A brush with…, sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, is a podcast by The Art Newspaper that features in-depth conversations with leading international artists. Host Ben Luke asks the questions you’ve always wanted to: who are the artists, historical and contemporary, they most admire? Which are the museums they return to? What are the books, music and other media that most inspire them? What do they get up to in the studio every day? And what is art for, anyway?
The podcast offers a fascinating insight into the inspirations, the preoccupations and the working lives of some of the most prominent artists today.
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The podcast A brush with… is created by The Art Newspaper. The podcast and the artwork on this page are embedded on this page using the public podcast feed (RSS).
In this first episode of the new series of A brush with…, Ben Luke talks to the painter Celia Paul about her influences—including writers as well as contemporary and historic artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Paul was born in 1959 in Trivandrum, India, and now lives in London. She makes intense yet ruminative paintings of people close to her, the spaces in which she lives and works, and landscapes of poignant significance. Her paintings are made from life but are pregnant with memory, poetry and emotion, which she imbues in her distinctive painterly language. Her art possesses a rare tranquillity in which one perceives deep feeling; Paul wrote in her memoir that her paintings are “so private and personal that there’s almost a ‘Keep Out’ sign in front of them”. At once a singular figure yet also connected to strands of recent and historic figurative painting in Britain, she has been admired widely throughout her career but only recently been recognised as a major figure in British art of the past 40 years. She discusses the fact that she began painting before she knew about art, but when she was introduced to Old and Modern Masters, she discovered El Greco and Paul Cezanne, who remain important to her today. She also reflects on the compassion in Rembrandt and Vincent van Gogh, the stillness and scale of Agnes Martin and the elementary power of the novels of the Brontë sisters. She also describes her response in painting to the artists of the School of London, including Lucian Freud, with whom she was once in a relationship, and Frank Auerbach.
Celia Paul: Colony of Ghosts, Victoria Miro, London, until 17 April 2025. Celia Paul: Works 1975–2025, published by MACK, £150 (hb)
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Renée Green talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work.
Green was born in 1959, in Cleveland, Ohio, and lives today between Somerville, Massachusetts, and New York. She brings together a wealth of cultural forms in complex and layered works that manifest as installations, video pieces and texts, among other media. Through what has been described as a “methodology of citation”, in which she overtly names and synthesises the language and forms of the disparate individuals she references, Renée reflects on the nature of ideas, on subjectivity and perception, on fiction and reality, and on memory—personal and collective. Just as she is generous in her allusions, so her art is an invitation to the viewer, to witness the connections she assembles, and help shape the works’ meaning. She discusses how her work is concerned with “perception and sensation” and how drawing is a daily activity alongside reading and research. She reflects on her ongoing fascination with On Kawara and how her interest in particular artists “has to do with their physical location, the material aspects of what their existences might have been like, and then what kinds of questions emerge from those conditions”. She discusses the references in her work to the writing of Muriel Rukeyser and Laura Riding, and the friendship and dialogue she had with the film-maker Harun Farocki. Plus, she gives insight into life in the studio, and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate, “What is art for?”
Renée Green: The Equator Has Moved, Dia Beacon, from 7 March and will be on long term view.
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Somaya Critchlow talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Critchlow, born in London in 1993, makes paintings and drawings of Black women, often nude, that are rooted in the present and yet draw on a wealth of imagery from the recent and distant past. The women are fictional but can be informed by anything from self-portraits and other life studies to images from pop culture and depictions of women in the history of art. They engage frankly with what it means to represent the female body and with power relations: between the artist and her subject, between the subject and the viewer, and ultimately between Critchlow and us. Depending on your perspective, her art offers different degrees of delight and discomfort. But her balance of fine drawing, a time-honoured approach to paint and colour, and arresting imagery means that her work is endlessly intriguing. She discusses the breakthrough moment where she realised that she was her own first model, being “comfortable with feeling uncomfortable”, the influence on her of Angela Carter’s response to the Marquis de Sade, her engagement with a wealth of visual artists, from Käthe Kollwitz to Francesca Woodman, Leonor Fini, Titian and Francesco de Goya, the power of David Lynch’s films and the consistent importance to her of Japanese manga. She gives insight into her life in the studio and responds to our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Somaya Critchlow: The Chamber, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, until 20 July. Group shows: A Room Hung with Thoughts British Painting Now, Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, US, until 11 May; Woman in a Rowboat, Olivia Foundation, Mexico City, until 28 September.
This podcast is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, the arts and culture app. The free app offers access to a vast range of international cultural organisations through a single download, with new guides being added regularly. They include the Dulwich Picture Gallery, where Somaya Critchlow is showing her work between February and July of 2025. If you download Bloomberg Connects you’ll find that the guide to the gallery has a section on the exhibition, with pictures of Somaya’s work in situ in the historic gallery spaces. There is also extensive content on the gallery’s other exhibition, Tirzah Garwood: Beyond Ravilious, the first major exhibition of the British artist. You can explore the works while listening to the actor Tamsin Greig reading excerpts from Garwood’s autobiography. Elsewhere, the guide features an animated film telling the story of the gallery and a guided tour of the many masterpieces in its collection.
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Thomas Ruff talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work.
Ruff was born in 1958 in Zell am Harmersbach, in what was then West Germany, and has, over five decades, extensively probed the forms and possibilities of photography. Though he is a key figure in the international generation of artists that emerged in the 1980s and experimented with the very nature of the photographic medium and discipline, Ruff has carved out a singular practice. He works in distinct series whose formal characteristics vary enormously, but are underpinned by experimental unorthodoxy, technical curiosity and conceptual rigour. Each new group contributes to a profound philosophical exploration of the photographic image and what it means to make a picture. But while the intellectual underpinning of his work is unwavering, Thomas makes prints that are remarkably beautiful objects. Operating in a medium that remains associated with the factual record and documentary, he has relentlessly made the case for a photographic practice in which imagination is a primary agent. He discusses his interest in “the puzzle of photography”, the distinctive geneses of his various series of work, and his conviction that while seeking an “intellectually high-end product… of course I want to have fun”. He reflects on the early influence of the photographer Ernst Haas, how Piero della Francesca influenced his early Portraits series, how he chose to study art over astronomy, yet outer space has remained a core concern in his work, and how the satirical television show Spitting Image proved an unlikely influence. Of course, he reflects on the work of numerous photographers, from Eugène Atget and Walker Evans to Lou Landauer and his teachers in Düsseldorf, Bernd and Hilla Becher. Plus, he answers our usual questions, including the ultimate, “What is art for?”
Thomas Ruff: expériences lumineuses, David Zwirner, London, until 22 March; his work features in Typologien, a survey of 20th-century German photography at Fondazione Prada, Milan, 3 April-14 July.
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The first episode of 2025 of A brush with… features a conversation with Linder, who discusses her influences—from writers to musicians and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Born Linda Mulvey in Liverpool in 1954, she is best known for her photomontages, made from images found in books and magazines across six decades. They bring together sex and sexual politics, glamour and grit, satire and seduction. Since emerging in the punk era of the late 1970s—a culture whose DIY approach and unflinching attitude to society her work embodies—Linder has reinvigorated a radical tradition of avant-garde art-making while developing a singular voice. She reflects on the particularities of her native Britain while also addressing global struggles and themes, including feminism and class politics. She discusses her use of the scalpel as a “magic wand” in cutting up print material, her journey to Delphi and recent use of ancient Greek and Roman imagery, her fascination with Ithell Colquhoun and other Surrealists, the impact of reading Germaine Greer and the Brontës, how she has used Playboy magazines from 1968 in a new body of work, and how she connects the Indian musical instruments, the dilruba and taus, with Barbara Hepworth. Plus, she answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: “What is art for”?
This episode contains descriptions of abuse and sexual violence.
Linder: Danger Came Smiling, Hayward Gallery, London, 11 February-5 May; a version of the show, curated by Hayward Gallery Touring, will travel across the UK in 2025 and 2026: Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, 23 May-19 October; Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea, 7 November 2025-8 March 2026; Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, 27 June-20 September 2026.
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Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset talk to Ben Luke about their influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped their lives and work. This is the first episode of A brush with featuring an artist duo. Over the past 30 years Elmgreen and Dragset have consistently created unexpected scenarios within and outside of the museum and gallery structure. Playful, even mischievous at times, and yet shot-through with searing critique and sincere expression, their sculptures and environments are fundamentally concerned with space, both private and public, and the people and communities that occupy it. Elmgreen was born in 1961 in Copenhagen and Dragset in 1969 in Trondheim, Norway. They now live and work in Berlin. They discuss the influence of Hannah Ryggen and Vilhelm Hammershøi, Michael’s meeting with Felix Gonzalez-Torres and his effect on their work, and how they feel their work relates to Samuel Beckett’s writing, and the final, moving scene of Wim Wenders’ film Paris Texas. Plus, they give insight into their lives in the studio and answer our usual questions, including: what is art for?
Elmgreen & Dragset: L’Addition, Musee d’Orsay, Paris, until 2 February 2025; Elmgreen & Dragset: Spaces, Amorepacific Museum of Art, Seoul, 23 February 2025; K-BAR is open now at Khao Yai Art Forest, Thailand; Nurture Gaia, Bangkok Art Biennale, Bangkok, Thailand, until 25 February 2025.
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Hank Willis Thomas talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Thomas, born in 1976 in Plainfield, New Jersey, is a conceptual artist whose works in various media address identity, collectivity and subjectivity, particularly in relation to race, and how these subjects shape—and are shaped by—broad phenomena, from sports, advertising and brands to art history. Thomas trained as a photographer and a search for a singular powerful image underpins much of his work. But however impactful it might be at first sight, that instant appeal is always a gateway to greater cultural and historical complexity. He discusses his latest exhibition, Kinship of the Soul and its fusion of the paintings of Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas and Henri Matisse, the early influence of Roy DeCarava’s photographs, the importance of the Gee's Bend quilters, the writing of Audre Lorde and James Baldwin, and his surprising response to the Dukes of Hazzard television show. Plus, he answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Hank Willis Thomas: Kinship of the Soul, Pace, London, unil 21 December; Irving Penn: Kinship, Curated by Hank Willis Thomas, Pace, New York, until 21 December.
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Jeff Wall talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work.
Wall—who was born in 1946 in Vancouver, Canada, where he still lives, though he also works in Los Angeles—makes photographs but aspires to approach his medium with the freedom, range and openness taken for granted by other artforms. Presented on a large scale, his images are enormously varied, from those that are close to reportage; to what he calls “near-documentary” images—tableaux, where he recreates a scene he has witnessed in reality with actors; to elaborately staged environments responding to art or literature; and even what he calls “hallucinations”. Crucially, he has used the term “cinematographic” to describe his approach, in that his pictures use different degrees of preparation and processing before he presses the shutter and afterwards, thereby applying what Jeff has called “aspects of the arts of dramatisation” to the pictorial practice of still photography. Because of this, his work has long had a fascinating philosophical relationship with truth and reality—two key cornerstones of orthodox claims for his medium’s potency—and what Wall has called “blatant artifice”. Initially famous for the technique he pioneered in the art world of presenting vast transparencies on lightboxes, he now mostly works with prints, on a similar scale, in both colour and black and white. As he has engaged closely with the history of art, books and film, Jeff has used the term “prose poems” to describe his photographs: that form’s complex structures and language and ability to conjure broad constellations of meanings, perfectly describe his art and how we experience it. He discusses how comics and Bruegel were his earliest visual inspirations, talks about his responses to historic works by Katsushika Hokusai and Albrecht Dürer, reflects on the “accidents while reading” that have led him to make images responding to literary works by Franz Kafka and Yukio Mishima, among others. Plus he answers some of our usual questions, including the ultimate, “what is art for?”
Jeff Wall: Life in Pictures, White Cube Bermondsey, London until 12 January 2025; Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon, Portugal, April-August 2025.
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Goshka Macuga talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work.
