Plus, visit the studio of Natalya Hughes as she works on an installation of mid-century aesthetics and Freud's psychoanalytic theory.

US artist Doug Aitken looks to the future through the hyperconnected present, in New Era.|Plus, enter the studio of Robert Andrew, whose programmable machines imprint ochre residue and missing histories.And a real-life art thriller documentary centred around the 'lost Leonardo da Vinci'.

We take stock of NFTs and hear from three people invested in the future of tokens, including Jonathan Zawada, collaborator to musician Flume.Plus, Bruno Booth on being an 'unwilling inspiration'. And Taloi Havini reclaims connections to land, culture and identity of Bougainville, PNG.

Christopher Pease wanted to create his own visual language, one that spoke to European art tradition and the hidden iconography of his Nyoongar ancestors. Plus, the horses that inspire Michael Zavros.And what happens when a painter loses half her hand? After a bad accident, Kaye Strange adapted.

A history of feminist art in Australia, painting western Tasmania and ice from a warming planet, at COP26.

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 the powerful immortal.Plus, a seascape painter who lives on a yacht, and artist Khaled Sabsabi explores the exchange between spiritual belief and our human aspirations.

Meet the man behind the hit YouTube series Cocktails with a Curator, from The Frick in New York.Plus, what if the arts were on the nightly TV news, like sport? And artists respond to Matisse's Tahiti-inspired work in a new exhibition.

With a bower bird's habit of collecting found objects, Rosalie Gascoigne's sculptures were inspired by her surrounding natural environment. The final episode in this series of radio interviews with Australian women artists from the ABC archives.

An interview with sculptor and metal smith Mari Funaki, who was instrumental in getting Australian contemporary jewellery on the global map.

The fifth episode in a pod-only series featuring interviews with women artists from the ABC archives.

A 2009 interview with the artist Margaret Olley, two years before her death.Part of our series featuring interviews with women artists from the ABC archives.

Interviews with women artists from the ABC archives.In 1979 Ivy Shore won Australia's richest art competition for women painters, for a portrait of trail blazing trade unionist Della Elliot.

Know My Name: interviews with women artists from the ABC archives. Hear Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, one of Australia's most renowned ceramicists, speaking to the ABC’s Julie Copeland in 1994.

Introducing Know My Name: interviews with women artists from the ABC archives. In this episode, hear from Grace Cossington Smith. A pioneer of modernism in Australia and one of the country’s most influential artists. Here she is interviewed in 1965 by Hazel de Berg for the National Library of Australia’s oral history collection.

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.

Globally and at home, artists are engaging with the reckoning happening around race and colonisation. But where do recent migrants and refugees to Australia fit into the dialogue?

It's 50 years since artists from Papunya began painting on board, heralding the Western Desert art movement, 'the last great art movement of the 20th Century' according to one famous critic.Plus, an artist's tribute to the iconic Leigh Bowery. A Japan-Australia photographic project featuring Mari Katayama.And Darwin's Street Art Festival brings new life to empty walls.

How does Francisco Goya help us make sense of the chaos of our contemporary world, and its depths of suffering? Then, discover art history through TikTok… and a contemporary sculpture powered by wind, water… and wine.

Do we turn a blind eye to the aggression and militarism — and colonialism — that defined the Italian Renaissance? Plus, hear why artist Vernon Ah Kee can't ignore a distinct Australian brand of racism, and whether a work by the Renaissance painter Artemisia Gentileschi found its way to 1970s Sydney.

How has social media giant Instagram changed how we experience art? Experts, artists and critics weigh in on the photo sharing platform, an evolution that's allowed artists to build careers outside of the gallery system, while drastically changing our consumption of art.

Maree Clarke is a key figure in the reclamation of southeast Australian Aboriginal art. Her three-decade career has centred on the revival and sharing of culture.Plus, Jemima Wyman's collages using images from global protests.And visit the studio of acclaimed painter Craig Ruddy.