Macuga was born in 1967 in Warsaw, Poland. Her deep research into multifarious subjects manifests in the form of installations, sculpture, tapestry, photography, video and more. As well as making objects, she occupies a role that relates closely to that of a curator and historian, often weaving together her creations with existing materials, including artworks and archival documents. Place has enormous significance in her practice, whether it is the museum or gallery, the city or the country in which she is presenting her ideas. After exploring her site and engaging in lengthy research, she fuses her own subjective interest with objective material, to produce absorbing and often complex environments that provoke broad meanings and reactions. She discusses the transformative impact of seeing the work of Christo in an art magazine; her interest in Paul Nash and Eileen Agar—and the personal importance to her of a work by Agar that is in her studio; how the subversive strategies used by Stanisław Lem when he was writing science fiction in Communist Poland have influenced her practice; and how, during Covid, she created a club for dancing in her studio. Plus, she gives insight into her rituals and disciplines and answers our usual questions, including, “what is art for?”
Goshka Macuga: Born from Stone, London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE, until 18 January 2025.
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Sonia Boyce talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Boyce, a recent Golden Lion-winner at the Venice Biennale, was born in London in 1962 and first made an impact through her figurative drawings before shifting to what she calls a “multi-sensory” practice. Over the past three decades, her art has been a social experience, as she has worked with individual and collective collaborators to create performances, video pieces and installations. They reflect on a wealth of subjects, from personal and collective memory, to sound as a conveyor of subjective feeling and cultural experience, to the dynamics and meanings of space and environment, and to questions of value and power and who bestows and holds them. Sonia’s art is about people but also formed by them—people are her raw materials. She talks about her interest in power and authorship and the shift in her career, away from drawing to relational and social practice. She discusses the transformative experiences of seeing work by the Fenix feminist art collective, Frida Kahlo and visiting the 1981 exhibition in Wolverhampton, Black Art an’ Done. She reflects on William Morris’s wallpaper designs and the different ways in which they have manifested in her work. She discusses the connections between Dada and jazz music, and the influence of Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, and much more. Plus, she gives insight into her life in the studio, and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate, “What is art for?”
Sonia Boyce: An Awkward Relation and Lygia Clark: The I and the You, Whitechapel Gallery, London, until 12 January; Sonia Boyce: Feeling Her Way, Toronto Biennial, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, until 6 April 2025; AMONG THE INVISIBLE JOINS: Works from the Enea Righi Collection, MUSEION—Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano-Bozen, Italy, until 2 March 2025.
Listen to Sonia Boyce talking about Feeling Her Way, in the episode of The Week in Art podcast from 22 April 2022, Venice Biennale Special.
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Episode 100: A brush with… Marlene DumasIn this, the 100th episode of A brush with…, Marlene Dumas talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Dumas was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1953 and lives and works in Amsterdam. She is a painter whose intensity is unrivalled. Using found images and responding to memory, she has the ability to seduce and repel, to lull and to shock, often all in a single image or group of works. She is endlessly daring in her questioning of her medium and what it can do, in the unorthodox formats and scale she chooses for her imagery, in the way she reflects on historic art and ideas, movies and literature, and in her unflinching confrontation of her own life. Her paintings and drawings are a means of responding to external events and internal feelings in ways that can be absurd, confounding, funny and profoundly affecting. And while her themes and language are consistent, she is always pushing herself to new territory and breaking boundaries. She discusses the early influence of comic illustration, the enduring effect on her of Francisco Goya’s work, how she grew to love the work of Edgar Degas, Edvard Munch and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres after first dismissing them, and her admiration for Nicole Eisenman and Diane Arbus, among others. She also gives insight in her life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including, “What is art for?”
Marlene Dumas: Mourning Marsyas, Frith Street Gallery, London, until 16 November.
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Robert Longo talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Born in 1953 in Brooklyn, Longo was a key figure in what was called the Pictures generation of artists, which emerged in New York in the late 1970s. After that initial burst of attention he has since met with wide acclaim with his translations of everything from reportage photographs to historic paintings into vast charcoal drawings. By rendering the images in this way, he reinforces the impact of the original sources and yet prompts questions about the meaning and the power structures within and around them. By expanding their scale, he also transforms them. Up close—as we are overwhelmed by the analogue artisanship involved in the drawing—these dramatic images are abstracted. He talks about why he favours the term “collision” over “collage” and reflects on the concern with violence in his work. He discusses being, as he puts it, “an abstract artist working representationally”. He explains the process behind his responses to major works of art by everyone from Jackson Pollock to Rembrandt and Manet, and talks about the influence of Gretchen Bender on his newest Combine pieces. And he details the breadth of inspirations for his 1980s Men in the Cities series, from James Chance, frontman of the Contortions, to Rainer Werner Fassbender’s An American Soldier. Plus, he gives insight into studio habits and rituals and answers our usual questions, including, “What is art for?”
Robert Longo: Searchers, Thaddaeus Ropac, London, 8 October-20 November; Pace, London, 9 October-9 November; Robert Longo, Albertina Museum, Vienna, until 26 January; Robert Longo: The Acceleration of History, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, US, 25 October-23 February 2025.
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Rana Begum talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work.
Begum was born in Bangladesh in 1977, came to the UK when she was eight years old and now lives and works in London. She distils everything she does into three essential elements—light, colour and form. From them, she conjures a distinctive array of works that often sit between sculpture, painting and architecture. She draws on influences that vary from canonic Modernist sculptors and painters to historic designs in the Qur’an and Islamic architecture. And she reflects on lived experiences, including growing up in rural Bangladesh and negotiating the London cityscape. Though they may take simple, tangible shape on first impressions, her creations engage the space around them and the senses of her audience in often surprising ways, creating a profound and finely balanced connection between object, environment and viewer.
She discusses how her early experiences of reading the Qur’an and the illuminations within it continue to affect her work today. She explains her newfound fascination with J.M.W. Turner, particularly his late paintings. She reflects on how she discovered Anni Albers later than her husband Josef, but how she has since influenced her work. She gives insight into life in the studio and rituals she adheres to, and answers our usual questions, including “What is art for?”
Rana Begum, Kate MacGarry, London, until 26 October; No.1367 Mesh, Pallant House, Chichester, UK; No. 1387 Fence, The Verbier 3-D Foundation, Verbier, Switzerland.
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Arthur Jafa talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Jafa 's work in film, sculpture and installation explores Black being with an unflinching eye for systemic and historic inequity and violence and an exuberant harnessing of disparate manifestations of Black—and particularly African American—culture. Jafa has only garnered major art world attention in the past decade, but in that time he has been prolific in creating landmark works that have shocked, stirred and moved his audiences, including Love is the Message, the Message is Death (2016), The White Album (2018) and his latest film, BEN GAZARRA (2024, formerly known as *****), which reimagines the climactic scenes in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. He discusses how, when he was a child, he was profoundly affected by seeing James Brown in concert and reading Jack Kirby’s creations for Marvel Comics. He explains how he feels inspired and challenged by Anne Imhof’s work, and how Jean-Michel Basquiat is an ongoing point of reference. He also describes the sheer power of seeing another transformative performance as a child: Mahalia Jackson singing in a Mississippi church. Plus, he gives insight into his life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Arthur Jafa, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles, 14 September-14 December; Arthur Jafa: Works from the MCA Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, until 2 March 2025; Arthur Jafa, Galerie Champ Lacombe, Biarritz, France, until 5 September.
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Eva Rothschild talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Rothschild, born in Dublin in 1971, has a profound sense of the unique qualities and peculiar power of her discipline, sculpture. Although her art clearly relates to the history of abstraction and Modernism, it balances a reverence and deep curiosity for this sculptural history with playfulness and subversion. In her sculptures, time-honoured avant garde principles meet the forms and practices of popular culture. Born of much instinctive experimentation in the studio, her work engages, often exuberantly, with diverse sculptural processes—from casting and welding to stacking and balancing—and properties—from weight and solidity to patina, texture and colour. As well as exploring gallery space in often unexpected ways, she has developed a rich seam of public sculpture, with major permanent works including a playground in East London. She discusses her the “material giddiness” she feels in making work, how she uses negative space and porosity as key elements in her sculpture, and why she feels that black is almost more a material than a colour. She reflects on the early influence of a catalogue of the British Museum’s Tutankamen in her family home as a child, discusses how Barbara Hepworth remains an enduring influence, recalls the shock of encountering Cady Noland’s work in a catalogue when she was a student and remembers the profound effect of seeing Sinead O’Connor perform in Dublin in the 1980s. She gives insight into her studio life and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Eva Rothschild, Modern Art, Helmet Row, London, 6-28 September; Still Lives, The Hepworth Wakefield, until January 2025; solo exhibition, Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 2026.
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Michael Craig-Martin talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Craig-Martin was born in Dublin in 1941, and grew up in the US, but has been based in London for most of his working life. Over the past six decades he has created an instantly recognisable body of work in which everyday objects are depicted simply in black outlines and often filled and surrounded by saturated, bright colour. The objects can be alone, in close-up fragments, or in complex combinations, and are captured in everything from small prints to room-scale installations. Intending at first to eschew style, Craig-Martin came to realise that his technique is inimitably his. And the works’ meaning has also shifted over the decades, gaining new and poetic meanings. Fifty years on from his first drawing, his core questions remain: what is it to represent something, to make an image of it? How does image-making work? What does it allow you to do? And what happens when a viewer encounters what you have done? The result is a world of sensation and visual and experiential pleasure that might seem unexpected given the nature of the items he depicts. This knack of making the humdrum compelling, even lending it a sensory power and emotional resonance, is why Craig-Martin has remained an enduringly significant figure in contemporary art. He talks about returning to the basics of drawing in the mid-1970s when it was “forbidden territory”, his slow but eventually hearty embrace of colour, why humour is a useful tool in addressing subjects of the utmost seriousness, his early encounter with the work of Picasso as a child in Washington DC, the effect of studying according to the principles of Josef Albers at Yale, his admiration for Bruce Nauman and Gerhard Richter, and his love of the work of Samuel Beckett. Plus, he responds to our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Michael Craig-Martin, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 21 September-10 December; Michael Craig-Martin: An Anthology, Prints and Multiples 1996 – 2024, Cristea Roberts, London, 25 October-23 November.
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Igshaan Adams talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Adams, born in 1982, who explores human space, both interior and exterior, and how that space speaks to racial, sexual and historical identities. Working in particular with wall and floor-based textiles, and sculpture, often brought together in atmospheric installations, Adams does not depict people but evokes their presence. He particularly refers to the community in which he was born and grew up in South Africa, Bonteheuwel near Cape Town, and suggests the marks people have made in that environment. They range from the traces on domestic floors to so-called “desire lines”, pathways forged in landscapes and cityscapes that reveal how we subvert the structures put in place to control and surveil us, and thus act as everyday gestures of resistance. Adams’s art is based on research but also deeply informed by his own story, as a mixed-race, queer man. Though referencing great difficulty and hardship, his is a language of unashamed beauty and elegance. In the podcast, he reflects on his curiosity about traces of human activity, his embrace of beauty, his longstanding engagement with Sufism, and the influence of the South African artists Nandipha Mntambo and Nicholas Hlobo, the French-American artist Louise Bourgeois and the love poems of Rumi. He gives insight into life in his studio in Cape Town, and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Igshaan Adams: Weerhoud, The Hepworth Wakefield, UK, 22 June-3 November; Igshaan Adams, ICA/Boston, US, until 15 February 2025;
Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, 14 September-5 January, 2025
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Otobong Nkanga talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Nkanga, born in 1974 in Kano, Nigeria, explores the land and the environment in relation to our bodies and the cultures and histories that mould and define them. Working across sculpture, installation, performance, sound, photography and video, Otobong brings together what she calls constellations of images, movements and objects, to poetically interweave ideas relating to cultural history and anthropology, geography and geology. She fuses in-depth research with her own lived experience. The result is a practice with a distinctive coherence between materials and concepts, where references to present-day geopolitical and ecological realities sit alongside forms, metaphors and symbols that speak to broader timescales and narratives and disparate belief systems. She reflects on her early choice to pursue art over architecture, discusses her use of minerals and particular colours, recalls encountering the Bakor monoliths in Nigeria as a child, and then Western masters from Caravaggio to De Hooch in Europe. She talks about her enjoyment of writers like Uwem Akpan and Helon Habila and the huge range of music she plays in her studio, from Alt-J via Fatoumata Diawara to Rihanna. Plus she gives insights into life in her studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: “what is art for?”
Otobong Nkanga: We Come from Fire and Return to Fire, Lisson Gallery,
London, until 3 August.
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Lynn Hershman Leeson talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Leeson, born in 1941 in Cleveland, Ohio, US, and now based in San Francisco, is one of the pioneers of media art. Over more than half a century, she has explored how people and society engage with, and are shaped by, technology—from surveillance and control, via scientific progress, to the formation and manipulation of identity. Her work has taken the form of sculptural installation, video, photography, sound, online art, performance, and much more. It moves fluidity across these disciplines and adopts disparate modes, from documentary to historical drama to science-fiction fantasy, in a language awash with art historical and cinematic allusion. At the heart of her practice is a fundamental analysis of how humans can navigate political, social and environmental upheavals, and how technology in contemporary society can liberate and empower as much as oppress and censor. She discusses the epiphany provoked by a photocopier malfunction that prompted her lifelong interest in humans’ engagement with technology, how she felt forced to look beyond conventional spaces when a museum rejected her multimedia Breathing Machines, the early influence of Cézannes she encountered in the Cleveland Museum of Art, the conversations with women artists that led to the Women Art Revolution film and archive, her film with the Cuban artist-activist Tania Bruguera, and a transformative encounter with the theatre of Tadeusz Kantor. Plus, she answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Lynn Hershman Leeson: Are Our Eyes Targets?, Julia Stoschek Foundation, Düsseldorf, Germany, until 2 February 2025; Lynn Hershman Leeson: Moving-Image Innovator, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 7-20 June
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Ben Luke talks to Michaël Borremans about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Borremans, born in 1963 in Geraardsbergen in Belgium, is one of the most original painters working today. He marries a technical brilliance, born of a careful study of the style and touch of the Old Masters, with a sensibility and atmosphere that are completely his own. Though they depict figures, objects and environments, his paintings remain enigmatic, refusing to settle into easily readable narratives. They are full of uncanny detail and incident which is all the more pronounced because of his sensual handling of the paint. Though he is a perceptive observer of people, things and space, Borremans says he paints culture as opposed to nature. When he makes a painting of a human face, for instance, he is not concerned with the mimetic process of portraiture, rather with a perception of the ineffable nature of human psychology; with what it might mean to be—and to represent—a human being today. Even though it is characterised by an often absurd playfulness, an abiding sense of isolation and disquiet permeates Michaël’s work. He discusses the ongoing influence of Francisco de Goya, Diego Velázquez and Jean-Siméon Chardin, the inspirational comedy of Monty Python, the profound writing of Vladimir Nabokov, and his love of music by everyone from Franz Schubert to Taylor Swift. He gives insight into life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Michaël Borremans: The Monkey, David Zwirner, London, opening in London Gallery Weekend, 31 May-2 June, and then 6 June-26 July; Michaël Borremans: The Promise, Prada Rong Zhai, Shanghai, China, until 9 June; Michaël Borremans, Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, the Netherlands, 30 November-23 March 2025
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Kapwani Kiwanga talks to Ben Luke about the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Kiwanga was born in Hamilton, Canada, in 1978 and lives in Paris. She works primarily in sculpture and installation but also with performance, sound and video. She explores what she has called “power asymmetries”, drawing from forgotten or unexpected histories and studies in everything from botany to sociology, to create enigmatic but alluring objects and environments in a wealth of materials. Research is at the heart of her project, but it triggers unique combinations of ideas, where forms that might initially appear entirely aesthetic and informed by Modernist geometries are in fact “documents” and “witnesses” to complex socio-political ideas and events. Materials are rarely selected simply for their visual effect; instead, Kiwanga chooses them for their historic, economic or cultural uses. A remarkable economy and precision underpins her language, through which she maximises an acute experiential balance between pleasure, curiosity and disquiet. She reflects on her new work, Trinket, for the Canada Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, about creating a welcoming space for viewers to explore complex histories and ideas, and about balancing seduction and disruption. She reflects on the early influence of the Black Audio Film Collective and how her hanging curtains relate to Felix Gonzalez-Torres; she discusses the significance of residencies in Paris, at the Musée national d’Histoire naturelle, and in Dakar, Senegal; and she talks about why the jazz legend Sun Ra inspired her to make a work. Plus, she gives insight into her life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including: what is art for?
Kapwani Kiwanga: Trinket, Canada Pavilion, 60th Venice Biennale, Italy, 20 April-24 November; Kapwani Kiwanga: The Length of the Horizon, Copenhagen Contemporary, Denmark, until 25 August.
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Michael Raedecker talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Raedecker, born in Amsterdam in 1963, brings together paint, thread and printed imagery to create canvases pregnant with unsettling and uncanny atmosphere. At the heart of his work is the meeting between humanity and nature and, even though his paintings are mostly unpopulated, the presence of people is always implied through their absence. We see the interiors and exteriors of homes, with lights on, beds ruffled, curtains half-drawn, cars outside; we witness empty loungers beside a swimming pool or an unoccupied lilo floating on its surface. We see landscapes that seem only recently to have been vacated. In still lifes we seem to witness a hastened process of decay. Images become almost hallucinatory through the emphases Michael gives elements of his compositions, with heightened texture or colour or surreal disjunctions. We are thrust into riddles, stories or dreams that are familiar yet otherworldly. He discusses his early encounter with the work of Edward Kienholz, how seeing Luc Tuymans at Documenta in Kassel in 1992 was a turning point in his work, and hear about an encounter with Sigmar Polke at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Raedecker reflects on the importance of 1980s New Romantic and Blitz Kids culture to his early life and how music continues to be central to his time in the studio today. We hear about more studio rituals and he answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Michael Raedecker: Material Worlds, Kunstmuseum den Haag, The Hague, The Netherlands, 13 April-28 August; Michael Raedecker, Grimm, Amsterdam, 30 May-20 July
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Alex Katz talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Katz, born in Brooklyn in 1927, is one of the most distinctive and influential painters of recent decades. Since he began making art in the 1940s, he has aimed to paint what he has called “the now”: to distil fleeting visual experiences into timeless art. It might be a spark of interaction between friends or family, the play of light across water, a field of grass or between the leaves of a tree, the movements of dancers, the electric illumination of an office building at night, or—more than anything else—stolen glances, everyday gestures and intimate exchanges with his wife Ada, who he has painted more than 1,000 times since they married in 1958. From the start, Katz has aimed to match what he calls the “muscularity” of the Abstract Expressionist artists that were dominant in New York when he emerged onto the art scene there in the 1950s, while never giving up on observed reality. He has said “the optical element is the most important thing to me”. He discusses the early influence of Paul Cezanne, the enduring power of his forebears, from Giotto to Rubens and Willem de Kooning, and his admiration for artists as diverse as Utamaro, Martha Diamond and Chantal Joffe. He reflects on the “emotional extension” of the poet Frank O’Hara and his interest in jazz maestros like Pres and Charlie Parker. Plus, he answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Alex Katz: Claire, Grass and Water, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, Italy, 17 April-29 September; Alex Katz: Wedding Dresses, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine, US, until 2 June; Alex Katz: Collaborations with Poets, The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio, 15 September-15 November.
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Shahzia Sikander talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Sikander, born in 1969 in Lahore, Pakistan, trained in the tradition of Indo-Persian manuscript painting and has used its forms, techniques and language as a launchpad for a wide-ranging engagement with colonial and postcolonial histories, with feminism, gender and sexuality, and with cultural identity and narratives around race. Working in drawing, painting, animation, video, mosaic and most recently sculpture, she has created a body of work in which existing and invented images and forms are juxtaposed to vivid and poetic effect. Technically exquisite and conceptually profound, her works have an instant impact but reward slow looking with layered narratives, references and histories. She discusses her early discovery of Michelangelo in Lahore, explains how she has channelled the “soulfulness” Eva Hesse found in minimalism in her response to historic manuscript painting, reflects on the importance of her teenage experience of Mogadishu, Somalia, and speaks about the enormous importance of poetry to her work, including the US writer Adrienne Rich’s translations of the Indian poet Mirza Ghalib. Plus, she gives insight into her life in the studio, and answers our usual questions, including which artwork, if she could only have one, she would most like to live with.
Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior, Palazzo SoranzoVan Axel, Venice, Italy, 20 April-20 October; Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio, US, 14 February-4 May 2025; Cleveland Museum of Art, 14 February-8 June 2025. Shahzia Sikander: Havah…to breathe, air, life, University of Houston, Texas, US, until 31 October; Entangled Pasts, 1768–now: Art, Colonialism and Change, Royal Academy of Arts, London, until 28 April 2024.
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Nalini Malani talks to Ben Luke, about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Malani was born in Karachi in 1946 and lives and works today in Mumbai. Her work in drawing and painting, performance, video and installation, responds to contemporary politics and human rights issues through the language of ancient myths, of poets, writers and thinkers, and of the history of art. She is increasingly celebrated for her installations that she calls “animation chambers”, fusing video and drawings, text and voice. They engulf the viewer in environments that contain endlessly shifting sequences of imagery and stirring soundtracks—a call to action in terms of both their political and cultural content. She discusses her early and enduring admiration of Indian Kalighat painting, how Louise Bourgeois’ reflections on memory are a consistent inspiration, why she has repeatedly returned to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, and about the pivotal period she spent in Paris between 1970 and 1972, meeting many leading intellectuals and artists. Plus she gives insight into her life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including “what is art for?”
Nalini Malani: Can You Hear Me? and Ballad of a Woman, Concrete, Dubai, in collaboration with Volte Art Projects, 25 February-3 March; Nalini Malani: The Pain of Others 1966-1979, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS)/Jehangir Nicholson Art Gallery, Mumbai, India, 1 August-5 November; Ambienti 1956-2010: Environments by Women Artists II, MAXXI, Rome, 9 April-6 October; Nalini Malani: In Search of Vanished Blood, collection display, Tate Modern, London, 13 December 2024-September 2025.
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Zineb Sedira talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Sedira, born in Paris in 1963 to Algerian parents and based in London since 1986, uses film, photography, installation, sculpture and other media to reflect on memory, from the personal to the collective and historical. She explores representation, language and family, intimately informed by her French, Algerian and British identity. By mining her singular autobiography and its connection with colonial histories and their contemporary legacies, Sedira has created a body of work that is at once politically nuanced, emotionally complex and visually rich. She discusses her early interest in Mary Kelly, her enduring engagement with the art of JMW Turner, and her admiration for the Algerian painter Baya. She reflects on her fascination with the Pan-African Festival in Algiers in 1969, the subject of a body of work. And she talks about her love of jazz and ska, the influence of postcolonial writers, among much else. Plus, she gives insight into her studio life and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: “what is art for?”
Zineb Sedira: Dreams Have No Titles, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 15 February-12 May; the film version of the work is on display at Tate Britain until September 2024; Dreams Have No Titles, Cultural Foundation, Abu Dhabi , UAE, 3 October-28 January 2025; Let’s go on singing!, Goodman Gallery, London, until 16 March; Standing Here Wondering Which Way to Go, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, Portugal, 19 June 2025-22 September 2025.
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Stanley Whitney talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Whitney, born in Philadelphia in 1946, makes abstract paintings that feature interlocking rectangles, squares and bands of paint whose intense colours hum with musical resonance and rhythm. Rigorously structured yet full of improvisation and unexpected incident, his paintings are both arresting and slow-burning: they grab you with their bold hues and hold you with their complex harmonies and dissonances, their sense of constant movement. He is particularly known for his square-format paintings of the past two decades but his career has been a lifelong search for a distinctive form of painting—one that, as he has said, is defiantly abstract yet contains “the complexity of the world”. He reflects on his encounters with an early mentor, Philip Guston; being painted by Barkley Hendricks, a fellow student at Yale; and his close friendship with David Hammons. He discusses his love of Paul Cezanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paolo Veronese and Henri Matisse, as well as the work of Gees Bend quilters. And explains how he connects this deep love of painting to musical greats including Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Charlie Mingus. Plus he discusses in detail his life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including “what is art for?”