Artists in Afghanistan are facing a frightening future. Australian Hazara artists Khadim Ali and Elyas Alavi speak to Daniel about what’s happening in their homeland.There’s a lot of buzz about 'Murrnginy', a new exhibition by Yolngu artists from Yirrkala, who have swapped stringybark for scrap metal. The works take a stunning contemporary direction on an ancient practice.

Meet the Turner Prize-nominated UK art collective Cooking Sections, making art about the food we eat, ecology and geopolitics.Plus, how Kathy Temin came to use fake fur for her large-scale monuments to memory. And a new book delves into the elusive Ian Fairweather's love of Chinese art and language.

Anne Wallace paints film-like scenes of intimacy and psychological tension that speak to iso life and the female gaze.

Plus, the ancient tomb art in Southern Italy that told an unexpected story of burial in the Classical world.And a new generation of artists from Western Arnhem Land in a new exhibition of exquisite art created on stone country.

A new biography of the post-Impressionist artist Hilda Rix Nicholas looks at the unusual life and sometimes overlooked career of a great Australian painter.Artist and designer W.H. Chong on the secret behind the perfect book cover. And this year’s National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Awards (NATSIAAs).

Two artists reflect on what has happened to Beirut since the devastating port explosion one year ago.And an antiquities sleuth and an art academic on the National Gallery of Australia's decision to return looted artworks to India.

Performance art tests the limits of the body and the gallery space. Fiona Kelly McGregor's latest book relives its bracing ascendancy in Sydney's queer and underground scene, and the well-known and lesser-known artists who lived and breathed it.Plus, performance artists Justin Shoulder and Stelarc. And, how do art galleries preserve performance art?

What if the use of white in classical sculpture was just a construct? For the ancient Greeks and Romans, sculptures were brightly-coloured affairs, clad in vivid red gowns with red lips, and pink or olive skin. Now scholars and artists want us to see that, too.

The mother-and-son collaboration of artists Dale and Kate Harding works across generations, artforms —and worlds. Textile artist Kate makes quilts, while Dale’s work is most commonly seen in the rarefied world of contemporary art. So why did they join forces for an exhibition?Plus, the photojournalist who turned his lens from the war in Afghanistan to the climate crisis at home.And a bespoke shoemaker mixing art and fashion.

The Art Show’s new presenter Daniel Browning finds Indigenous artists who enact healing and cultural rejuvenation through their artwork – from senior Pitjantjatjara elder and Betty Muffler, whose practice as a traditional healer – or ngangkari – extends to her monochromatic canvases mapping the topography and spiritual odysseys of her ancestor to the work of mainland Torres Strait Islander artists working in still lives and comic superheroes.

Czech brothers Dušan and Voitre Marek escaped communist political repression for Australia, but their Surrealist art was met with incomprehension in 1950s Australia. Now decades of their vibrant artistic output is on show, raising the question -- why aren't they better known? Plus, sculpture meets imitation food and the found photos that document China's embrace of capitalism.

The rediscovery of Hilma af Klint's abstract paintings has taken the art world by storm, but what meaning can we find in her powerful, mysterious work? The curator of the largest exhibition to reach Australia talks us through her symbols and spiritual quest. Plus, hear from an artist whose feminist-inspired underwear became a hit with the likes of Madonna. Then it's time to ponder… what do artists actually want to portray in a portrait?

How does Francisco Goya help us make sense of the chaos of our contemporary world, and its depths of suffering? Then, discover art history through TikTok… and a contemporary sculpture powered by wind, water… and wine.

Australia's Archibald portrait prize has been running for 100 years and remains wildly popular with punters, with its spats and controversies often more memorable than its artworks. What lies behind its appeal, and with a history of portraying and awarding a narrow range of distinguished Australians — what does it really say about us? Plus, meet the contemporary jeweller whose necklaces and rings tell stories of industry, social history and even architecture.

Patricia Piccinini returns to press our ethical buttons with new hyper-real silicon sculptures, staged in a hidden ballroom above Melbourne's busiest train station.

Pus, what's the state of drawing in Australia? The simple act of putting pencil to paper used to be central to almost all art practices and art schools, but is it still? Two leading drawing artists make the case.