Stanley Whitney: How High the Moon, Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, US, 9 February-27 May; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, US, 14 November-16 March 2025; Institute of Contemporary Art /Boston, US, 17 April 2025–1 September 2025; Stanley Whitney: Dear Paris, Gagosian, Paris, until 28 February.
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Polish artist Wilhelm Sasnal talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Sasnal, born in 1972 in Tarnów, Poland, has made one of the most significant contributions to painting in the 21st century. He works with photographic imagery, drawn from an array of sources including newspapers, film, music videos, album covers, graphic novels, historic art and, crucially, his own photographs, including those taken on his smartphone, of his family. He also makes films, both in collaboration with his wife Anka and on his own. The result is a body of work that engages profoundly with contemporary life and the saturation of images that accompanies it. He discusses his array of source images and the process of choosing and using them, and how he has balanced the public and private across his career. He talks about risk-taking and allowing the paint to dictate the path of a picture. He reflects on how music was the spur for his discovery of art, and how it continues to be central to his work today. He talks about artists as diverse as Degas, Seurat, Sigmar Polke and Wolfgang Tillmans. And he answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: “What is art for?”
Wilhelm Sasnal, Sadie Coles HQ, Kingly St, London, until 16 March; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 30 March-1 September; Wilhelm’s film The Assistant will be screened later in 2024.
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Camille Henrot talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Henrot was born in 1978 in Paris and studied film at the École Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in the French capital. She uses drawing, painting, sculpture, installation and film to reflect on a huge range of subject matter, from anthropology and the climate emergency, to biodiversity and motherhood, to art history, literature and the excesses of the digital experience. At the heart of her practice is a concern with different forms of language and knowledge and how they are structured and composed. Her work emerges from deep research and is full of intriguing contradictions, awash with fragmentation and disruption yet pregnant with humour and delight. Henrot grapples with the stuff around us and within us; her art explores distinctively how the empirical and the subjective, the outer world and her own private realm, intersect. She discusses her early and enduring passion for the art of Saul Steinberg and Louise Bourgeois, a profound friendship with the architect and thinker Yona Friedman, finding a kindred experience in the work of Hélène Cixous and Clarice Lispector, her use of musical playlists in the studio, and her fascination with the sadistic violence of Disney cartoons. Plus, she gives insight into her life in the studio and has a profound answer to our ultimate question: “what is art for?”
Camille Henrot’s books Milkyways and Mother Tongue are published by Hatje Cantz and priced £22 and £48.
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Urs Fischer talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Born in 1973 in Zurich, Switzerland, Fischer makes work across multiple disciplines and media that defies categorisation. Whether he is working in photography, painting, drawing, sculpture or installation, he often upends the given characteristics of his medium. His art is in a state of constant transformation, being pushed and pulled in unexpected directions, often with a pronounced absurdity and always with a distinctive impact. He reflects on the experience of curating an exhibition of John Chamberlain’s work for Aspen Art Museum and how, if at all, it has affected his own practice. He discusses his early interest in Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Brueghel, why he recreated Giambologna’s Abduction of the Sabine Women (1579-83) in the form of a candle, and Rodin’s The Kiss (1882) from plasticine. He talks about Headz, the jazz and drawing workshop-cum-venue he created with Spencer Sweeney, and his experience of watching several movies in a single day. And he answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
John Chamberlain: The Tighter They’re Wound, The Harder They Unravel, curated by Urs Fischer, is at the Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, US, 15 December-7 April 2024.
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An in-depth conversation with the British artist Stephen Willats, one of the leading figures in conceptual art in Britain, who addresses societal issues while exploring the meanings and purposes of art in the wider world. Since the 1960s, Willats (born in London in 1943) has foregrounded ideas that have become more widespread in contemporary art today, including empowering the viewer as a participant, emphasising the role of community in forging his work, and collaborating with his subjects so that they are effectively co-authors. From the very start of his career, Willats eschewed what he has called the “norms and conventions of an object-based art world” and instead attempted to subvert what he views as “a deterministic culture of objects and monuments”. For him, art has a complex, interactive and dynamic social function. He discusses his interest in thinking related to theories of learning and communication, early forms of artificial intelligence, advertising theory, and cybernetics. He reflects on how working in a gallery as a teenager gave him access to artists at the vanguard of new approaches to creativity. He recalls his encounters with punk and the New Romantic scene of the 1970s and 1980s, and his response to these countercultural developments. And while he avoids answering most of our usual questions, he does respond to one or two, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Stephen Willats: Time Tumbler, Victoria Miro, London, until 13 January 2024
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Sutapa Biswas talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Biswas was born in Santinekethan, India, in 1962, and her work in painting, drawing, photography and video explores race and gender within the context of colonialism and its legacies. Made over five decades since the early 1980s, her art is both rigorously consistent in its themes and thrillingly diverse in mood and mode—by turns poetic, activist and even satirical. She discusses her studies in art and art history with Griselda Pollock, among others, at the University of Leeds in the 1980s, where she challenged the Eurocentric framing of the course, and made crucial early pieces including the painting Housewives with Steak-knives (1983-85). She reflects on her family history, and the traumatic journey to the UK from India, and how this haunts her work today. She discusses the influence of artists including Leonor Fini, Johannes Vermeer and Mary Kelly, film-makers like Satyajit Ray and Jean Cocteau, and writers including Marcel Proust. And she answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990, Tate Britain, London, until 7 April 2024; The Time of Our Lives, Drawing Room, London, 25 January-21 April 2024; Photographing 80s Britain: A Critical Decade, Tate Britain, London, 21 November 2024-5 May 2025.
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Torkwase Dyson talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Dyson, who was born in Chicago in 1973, uses abstraction as a means of exploring what she describes as “the ways Black and brown bodies perceive and negotiate space as information”. Painting is the fundament of her practice but she uses a variety of media, from drawing through sculpture and architecture to community practices and collaborative performance. The result is a body of work that is diagrammatic and scientific yet expressive and sensorial. It deconstructs natural and built environments in relation to the histories and legacies of enslavement, colonialism, capitalism and extractivist practices, while addressing the climate emergency and climate justice. She reflects on her concept of Black Compositional Thought and the “hypershapes” that appear in her work, discusses the profound role of the senses and embodiment in her practice, and acknowledges the rigour and discipline that underpin it. She describes the seismic effect on her of the paintings of Mary Lovelace O’Neal, reflects on her admiration of the work of Tony Smith and his daughter, fellow artist Kiki Smith, explains the effect of the writer Saidiya Hartman’s reflections on her work, and discusses a recent project responding to the music of Scott Joplin. And she answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
35th Bienal de São Paulo: Choreographies of the Impossible, until 10 December; 12th Seoul Mediacity Biennale: This Too, Is A Map, until 19 November 2023.
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An in-depth conversation with Sarah Lucas about her life and work. Lucas, born in London in 1962, is one of the most significant artists of her generation, both in Britain, where she was associated with the 1990s movement known as the Young British Artists, and internationally, where she has been the subject of several significant recent institutional exhibitions. Her practice primarily consists of sculpture, but it is often presented in distinctive installations in dialogue with photography, in the form of prints or wallpaper. Her work is characterised by sardonic and ribald humour, informed by colloquial British language but also shot through with feminist theory and social commentary. Formed from a wealth of materials, many of them everyday found objects like newspapers, food, furniture, cigarettes and clothing, her sculptures almost always evoke the body, however crudely reduced or abstracted. And while a humdrum frankness and bawdiness are ever-present, Lucas’s sense of the strange and the uncanny locate her work within the legacies of Dada, Surrealism and absurdist art in Europe and the US. She discusses her innovative approach to exhibition-making, and the liberating collaborations with Franz West that influenced them. She discusses how Yoko Ono informed some of her recent work. She reflects on an anarchic collaboration with the Austrian collective gelitin. Plus, she gives insight into her working practices and studio life.
Sarah Lucas: Happy Gas, Tate Britain, London, until 14 January 2024.
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Claudette Johnson talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Johnson, who was born in 1959 in Manchester, UK, and now lives in London, has created some of the most powerful figurative art of recent years. Working primarily in what she has called the “very small, twisted space offered to Black women”, she uses drawing and painting together in works that are bold yet sensitive, imposing in scale and intimate in their handling. She subverts the conventions of portraiture in her dramatic approach to composition and pose and in foregrounding the figure’s presence in the viewer’s space rather than establishing the context in which they are depicted. As a result, she confronts the historic invisibility, distortion and denial of Black subjects, and particularly Black women, in art. She discusses her discovery of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon at university and how it has proved both inspirational and problematic. She reflects on the huge importance of Lubaina Himid to her early career and the recent resurgence in her work. She recalls the impact of Toni Morrison’s fiction on her subject matter. And she eulogises Paula Rego’s approach to pastels, a key element in her work. Plus she answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Claudette Johnson: Presence, The Courtauld, London, 29 September-14 January 2024; Women in Revolt! , Tate Britain, 8 November-7 April 2024; The Time is Always Now, National Portrait Gallery, 22 February-19 May 2024. She has a solo presentation at The Barber Institute in Birmingham, UK, opening in late March and is taking on a commission from Art on the Underground in London, scheduled for November 2024.For web article:
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In the first of this new series of A brush with…, Yinka Shonibare talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work.
Shonibare was born in 1962 in London to Nigerian parents and moved to Lagos in Nigeria when he was a child. He returned to London for his fine art studies at Byam Shaw School of Art and Goldsmiths College. He explores race, class and constructions of cultural identity through sculpture, installation, painting, photography, film and other media. His signature material is Dutch wax fabric, which he is able endlessly to repurpose and recontextualise. He chose this material precisely for its complex and loaded history: it was originally inspired by Indonesian batik, mass-produced by the Dutch and then sold to European colonies in West Africa. Dutch wax fabric eventually became a signifier of independence and culture in Africa and its diaspora. Through references to Western art history, film and literature Shonibare uses this textile to playfully, even provocatively, explore the validity of national identities and the cultures that inform them. He discusses his perennial fascination with William Hogarth and Francisco Goya, and his admiration for contemporary artists as diverse as Cindy Sherman, David Hammons and Paul McCarthy, who he describes as “Hogarth x100”. He explains his love of opera—the total artwork—and contemporary dance. And he reflects on the consistent environmentalist strand in his work. Plus he gives insight into his studio life and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA: Free The Wind, The Spirit, and The Sun, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, 6 October-11 November; Yinka Shonibare CBE: Ritual Ecstasy of the Modern, Cristea Roberts Gallery, London, 22 September-4 November; Shonibare’s public work Hibiscus Rising, commissioned by the David Oluwale Memorial Association for Aire Park, Leeds, as part of Leeds 2023, is unveiled on 25 November. Between April and September 2024, Shonibare will have a solo exhibition at the Serpentine Galleries, London. He will also participate in Nigeria’s Pavilion at the 60th International Venice Biennale from April 2024.
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Analia Saban talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Saban, who was born in 1980 in Buenos Aires and now lives in Los Angeles, examines, unpacks and plays with the medium of painting. She explores its materiality, its iconography and its history, reflecting on the origin and hue of colour pigments and the properties of media, the weave of canvas, the nature of brushwork, the conventions of depiction, and more. Her approach is consistent with the strategies of conceptual art yet it is abundantly physical and visual. She discusses her decision to move her studies from film to art after an epiphanic visit to New York museums; her profound friendship with her tutor at the University of California, Los Angeles, John Baldessari, and how it affects the presence of humour in her work; the perfect balance in the music of Keith Jarrett; and how Julia Kristeva’s writings on abjection prompted some of the darker thoughts in her work. Plus, she gives insight into her life in the studio, and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Analia Saban: Synthetic Self, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles, and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Los Angeles, 15 September-28 October; Group exhibitions: Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma), 17 September–21 January 2024; Eternal Medium: Seeing the World in Stone, Lacma, until 11 February 2024; Chosen Memories: Contemporary Latin American Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift and Beyond, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, until 9 September.
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Alvaro Barrington talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. For Barrington—who was born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1983, but grew up in Grenada and Brooklyn—painting is the bedrock of a practice that incorporates installation, sculpture and found objects, textiles, the written word and community events. He weaves together broad references, drawing on his personal and cultural background, and hugely diverse influences—particularly from art history, literature, political thought, and music—to create arresting and often exuberant constellations of imagery and materials. He discusses his early interest in the Akira manga, his admiration for artists as diverse as Louise Bourgeois, Jeff Koons and Johannes Vermeer, the significance of Audre Lorde’s essay Poetry is Not a Luxury, and why he feels the hip-hop legend Tupac is the most significant artist of the last 40 years. He gives insight into life in the studio, and reflects on the importance of his move to London from New York in the 2010s. Plus, he answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Alvaro’s work will be at the Notting Hill Carnival on 27 and 28 August. Grandma’s Land, Sadie Coles HQ, London, 2 September-21 October; They Got Time, Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris Pantin, 18 October-27 January 2024; Nicola Vassell, New York, November-December, dates to be confirmed; Tate Britain commission, Tate Britain, London, spring 2024. Alvaro discusses Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, on the The Week in Art’s Vermeer Special.
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Mandy El-Sayegh talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. El-Sayegh, born in Selangor, Malaysia, in 1985 and now living in London, makes paintings, sculptures, installations, videos and performances that assemble disparate materials to explore the human body and mind within diverse social, cultural and political contexts. Moving freely and intuitively across these disciplines and media, she creates arresting correspondences between image and text, between the natural and the artificial, and between the senses and the intellect. She discusses growing up with a reproduction of Albrecht Dürer’s Christ on the Cross on the wall, the power of Paul Thek’s diverse work, her love of the South Korean artist Keunmin Lee’s paintings, the poetry of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and the films of David Cronenberg. Plus, she gives insight into life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: “what is art for?”
Mandy El-Sayegh, Interiors, Thaddaeus Ropac, London, 1-30 September; Mandy El-Sayegh: In-Session, Tichy Ocean Foundation, Zurich, until 30 November; the book The Makeshift Body: Mandy El-Sayegh, Black Dog Publishing, published in September, £29.95/$39.95
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In this first episode of a new series of A brush with…, Ben Luke talks to Larry Achiampong about his influences—from writers to film-makers, musicians and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Achiampong was born in London in 1984 to parents from Ghana, and he explores his personal and communal heritage through media including film, sculpture, installation, sound and performance. He uses diverse visual languages, drawn from popular culture like gaming, comics and Hollywood movies, as well as video art and conceptualism, to explore the legacies of colonisation and entrenched inequalities in contemporary society relating to class, gender and race. He veers from documentary to speculative fiction, often within the same piece. Achiampong discusses the profound early influence of Adrian Piper’s art and the films of Spike Lee, the poetry of Claudia Rankine, how he draws on video games and comics as well as art, and his rejection of the term Afrofuturism. Plus, he gives insight into his life in the studio, and reflects on our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Larry Achiampong: Wayfinder, BALTIC, Gateshead, UK, until 29 October 2023; Larry Achiampong and David Blandy: Genetic Automata, Wellcome Collection, London, until 11 February 2024.
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Ben Luke talks to Jeremy Deller about his influences—from writers to film-makers, musicians and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Deller, born in London in 1966, has created some of the most extraordinary works of recent decades, acting as a catalyst for exhibitions, films, events and happenings that often involve numerous collaborators. His works reflect on social movements, communities and countercultures, the history of art and design, pop-cultural forms and celebrated public figures. He discusses the early influence of Francis Bacon, how Mike Kelley was an important figure in defining the possibilities of art’s relationship with popular culture, the power of Gitta Sereny’s pivotal biography of Albert Speer, his ongoing engagement with music in various forms, and much more. Plus, he gives insight into his studio life and answers our usual questions—including the ultimate: “What is art for?”
Jeremy Deller, Art is Magic (book), Cheerio, £30/$60; Art is Magic (exhibition), Frac Bretagne, La Criée contemporary art centre and Musée des beaux-arts, Rennes, until 17 September; Jeremy Deller: Welcome to the Shitshow!, Kunsthalle Charlottenberg, Copenhagen, until 6 August.
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Ben Luke talks to Jacqueline Humphries about her influences—from writers to film-makers, musicians and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Humphries, born in 1960 in New Orleans, US, and now based in New York, is an artist who has pushed painting into new territories. She is mindful of the medium’s history but embraces technologies and explores their impact on this time-honoured discipline. Her practice, which now stretches across five decades from the late 1980s to today, is rigorous, irreverent and consistently surprising. She discusses the early influence of Édouard Manet and a late revelation about Caravaggio, key relationships with fellow painters like Charlene von Heyl, her admiration of The Fall’s Mark E. Smith, and her fascination with the video game Dwarf Fortress. Plus she answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: What is art for?
Jacqueline Humphries, Modern Art, Helmet Row and Bury Street, London, until 22 July; We Smell Gas, Reena Spaulings, New York, until 25 June; From Andy Warhol to Kara Walker: Scenes from the Collection, Museum Brandhorst, Munich, Germany, until 14 July; To Bend the Ear of the Outer World: Conversations on contemporary abstract painting, Gagosian, London, until 25 August.
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Ben Luke talks to Gary Simmons about his influences—from musicians to writers, film-makers, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Simmons, born in New York in 1964 and based in Los Angeles, is a significant figure in a generation of politically engaged, artistically ambitious US artists that emerged in the early 1990s. Gary explores the complexities of race and class through media including drawings on chalkboards, sculpture, installation, architectural environments and painting. He draws on diverse references, including from pop culture like cartoons and sports, to create works that address systemic and enduring prejudice and the nature of memory. Gary’s language is deeply personal and informed by his own experiences but also calls on imagery with collective, if unstable, meanings.
Gary Simmons: Public Enemy, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 13 June-1 October, Pérez Art Museum Miami, 5 December-24 April 2024. Gary Simmons: This Must Be the Place, Hauser & Wirth, London, until 29 July.
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In March this year, we went to Finsbury Park in London to the home of Phyllida Barlow to interview her for the A brush with… podcast. Tragically, Phyllida died just a few days later. So this conversation is a tribute to one of the most significant British artists of recent years. Ardently committed to sculpture and convinced of its special power, she was coruscatingly erudite and perceptive, yet also irreverent and suspicious of orthodoxies. This was evident in her combinations of simple materials such as wood, plaster and scrim, cement, paint and fabric in extraordinary sculptures and installations. She managed to achieve at once awkwardness and grace, humour and pathos, the grand and the intimate. Among much else, Phyllida discusses the morality imposed on sculpture in her art school days, the underacknowledged “dirty side of making” in Marcel Duchamp’s work, her admiration for Louise Nevelson and Eduardo Chillida, the writing of Fyodor Dostoevsky and the films of Robert Bresson. Plus she answers our usual questions, including a moving response to the ultimate question, “What is art for?”
Phyllida Barlow, Chillida Leku, Hernani, near San Sebastian, Spain, until 22 October; The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Toronto, 8 September-4 February 2024.
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Ben Luke talks to Alfredo Jaar about his influences—from writers to film-makers, musicians and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Jaar, who was born in 1956, in Santiago, Chile and has been based in New York since the early 1980s, addresses social injustice, human suffering, state-sponsored violence, and imbalances in power between the global north and south. He also explores how these issues are framed in the international media. He has responded to some of the most troubling moments in recent human history, from the military coup in his native Chile in 1973 and its aftermath, to the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s, to wars and covert operations waged by Western powers over multiple decades, and the relentless displacement of refugees across the world. He has done so through uncompromising, searing, yet often deeply moving installations in multiple media. Among much else, he discusses the profound influence of John Cage, Hans Haacke and Marcel Duchamp, his fascination with Pier Paolo Pasolini, a transformative experience watching Simone Forti, and the poetry of Ben Okri. Plus, he gives insight into his studio life, and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: “What is art for?”
Alfredo Jaar: If It Concerns Us, It Concerns You, Goodman Gallery, London 18 April-24 May; Alfredo Jaar: 50 Years Later, Cecilia Brunson Projects, London, 19 April – 19 May 2023. One Million German Passports, Pinakothek del Moderne, Munich, 29 March-27 August; Alfredo exhibition for the 11th Hiroshima Art Prize at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan, 22 July-15 October, and an exhibition at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago, Chile, opens on 14 September.
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Ben Luke talks to Marguerite Humeau about her influences—from writers to film-makers, musicians and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work.
Humeau was born in 1986 in the French city of Cholet, near Nantes, and lives in London. She creates extraordinary sculptural environments in which the scientific and the speculative are fused. She acknowledges the perilous present state of the planet and the future of humanity while exploring histories of life on earth across millennia, drawing on mainstream and fringe scientific theory, science fiction and various cultural phenomena, to create dramatic tableaux that are hugely distinctive in their visual language and subject matter. She asks fundamental questions about the world we inhabit and the meaning of human existence. She discusses her early love of the painting of Marlene Dumas, her awe at the work of Pierre Huyghe and how Nina Simone is an ongoing role model. She also reflects on her fascination with Leonora Carrington and the musicians Angel Bat Dawid and Bendik Giske. Plus, she gives insight into her studio life and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: “What is art for?”
Marguerite Humeau: meys, White Cube Bermondsey, London, until 14 May; Orisons, Black Cube, San Luis Valley, Colorado, 24 June-June 2025.
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Ben Luke talks to Mike Nelson about his influences—from the worlds of literature, film, music and, of course, art—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Nelson, born in 1967 in Loughborough in the UK, is one of the most significant British sculptors and installation artists of this century. He has spent the past three decades assembling materials gathered in junkyards, flea markets, online auctions, even street-corner fly tips into often labyrinthine sculptural environments. He creates distinctive spaces that suggest fictional (and often science-fictional) narratives, while alluding to diverse histories, obscure countercultural or political movements and current affairs as well as his own biography. He discusses the early influence of Graham Sutherland and Francis Bacon, his elation at discovering the work of Paul Thek, how fiction—and science-fiction writers like Stanislaw Lem, J.G. Ballard and the Strugatsky brothers—liberated his approach to art making, and the enduring influence of film-makers including Jean-Luc Godard and Sergei Parajanov.
Mike Nelson: Extinction Beckons, Hayward Gallery, London, until 7 May.
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In the first episode of this new series of A brush with… Ben Luke talks to Matthew Krishanu about his influences—including writers, composers, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work.
Krishanu, who was born in 1980 in Bradford, UK, is one of Britain’s most distinctive painters. He draws on specific photographic images, including those of his family and his childhood in Bangladesh, yet his paintings are richly ambiguous, as he complicates his source material through emotion, memory, geopolitics, references to art history and literature, and the poetics of paint itself. He discusses the transformative experience of seeing Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work, the ongoing influence of El Greco, his response to the work of Gwen John and the art in the caves of Ajanta in India, and his oeuvre’s intimate connection with literature, film and music. Plus, he gives insight into his studio life and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Matthew Krishanu, Anomie Publishing, 196pp, £30/€35/$40 (hb). Out now in the UK and Europe, published 20 April in the US. Exhibitions: Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai, 13 July-19 August; Tanya Leighton, Los Angeles, 11 November-11 December (tbc).
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Ben Luke talks to Amy Sillman about her influences—including writers, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Sillman, who was born in 1955 in Detroit, Michigan, grew up in Chicago, and lives and works in New York, is one of the most brilliant and original painters working today. Her art is steeped in the history of painting, but manages to build on traditions while also taking an irreverent and playful approach to the medium’s time-honoured qualities: colour, line, scale, shape, figure and ground. She also pushes her painting into experimental territory through animated drawings and zines. Among a wealth of references, she discusses the early influence of Saul Steinberg, her passion for the work of artists as diverse as Prunella Clough, Maria Lassnig and Howard Hodgkin, and the enduring influence of Gertrude Stein and Fred Moten. She reflects on a life-changing trip to India and the diverse cultural landscape of late-1970s New York. Plus, she gives insight into her life in the studio and answers the ultimate question: what is art for?