For years now, Peter Drew's been challenging notions of Australian identity in his 'Aussie' poster series — join him as he pastes up his next series around Melbourne's laneways. Then hear about how Walt Disney Studios preserves its vast film stills archive, which holds the earliest sketches of beloved characters including Bambi, Dumbo and Pinocchio. Afterward, introduce yourself to Yul Scarf, a multi-disciplinary artist and recent art school graduate who's been 'hatched' by the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art.

Who exactly was Iso Rae, the Melbourne-born impressionist painter who honed her craft in northern France? Plus, a different take on a distinctly Australian 'ready-made' — the gumnut — with Colombian-Australian artist Maria Fernanda Cardoso.

Australian-South Sudanese artist Atong Atem brilliantly flips the Ethnographic gaze to create gorgeous studio portraits with a powerful statement.

Plus, how does the medium of video art exist in the era of binge watching?

And Namila chats to incoming guest host Daniel Browning, a familiar voice to RN listeners — but did you know he trained as an artist?

How do you turn the stark geographical facts of war and conflict into art? And how do you do it authentically and sensitively, from the far-off shores of Australia? Stanislava Pinchuk started making street art in Melbourne, then moved into tattooing before the Russo-Ukrainian conflict pushed her art in a very different direction. At 32, she has a survey exhibition called Terra Data — mapping the borders and human movement of war and displacement.

The partial destruction of the 1,500-year-old stone sculptural arrangement in Victoria’s western district added to the devastating tally of damaged First Nations art and cultural sites. Museums Victoria curator Kimberley Moulton joins Dark Emu author Bruce Pascoe.

Plus, take a tour of FLOAT, an innovative community artists' studio floating on Lake Tyers.

And we talk to an artist and a curator about two new exhibitions that look at food and eating through Art.

Yuki Kihara's reaction to being chosen to represent Aotearoa/New Zealand in the 2021 Venice Biennale was to scream at the top of her lungs. But with it came a huge sense of responsibility: "If I f**k this up, then people like me won't get a chance anymore." An interdiscplinary artist of Japanese and Sāmoan descent, Kihara has hit a lot of firsts in her international career — a show at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the first Pacifika and Asian artist to represent Aotearoa at the Biennale. Always, her cinematic photography, dance, installation and curatorship seeks to challenge the dominant historical narratives and explore intersecting identities and experiences.

Plus, step inside the world of Terminus, a series of virtual reality installations inspired by sci fi and fantasy comics and movies.

And the 'deceptively simple' art of Miffy, the bunny grounded in ideas of 20th century avant-garde design.

Khadim Ali began his art career painting propaganda murals in Iran before training in Persian miniatures and eventually finding his way to Australia. Now the acclaimed Hazara artist is launching his largest solo show at the Institute of Modern Art.

Using apparently innocent phrases and bright enamel paint, Jon Campbell’s joyful paintings unpack the pathos and humour of Australian vernacular and suburban life.

Plus, why did the Australia Council commission a report on Graphic storytelling? Co-author Pat Grant joins acclaimed Montreal-based cartoonist Lee Lei.

Photographer William Yang has been turning the camera on himself and his community with equal candour for four decades. Now he dusts off the film for the largest survey of his work yet.

Plus, when you think of Australia’s best art and culture destinations, do you think ‘go bush’? With many of Australia’s most sought-after artists living remote, it might be time to re-think where our cultural capitals lie. Parrtjima Festival director Rhoda Roberts joins author Monica Tan (Stranger Country).

Brisbane-based artist Vernon Ah Kee has been making art that asks hard questions for nearly two decades, critiquing systems and racial inequality in contemporary Australia.

Plus an interview with Liz Ann Macgregor, director of Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art. The director has since announced she will be leaving the job after 22 years.

Yhonnie Scarce creates hand-blown glass installations that express the trauma of atomic testing at Maralinga in the 1950s and 60s, and the impact of colonisation.

Enter the studio of painter and musician Mick Turner, one third of the band Dirty Three.