Amy Sillman: Temporary Object, Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples, from 26 April. Faux Pas: Selected Writings and Drawings, After 8 Books, 300pp, €20/£20/£24.95 (pb); amysillman.com
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Ben Luke talks to Joan Jonas about her influences—including those from the worlds of literature, film, music and, of course, art—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work.
Jonas, who was born in 1936 in New York and still lives in the city today, is one of the most significant and pioneering artists in the history of video and performance. She draws inspiration from a wealth of cultures and traditions, alluding to everything from fairy tales to ancient myths, scientific study and art history, and brings them together in multidisciplinary installations involving live action, drawing, spoken word, music, sound and video. She discusses her early interest in Minoan culture and Renaissance depictions of space, life-changing visits to Japan and Iceland, and writers as diverse as Jorge Luis Borges, Halldór Laxness, and Susan Howe. Plus, she gives insights into her studio life and has a stirring answer to the ultimate question: what is art for?
Joan Jonas: Moving off the Land, Walther König, 272 pp, €25. Drawing in Circles, with Eiko Otake, Castelli Gallery, New York, 14 March-1 April; Joan Jonas, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, until 26 February. Joan Jonas, Dia Art Foundation, Beacon, NY, US, until 13 March. Her retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, opens in spring 2024
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Ben Luke talks to Haroon Mirza about his influences—from writers to composers and musicians, film-makers and, of course, artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Mirza, born in London in 1977, creates installations using sound, light, objects and video. These complex and evolving experiences immerse the viewer in varied sensory phenomena while building fascinating connections between their materials, formally and in the meanings they produce. He reflects on his early interest in Salvador Dalí’s sense of space and time; the impact of seeing the exhibition Sensation in 1997 at the Royal Academy in London; the relationship between science and science fiction; and the complex process of translating ideas from his head to a practical language. We gain insight into Mirza’s studio life and daily rituals and he answers the ultimate question: what is art for?
Haroon Mirza, Lisson Gallery, London, 24 February-8 April. You can listen to Haroon’s Modular Opera EP at haroonmirza.bandcamp.com
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British painter Tess Jaray talks to Ben Luke about her influences—including those from the worlds of literature, music and, of course, art—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work.For more than 60 years, Jaray relentlessly explored pictorial and architectural space through abstract painting. Born in Vienna in 1937 but based in the UK since she was a child, she achieved notable success early in her career but is only now gaining the recognition that she has long deserved for building one of the most singular and consistent bodies of work in recent British painting. Steeped in the history of her medium, she balances hard edges and precise handling with a distinctive colour sense that lends it a powerful emotional resonance.
Among much else, she discusses her instinctive response to the landscape of Worcestershire, England, where she grew up; the impact of the New York School on the UK art scene of the 1960s; her trip to Morocco in Henri Matisse’s footsteps; the enduring influence of Italian architecture and painting; and her friendship with the writer W.G. Sebald. Plus, she gives insight into her studio life and answers the ultimate question: what is art for?
Tess Jaray, Karsten Schubert, London, 16 March-15 April. Gwangju Biennale: Soft and Weak Like Water, Gwangju, South Korea, 7 April-9 July.
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Ben Luke talks to Alicja Kwade about her influences—including writers, musicians and, of course, artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Kwade, born in 1979 in Katowice, Poland, and based in Berlin, makes spellbinding sculptural installations that play with perception and question the structures of reality and society. She grapples with philosophical concerns and draws on scientific and mathematic theory, while engaging with time-honoured sculptural properties—space, material, weight and surface. She discusses her early, and ongoing, interest in Gordon Matta-Clark, Leonardo and Jean-Paul Sartre; how music helps her create in the studio; and how, as she has said, “My muse is the blank space, the not-knowing and not-understanding.” Plus, she answers our usual questions, including: “What is art for?”
Alicja Kwade: Petrichor, 303 Gallery, New York, until 17 December. In Relation to the Sun, to Sequences of Events within 8016 Hours, i8 Gallery, Reykjavik, until 22 December 2022
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Ben Luke talks to Nick Cave about his influences—including those from the worlds of literature, music, film and, of course, art—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Cave, born in Fulton, Missouri, US, in 1959, creates elaborate sculptures and found-object installations. He’s best known for his Soundsuits, which blend sculpture, performance, fashion and social activism. His work veers from the intimate and homespun object to vast installations and performances involving multiple participants. Among much else, he discusses his early encounters with the work of Anselm Kiefer and Barkley Hendricks; his passion for the couture of Elsa Schiaparelli; the enduring influence of George Clinton’s Parliament/Funkadelic; and a seminal sequence in the film The Wiz. Plus, he answers all our usual questions, including the ultimate one: what is art for?
Nick Cave: Forothermore, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, until 10 April 2023. In the Black Fantastic, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Netherlands, until 9 April 2023.
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Ben Luke talks to the British artist Helen Marten about her influences—including those from the worlds of literature, music, and, of course, art—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Marten works in sculpture, text and screen-printed paintings and has created a complex language of forms with a remarkable breadth of materials. Her works entice us to make associations and draw meanings, while remaining richly ambiguous. She discusses her early interest in Joan Miró and Robert Rauschenberg, her enduring passion for the art of Martin Kippenberger and Charline von Heyl, and her absorption in the writing of Roland Barthes as well as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Plus, she reflects on life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate one: what is art for?
Helen is co-curator and exhibition designer for Hervé Télémaque: A Hopscotch of the Mind, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, US, until 26 March 2023.
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Ben Luke talks to Theaster Gates about his influences—including writers, musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Gates is an artist whose every gesture is transformative, whether that’s in the form of social projects in his native Chicago, works repurposing found materials from significant disused spaces in the city, presentations honouring and reimagining collections of materials he’s gathered over time, or the ceramic sculptures that were his earliest medium and remain at the heart of his work today. He discusses his engagement with artists as diverse as El Lissitzky, Agnes Martin and Arthur Jafa; his transformative encounters with Martin Puryear and bell hooks; how he came to be custodian of Chicago House pioneer Frankie Knuckles’s personal vinyl collection; and his abiding passion for ceramics, which, he says, are “made for the eternal as much as they are made for tea”. Gates also gives insight into his life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate one: what is art for?
Theaster Gates: Young Lords and Their Traces, New Museum, New York, until 5 February 2023; Vestment, Gagosian, New York, until 23 December; A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, Baltimore Museum of Art, until 29 January 2023.
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Ben Luke talks to John Akomfrah about his influences—including writers, musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work.
Akomfrah was born in Accra, Ghana, in 1957 but has been based in London since he was a child. From his early years with the Black Audio Film Collective to his recent works as a solo artist, he has explored major issues—including racial injustice, colonialist legacies, diasporic identities, migration and climate change—through a distinctive approach to memory and history. First shown on television and in the cinema, his films are increasingly made for museums and galleries, in the form of ambitious, often epic, multi-screen video installations. He is one of the great film-makers of the last few decades. He discusses discovering Jackson Pollock through Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz album, his early experiences of the Tate Gallery and ongoing love of J.M.W. Turner’s paintings, his passion for John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, and his enduring engagement with music from post-punk to John Luther Adams. He also gives us insight into his studio life and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate one: what is art for?
John Akomfrah: Purple, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C., 28 October–summer 2023; The Unfinished Conversation, Tate Britain, London, until the end of 2022. A new work will be shown at the Sharjah Biennial, 7 February-11 June 2023, and The Box, Plymouth, UK, from December 2023.
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Ben Luke talks to William Kentridge about his influences—from the worlds of literature, music, film and, of course, art—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Kentridge was born in 1955 in Johannesburg, South Africa, and began his career making large-scale drawings. But his work has grown to encompass film and video installation, sculpture, tapestry, sound, performance, and puppetry. It teems with imagery and ideas, reflecting on his autobiography, on the inequities of Apartheid South Africa, but also on broader histories from colonialism to communism and beyond. He discusses being surrounded by Miró and Matisse as a child, his homages to Beckmann and Manet, the enduring power of composers like Shostakovich and early filmmakers like Georges Méliès, and the poetry of Vladimir Mayakovsky. Plus, he gives insight into life in his studio, and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
William Kentridge, Royal Academy of Arts, London, until 11 December; William Kentridge: Oh To Believe in Another World, Goodman Gallery, London, 1 October-12 November. William Kentridge: In Praise of Shadows, the Broad, Los Angeles, 12 November-9 April 2023. William Kentridge: That Which We Do Not Remember, M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum Of Art, Kaunas, Lithuania, until 30 November. Kentridge’s series of short films, Self Portrait as a Coffee Pot, is shown at the ICA, London, as part of the BFI London Film Festival on 7 October.
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Ben Luke talks to Anicka Yi about her influences—from the worlds of literature, music and, of course, art—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Yi creates installations and objects that sit on the borders of art and science. Drawing on research into biology, and particularly macrobiotics, but embedded in geopolitics, Yi’s work calls for a deep sensory engagement from the viewer, with smell as important as sight. In fusing different categories of knowledge, she questions what she calls “the increasingly hazy taxonomic distinctions between what is human, animal, plant and machine”. She discusses being “possessed” by the formal language of Isamu Noguchi and inspired by the breadth of Rosemarie Trockel’s work; she reflects on the impact of John Ashbery’s poetry and how Donna Haraway prompted her series When Species Meet (2016). Plus, she gives insight into life in her studio (and how it compares to a laboratory) and answers our usual questions, including: what is art for?
Anicka Yi, Gladstone Gallery, 24th Street, New York, 6 October-12 November
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In this 50th episode of A brush with…, Ben Luke talks to Glenn Brown about his influences—from writers to film-makers, musicians and, of course, artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Brown (born in Hexham, UK, in 1966) takes reproductions of other artists’ works—including those by Old Masters, the greats of Modern art and science-fiction illustrators—and transforms them by changing their colour, orientation and size. It leads to paintings, drawings and sculptures that are often grotesque and macabre but always strangely enticing and resonant. He discusses his early love of the art of horror and fantasy, his ongoing fascination with Salvador Dalí, his admiration for artists as diverse as Hendrick Goltzius and Maria Lassnig, the impact of Andrei Tarkovsky’s films, the writing of T.S. Eliot and Samuel Beckett, and how growing up during the Cold War influenced the music he listened to and the art he makes today. Plus, he gives intimate insight into his working life and answers our usual questions, including “What is art for?”.
Glenn Brown: We’ll Keep On Dancing Till We Pay the Rent, Gagosian, West 24th Street, New York, 10 November-23 December; Things: A History of Still Life Since Prehistoric Times, Musée du Louvre, Paris, 13 October-23 January 2023; Glenn Brown: The Real Thing, Landesmuseum and Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany, 23 February-24 June 2023; The Brown Collection, Brown’s museum of his own work, opens in Bentinck Mews, Marylebone, London, in October 2022. Visit Glenn’s website glenn-brown.co.uk for more details.
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Ben Luke talks to Adam Pendleton about his influences—from the worlds of literature, music and, of course, art—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Pendleton, born in 1984 in Richmond, Virginia, makes paintings, drawings, performances, films and other works exploring the relationship between Blackness, abstraction and histories of the avant-garde. He is perhaps best known for an ongoing body of work he calls Black Dada. He discusses the influences behind Black Dada, from the poetry of Amiri Baraka to the sculpture of Sol LeWitt, reflects on the drawings of Jean Dubuffet and the drafts and revisions of Joan Jonas’s work, and enthuses about the power of Nina Simone’s voice and Julius Eastman’s compositions. Plus, he gives insight into his studio life and answers the ultimate question: what is art for?
Adam Pendleton: In Abstraction, Pace Gallery, Geneva, 7 September-5 October; Adam Pendleton: Toy Soldier, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, 10 September-26 November. Whitney Biennial: Quiet as It’s Kept, Whitney Museum of American Art, until 5 September. Adam Pendleton, Mumok, Vienna, 31 March-10 September 2023.
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Ben Luke talks to Pierre Huyghe about his influences—including writers, musicians and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Huyghe was born in 1962 in Paris and today lives and works in New York. He has experimented over more than 30 years with the form of exhibitions and the very nature of art. His works are complex systems involving a host of elements, from lifeforms including plants, animals and microorganisms, to inanimate objects and technologies. He pays particular attention to the spaces in which these disparate factors come together and bleed into each other, leading to constantly evolving, strange and often spellbinding experiences. He discusses his early interest in the “multiplicity of things” in Yves Tanguy and Hieronymus Bosch; his admiration for artists today, including Daniel Buren and three previous guests on A brush with…, Mark Leckey, Philippe Parreno and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster; his response to the musical works of John Cage; and his 1990s projects exploring the cinema of Pasolini and Hitchcock, among others. Plus, he gives insights into his daily studio life and answers the ultimate question: what is art for?
Pierre Huyghe’s permanent work Variants is at Kistefos, Jevnaker, Norway. Pierre Huyghe: Offspring, Kunsten Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg, Denmark, until 30 October. Une seconde d’éternité, Bourse de Commerce, Paris, until 26 September.
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Ben Luke talks to the Canadian-Korean artist Zadie Xa about her influences—from the worlds of literature, film, music and, of course, art—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Xa was born in 1983 in Vancouver, Canada, and is now based in London. She explores folklore and speculative fiction, familial and collective histories, diasporic identity and the climate emergency through painting, sculpture, film and performance, often brought together in fantastical installations. She talks about artists from Lee Bul to Hieronymus Bosch and Kara Walker; her interest in Korean folk art and folk tales; how she returns to the science fiction novels of Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia E. Butler; and the early and ongoing influence of hip hop and rappers like Cam’ron. Plus, she gives insight into her life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Zadie Xa: House Gods, Animal Guides and Five Ways 2 Forgiveness, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 20 September-May 2023; The Condition of Being Addressable, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, until 4 September; Hospital Rooms: Like there is hope and I can dream of another world, Hauser & Wirth, London, 19 August-14 September; Wonder Women, Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, 3 September-22 October; Soy Dreams of Milk, Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong, from 10 September; The New Bend, curated by Legacy Russell, Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles, 27 October-30 December; The Horror Show: a Twisted Tale of Modern Britain, Somerset House Studios, London, 27 October-19 February 2023; Jeju Biennale, Jeju Island, South Korea, 16 November-12 February 2023
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Ben Luke talks to Lina Iris Viktor about her influences—including writers, film-makers, musicians, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Born in the UK in 1987, the Liberian-British artist works in painting, sculpture, photography, performance and installation. She creates works that reflect on her own identity amid broader themes—history and geopolitics, astrophysics and maths, ancient myths and belief systems—to explore universal implications of blackness. Among much else, she discusses her love of Rebecca Horn’s Concert for Anarchy (1990); the influence of Chris Ofili, Louise Nevelson and Seydou Keïta; her enduring engagement with the writing of Jun'ichirō Tanazaki and Sylvia Plath; and her response to the films of Ingmar Bergman and Carl Dreyer. And, as usual, we find out about her life in the studio, and ask the ultimate question: what is art for?
In the Black Fantastic, Hayward Gallery, London, until 18 September; Rite of Passage: Lina Iris Viktor with César, Louise Bourgeois, Louise Nevelson and Yves Klein, LGDR, London, until 17 September
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Ben Luke talks to Megan Rooney about her influences—including other artists, writers and musicians—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Rooney was born in 1985 in South Africa, but grew up in Brazil and then in Canada, before studying in London. She works in performance, sculpture and painting and has gained particular attention recently for the vast murals she has made in several international museums. Among much else, she discusses the transformative experience of seeing Henry Moore at the National Gallery of Ontario; a life-changing moment seeing works made on the walls by women prisoners in the Carceri dell’Inquisizione, Palermo, Sicily; and about the writing of Maxine Kumin and Haruki Murakami. Plus, Rooney answers our regular questions, including those about the pictures on her studio wall, her daily working rituals and the artwork she would choose to live with, as well as the ultimate one: what is art for?
Megan Rooney’s With Sun is in Fugues in Colour, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, until 29 August. She is also in the group exhibition Saturation, Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, Paris, until 24 September. She will have a solo exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, in early 2023.
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Ben Luke talks to Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster about her influences—from other artists to writers, film-makers and musicians—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Gonzalez-Foerster is one of the leading European artists of her generation. Born in 1965 in Strasbourg, France, she works primarily with installation but her artistic language is enormously diverse, taking in film and video, sculpture, holograms, sound, virtual reality and even smell. Her pieces range from spectacular immersive environments to enigmatic neon texts, and they draw on a wealth of references, from literature and cinema to opera and architecture. In the conversation, she discusses her early fascination with the Musée Gustave Moreau in Paris and with historic forms of public entertainment. She reflects on the “almost traumatic” impact of seeing Marcel Duchamp’s work for the first time, her friendship with Felix Gonzalez-Torres, reading Peter Pan, her late discovery of opera and her abiding love of film.
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster: Alienarium 5, Serpentine South Gallery, London, until 4 September. Her work OPERA (QM.15) (2016) is at the Bourse de Commerce, Paris, until 2 January 2023.
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Ben Luke talks to Emma Talbot about her influences, including writers, film-makers, musicians, and, of course, other artists, and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Talbot (born in Stourbridge, UK, in 1969) brings together drawing, painting, text, sculpture and animation in installations that fuse a personal response to her internal emotional world with societal and geopolitical issues, from feminism to capitalism and climate change. She talks about her love of the Sienese early Renaissance artist Sassetta; her troubled response to Gustav Klimt’s Three Ages of Woman (1905) and how she has used it as the basis for a new body of work made for the Max Mara Art Prize for Women; how she returns to the novels of George Orwell and Edna O’Brien; and the profound effect of Federico Fellini’s films, including Satyricon (1969). Plus, she answers our regular questions about her studio life, the art she would most like to live with, and, ultimately, what art is for.
Emma Talbot: The Age/L’Età, Max Mara Art Prize for Women, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 30 June-4 September; Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy, 23 October-19 February 2023. Emma Talbot’s work is included in The Milk of Dreams at the 59th Venice Biennale, until 27 November 2022.
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Ben Luke talks to Stan Douglas about his influences—including writers, film-makers, musicians, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Douglas is a video artist and photographer—one of the leading pioneers of video installation and large-scale photography. He scrutinises these different media and explores how they shape our understanding of reality, through often unexpected connections between contemporary and historical events, and rich references to music and literature. Douglas discusses his early interest in Marcel Duchamp, the enduring power of artists as diverse as Francisco de Goya and Agnes Martin, his endless fascination with Samuel Beckett, and how his love of Miles Davis’s underrated album On the Corner prompted one of his best works, Luanda-Kinshasa (2013).
Stan Douglas’s project for the 59th Venice Biennale, 2011 ≠ 1848, is in the Canadian Pavilion in the Giardini and the Magazzini del Sale, Venice, until 27 November.
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Cornelia Parker talks to Ben Luke about her influences, including artists, writers, film-makers, composers and musicians, and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work.
Parker, born in 1956 in Crewe, Cheshire, north-west England, makes works ranging from dramatic room-filling installations to subtle, ephemeral objects— some of the most profound, witty and thought-provoking art of recent decades. Common to her work are acts of transformation, from the violent to the surreal and the whimsical. She takes found objects and substances and through hugely varied processes lends them new, often multilayered, meanings. She discusses her early love of J.M.W. Turner, and the work she eventually made linking Turner with Mark Rothko. She recalls wrapping Auguste Rodin’s The Kiss with a mile of string, in a reference to Marcel Duchamp, and the controversy this intervention prompted in the press. She talks about the increasing concern with politics in her work, including two new works made for her Tate Britain retrospective opening in May 2022. And she answers the questions we ask all our guests, including those about the museum she visits the most, her daily studio rituals, and, ultimately, what art is for.
Cornelia Parker, Tate Britain, London, 19 May-16 October
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Mark Leckey tells Ben Luke about the influences—from art to literature, film and music—and cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Leckey’s enormously varied and experimental work sits on the cusp of digital and analogue worlds. Using video, sound, performance and installation, he explores the meanings and effects of images, consumer products, media and technologies, alongside themes including class and capitalism, interwoven with personal and collective histories. Deeply subjective and emotional, yet seeking universal truths, Leckey’s practice has made him one of the most influential artists working today. He discusses his preoccupation with pre-Renaissance icons, his early interest in Mexican Muralism, the influence of Lutz Bacher and Mike Kelley, his fascination with a range of musical artists, and his use of YouTube, TikTok and other platforms in making his work. Plus, he answers our questions about daily rituals, the one work of art he would choose to live with, and the ultimate question: what is art for?
Mark Leckey, Cabinet, London, until 30 April. You can find his latest works, as well as previous pieces like Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore and Dream English Kid on Mark’s YouTube channel.
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Ali Cherri talks to Ben Luke about his influences, from art to literature, film and music, and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Cherri works with film, sculpture, installation, drawing, painting and other media to explore geopolitical and cultural histories, the loaded sites of museums, and the meanings and practices of archaeology. He was born in 1976 in Beirut at the beginning of the Lebanese civil war and, as we hear, growing up in Lebanon in this period inevitably marked his life and ultimately the art he would make. As well as talking about growing up in Beirut, he discusses his National Gallery exhibition, prompted by his residency at the gallery, his exploration of what he calls the “politics of visibility”, his use of taxidermied animals and his experiences at antiques auctions. Among the huge range of cultural figures he discusses are David Hockney, Ilya Kabakov, Man Ray, Donna Haraway and Tsai Ming-liang. He also responds to the questions we ask all our guests, about the objects he has in his studio, his daily rituals, and the ultimate question: “what is art for?”
Ali Cherri: If you prick us, do we not bleed?, National Gallery, London, until 12 June. Ali Cherri will feature in the main exhibition of the 59th Venice Biennale, The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani, 23 April-27 November.
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Ben Luke talks to Ai Weiwei about his influences, from art to literature, film and music, and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Ai, born in Beijing in 1957, is an artist who needs little introduction; he is among the most famous artists in the world, principally due to the activism which led him to be incarcerated in his native China for months without charge in 2011. Since his release he has not let up and he continues to be a thorn in the Chinese government’s side, relentlessly documenting and publicly speaking out against its attacks on freedom and manifold other human rights abuses. And while this conversation addresses his political activities it also explores his wider work, including the early objects inspired by Marcel Duchamp, his first pieces made with ancient Chinese ceramics, his middle-finger salutes, Study of Perspective, and the huge actions, like Fairytale at Documenta in 2007, for which he has come to be best known. He also answers the questions we ask all our guests, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Ai Weiwei: The Liberty of Doubt is at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, UK, until 19 June. His show Intertwine is at the Serralves Museum in Porto, Portugal, until 9 July. The opera Turandot is at the Rome Opera House from 22-31 March. His book, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, is published by Bodley Head in the UK, priced £25 and Crown in the US, priced $32.
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Ben Luke talks to Allison Katz about her influences in the realms of literature, music and, of course, art, and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Born in Montreal in 1980, Katz is an artist who probes the complexities of painting, drawing on diverse imagery, a range of painterly techniques and distinctive forms of display to create environments that are by turns delightful and perplexing, but always enthralling. The longer you spend in the company of Katz’s work, the more the associations, the playful connections, and the fundamental rigour of her thinking emerge. In this conversation, she discusses the influence of being a life model at a young age, and making numerous “portraits” of a painting of a woman by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. She reflects on paintings by Edgar Degas and Andrea del Verrocchio, among others, discusses how the poet and translator Richard Howard helped her read poetry and see that frivolity could be serious, and expresses wonder at British radio programmes, including sporting commentary. And she answers the questions we ask all our guests, including the ultimate one: what is art for?
Allison Katz: Artery, Camden Art Centre, London, until 13 March. That exhibition originated in a slightly different form at Nottingham Contemporary, and a catalogue accompanying the two versions of the show will be published in early 2023. An exhibition of Katz’s posters is at Canada House, London, until 26 March. Her paintings are in The Milk of Dreams, the central exhibition at the Venice Biennale, 23 April-27 November. She has a solo exhibition at Luhring Augustine, New York, in September.