Plus, what about zines? Two zinesters make the case for the longevity of the DIY art mag.

Namila meets the abstract artist Robert Owen at a new retrospective.Plus, enter the studio of a bespoke shoemaker mixing art and high fashion.And an artist and journalist explain the phenomenon of NFTs.

Is there a fear of the older female nude? Flesh After Fifty is an exhibition about women’s bodies over the age of 50.

Plus, Gabby O’Connor is tackling how to communicate the risk of climate change through public art, with the help of scientists.

And enter the studio of sculptor Isadora Vaughan and the fantastical Plastic Bag Store of puppeteer Robin Frohardt.

Kay Rufai's Smile-ing Boys Project flips negative stereotypes and perceptions associated with young black boys to create healing and social change.

Plus, head into the bush with immersive landscape painter Mary Tonkin.And what’s in a tattoo? An art exhibition about Ink in LGBTI history and culture.

Photographer Hoda Afshar turns 110 camera lenses on well-known Australian whistle-blowers for her work 'Agonistes'. And walk in the footsteps of modernist Clarice Beckett, the subject of a new retrospective.

Artist Lucy Culliton paints almost exclusively her own homelife on the farm. She takes us through her inspiration and philosophy, including the importance of rescue animals in her life – all eight dogs, four horses, parrots, goats and 47 sheep.

Plus, meet the sculptor using discarded plastic lids to create large-scale 'constellations'.

And what makes for 'disobedience' in Art, and how does gender matter?

Art historian Kate Bryan on her favourite Art love stories of the 20th Century.

Filmmaker-turned-photographer Amos Gebhardt guides us through ‘Small acts of resistance’, a glittering triptych of queer love.

And the spirit and life lessons of the iconic Melbourne artist Mirka Mora, the subject of a big new exhibition.

Savanhdary Vongpoothorn on the family stories and mythical sagas at play in her meditative Slow Art.

Plus, step into the outback landscapes of painter Zhou Xiaoping.

And two artists discuss a new artwork about an environmental tragedy.

The visionary Turkish artist and his studio collaborate with computers to make hallucinatory public art.

We go into the studio of Kate Just, who's knitting a feminist project bound for the Museum of Contemporary Art.

And Tony Albert and Brook Andrew discuss the legacy of significant Australian artist Gordon Bennett.

Sandra Hill was 6 years old when she was taken from her family in 1958. As part of the stolen generation, it wasn't until years later that Sandra found herself able to reconnect with her culture and community through art.

Pulitzer prize-winning Australian art critic Sebastian Smee on finding new ways to work as a critic during the pandemic, being an ally and how he came to art.

Last year marked 45 years of Independence for Papua New Guinea. For this RN Summer edition of the Art Show, we explore the role that art has played in the country's development and engagement with Australia since 1975.

We speak with Pulitzer prize-winning American art critic, Jerry Saltz about his new book How to Be an Artist, and find out how Quandamooka country on North Stradbroke Island inspires the art of Megan Cope.

Influential artist Lindy Lee reflects on her long career; plus the art collective Still Nomads claiming new space for young African Australian artists.

Megan Evans is a multi-disciplinary artist and curator whose art examines Australia's colonial history, looking at the impact that history has had on her own life and the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Two decades ago, artist Olafur Eliasson hired a plane to fly across Iceland so he could document the epic glaciers of his homeland. When he returned years later, many of the glaciers were completely unrecognisable. Or had disappeared altogether.

Carly Findlay OAM joins The Art Show to celebrate International Day of People with Disability. Carly and Namila discuss access and creativity with installation artist Eugenie Lee, painter Digby Webster and blacksmith Ceilidh Dalton.

Pacific Melanesian artist Lisa Hilli shares how her black experience shapes her creativity, from the texture of her afro hair to capturing the joy of black sisterhood, it's all embedded in her art.

In her latest work, artist Judy Watson investigates our relationship to ancient sites, drawing viewers in with beguiling works of art that ask us to confront Australia's brutal colonial history