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Ben Luke talks to Charles Ray about his influences and the cultural experiences that shape his life and work. Ray, born in 1953 and based in Los Angeles, is one of the most singular voices in contemporary sculpture, with a extraordinary grasp of the key elements of the discipline—space, material, surface, scale, weight and mass—and a unique approach to imagery, drawing on a huge range of sources to create absorbing, yet deeply ambiguous works. Carved and cast by hand and using cutting-edge technology, they often take years to come to fruition, and are made and remade in a variety of different patterns and prototypes in a range of materials and scales before being completed. Ray engages deeply with the history of sculpture, and in this conversation reflects on his admiration for everything from Anthony Caro’s abstract metal sculpture Early One Morning to the ancient Greek Great Eleusinian Relief. He also reflects on the significance to his work of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and the importance of his daily walks to his practice. Plus, he answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
The exhibition Charles Ray is at the Bourse de Commerce and the Centre Pompidou in Paris from the 16 February and continues until 6 June at the Bourse and until 20 June at the Pompidou. Charles’s exhibition Figure Ground is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York until 5 June. Charles is in this year’s Whitney Biennial, called Quiet as it’s Kept, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, from 6 Apr–5 Sept. And the third special installation of Ray’s works at Glenstone, Potomac, Maryland continues until spring 2023.
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In this first episode of 2022, Ben Luke talks to Dayanita Singh about her influences, from art to literature, music and film, and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Singh, who was born in 1961 in New Delhi, India, is one of the most pioneering photographers of recent decades. She resists the idea of a single, decisive image, and instead presents her richly diverse, poetic photographs in the context of constructed environments, bespoke archival structures and artists’ books. She continues to push the presentation of her photography in new directions. In the conversation, she recalls how her mother’s photography was a “traumatic” part of her childhood and remembers an early opportunity to photograph the celebrated tabla player Zakir Hussain. She talks about her passion for the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke and Michael Ondaatje, the revelatory visits to Shankar’s Dolls Museum in Delhi, and about her remarkable project documenting Mona, a lifelong friend and collaborator. Plus, she answers all our usual questions, including the ultimate one: what is art for?
Dayanita Singh: Dancing with My Camera, Gropius Bau, Berlin, 18 March-7 August 2022. The exhibition tours to Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, MUDAM Luxembourg, the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, and Les Rencontres d’Arles, France.
This podcast is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects.
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Ben Luke talks to Kehinde Wiley about his influences, including artists, writers, composers, musicians and filmmakers, and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Perhaps more than any other contemporary artist, Wiley has situated himself within the history of Western portrait painting. He makes direct reference to the art of the past, quoting from artists like Holbein, Titian, Rubens, Gainsborough and David, but replacing the royal, noble and ecclesiastical figures depicted by the Old Masters with ordinary people he has encountered on the street. These “moments of impact” happen mostly in New York, where he lives much of the time, but also—in his grand ongoing project The World’s Stage—in cities in Jamaica, India, Haiti, Nigeria, Brazil and beyond.
As well as his project at the National Gallery in London, Wiley discusses the early influence of John Singer Sargent, his latest works relating to Caspar David Friedrich, the influence of museums like The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens and a formative visit to the Soviet Union. Plus he tells us what work of art he would most like to live with and ponders the ultimate question: what is art for? This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects.
Kehinde Wiley, The Prelude, National Gallery, London, until 18 April 2022; The Obama Portraits Tour is at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art until 2 Jan 2022. He features in 30 Americans, Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina, until 17 January 2022. And his work is in Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear, at Victoria and Albert museum, London, from 19 March 2022.
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Isaac Julien talks to Ben Luke about his influences, from art to literature, music and film, and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work.
Julien's films and video installations are often swooningly beautiful, and always deeply engaged in diverse cultural histories, reflecting on, among other things, diaspora and Blackness, queer identity and the movement of people. His work actively involves other art forms, and is often produced from collaborations with choreographers and actors. He responds repeatedly to the art, literature and cinema of the past, but is also pushing video installation into new territory, using multiple screens—sometimes as many as ten—to create fractured narratives which envelop the viewer, encouraging distinctive readings of the complex stories he tells, and constantly expanding the frames through which we see his subject matter.
He discusses the epiphany of seeing Max Beckmann at the Whitechapel Gallery, his admiration for Peter Doig, Stan Douglas and Glenn Ligon, the influence of poets including Aimé Césaire and Derek Walcott, the architect Lina Bo Bardi, the cultural scene in London when he began his film-making journey in the 1980s, and discovering, in his archive, his student photographs of early 1980s protests against police brutality—images that he had forgotten he had even taken. Plus, he answers our familiar questions, including the ultimate one: what is art for? This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects.
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Billie Zangewa talks to Ben Luke about the art, literature, music and film that have influenced her and inspire her today, and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work.
Zangewa hand-stitches images, often featuring herself, using raw silk, in highly coloured, intricate compositions, and hopes to challenge existing representations of Black women. Born in 1973 in Blantyre, Malawi, she grew up in Botswana and then studied at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, in the 1990s. She now lives and works in Johannesburg. Zangewa’s imagery is both highly personal and universal—in recent years, particularly since the birth of her son, Mika, she has focused increasingly on depictions of herself at home, as a woman and a mother in domestic space, engaging in humdrum activities. By training her eye on the mundane moments of daily existence, she says she wants to explore the overlooked aspects of women’s lives—she refers to this as “daily feminism”. She discusses her use of silk and how she began working with it out of necessity rather than by design. She recalls her early love of Vincent van Gogh, her response to the films of Jane Campion. She reflects on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on her life and practice, and how she still works at her kitchen table, even despite the fact she has a dedicated studio. This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects.
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Thomas J Price talks to Ben Luke about the art, books and music that have influenced him and continue to inspire them today, and the cultural epiphanies that have defined his life and work. For two decades, Price has been making work about a subject that has now become a major cultural issue across the world: how power is transmitted through statuary and public sculpture and how diverse people in society are represented, or mostly not represented, in our streets and squares. Price was born in London in 1981, and studied at Chelsea College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London, and his works ask questions of the nature and history of his medium and of the perceptions and biases of the viewer. He talks about his early shift away from performance art, his long journey into the history of classical statuary, his passion for Alberto Giacometti and Giorgio Morandi, his early love of opera and his conflicted engagement with the British Museum. Plus, he ponders the questions we ask all our guests, about his studio rituals and the one work of art he’d choose to live with, and answers the ultimate one: what is art for? This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects.
Thomas J Price: Thoughts Unseen, Hauser & Wirth, Somerset, UK, until 3 January 2022. Witness, for the Studio Museum in Harlem’s inHarlem series, Marcus Garvey Park, New York, until 1 October 2022. Reaching Out has just been permanently installed at the Donum Estate, Sonoma, California. Price’s work for the Hackney Windrush Art Commission, will be unveiled in June 2022.
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Philippe Parreno talks to Ben Luke in depth about his cultural experiences and influences. A master of exhibition-making, Parreno was born in 1964 in Oran, Algeria, but grew up Grenoble in France. Ever since he emerged in the 1990s, he has used the spaces he shows in and the immediate environment around them as an active presence in his work. Architectural elements in the gallery might be animated at certain moments, lighting might flicker according to scores we don’t see, screens might descend to show examples of Philippe’s diverse video works, at unexpected times. Often these actions are triggered by hidden environmental forces that Philippe harnesses as data to orchestrate his shows. He talks about his close network of collaborators, the group shows they put on early in their careers, his interest in science fiction, his new work about Francisco de Goya's Black Paintings, his aim to make a film about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein from the monster's point of view, and the unlikely experience of getting Angus Young from AC/DC to contribute to one of his works. Plus, he responds to the ultimate questions we ask on each podcast: if he could live with just one work of art, what would it be? And, what is art for? This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects.
Links for this episode:
Philippe Parreno at Pilar Corrias
Danny/No More Reality at LUMA Arles
Jaron Lanier, computer scientist, composer, artist and author
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, artist, at Esther Schipper
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
Pier Paolo Pasolini biography on BFI website
Daniel Buren, artist
Peter Plagens on Michael Asher in Artforum in 1972
Goya's Black Paintings in the Museo del Prado
Schatten/Le Montreur d'Ombres/Warning Shadows at IMDb
Fiona Sampson on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at 200
The Year Without a Summer on the In Our Time podcast
Adam Thirlwell at Granta, and his book Conversation: A Script with Philippe Parreno
Pierre Huygh, artist, at Marian Goodman Gallery
Nathalie Heinich on Les Immatériaux, exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in 1985 in Tate Papers
Author Kenric MacDowell’s Pharmako-AI
Neal Stephenson, author
Marko Nikodijević, composer, at sikorski.de
Dmitri Shostakovich, Fugue no24 in D Minor
Robert Filliou, artist, at Peter Freeman, Inc
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Glenn Ligon talks to Ben Luke about the artists, writers, musicians and other cultural figures who inspire and intrigue him, and the pivotal cultural moments in his life. Born in the Bronx, New York, in 1960, Ligon works across various media, from painting to film and neon, and primarily uses text and found images to produce powerful ruminations on contemporary politics, culture and African American identity. Despite the array of media he uses, Ligon’s work is hugely consistent in its language and subject matter, with an economy and directness of form allied to a capacity for rich ambiguity and diverse meaning. Ligon joins us as he prepares to show the epic conclusion to his series Stranger, which he started in 1997, featuring excerpts from James Baldwin’s 1953 essay, Stranger in the Village, in which the American writer uses his experiences in a remote Swiss village to reflect on the nature of Blackness and the embeddedness of white supremacy, among much else. In this conversation, he discusses Baldwin and the Stranger series, along with other writers, from Gertrude Stein and Charles Dickens to Toni Morrison. He talks about his visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to draw Cézanne as a teenager, the depth and enduring power of Andy Warhol’s work and the abiding influence of David Hammons. He reflects on his musical references, from Steve Reich to Stevie Wonder, and on his interest in Korean ceramics. And, of course, he answers the questions we ask all our guests, about his daily rituals, the cultural experience that changed his view of the world and, ultimately, what art is for. This episode is sponsored by ARTIKA.
Glenn Ligon: First Contact is at Hauser & Wirth, Zürich, 17 September-23 December and a big show of his work opens at Hauser & Wirth in New York on 10 November. A new publication from Hauser & Wirth Publishers is out this autumn. A show at the Carré d’Art in Nîmes, France, opens in 2022.
Links for this episode:
Glenn Ligon: First Contact at Hauser & Wirth, Zurich
James Baldwin interview in the Paris Review and Collected Essays, edited by Toni Morrison, including the collection Notes of a Native Son, in which Stranger in the Village features
Cézanne at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Cézanne Drawing at the Museum of Modern Art
Andy Warhol's Shadows at Dia Beacon
Calvin Tomkins on David Hammons in the New Yorker and Glenn Ligon’s text on Hammons, Black Light: David Hammons’s Poetics of Emptiness
Willem de Kooning's Pirate (Untitled II) (1981) at the Museum of Modern Art
Robert Mapplethorpe at the Mapplethorpe Foundation and Glenn Ligon's Notes on the Margin of the Black Book at the Guggenheim Museum
Whitney Museum of American Art
White porcelain “moon jar” at the British Museum
Extract from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man at penguin.co.uk
Zora Neale Hurston official site
Toni Morrison Society and audiobooks narrated by Toni Morrison at Audible
Édouard Glissant at Global Social Theory
Charles Dickens's Tale of Two Cities
DeForrest Brown Jr as Speaker Music at bandcamp
Chrissie Hynde on the Pretenders’ I’ll Stand by You
Jessye Norman on Spotify and Jessye Norman singing Richard Strauss's Vier Letzte Lieder/Four Last Songs
Steve Reich’s Come Out on Spotify and a Pitchfork article on the piece and the Harlem Six
Stevie Wonder on Spotify and a link Music of My Mind, which came out when Glenn Ligon was 11 years old
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Thomas Edison and Edwin Porter at the University of Virginia’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin multimedia archive, Death of Tom by Glenn Ligon
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Alberta Whittle talks to Ben Luke about her influences in art, books, music and other media and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Over the last few years, Whittle has emerged as one of the most striking new voices in contemporary British art, especially with her collaborative film installations focusing on battling anti-blackness. Born in 1980 in Bridgetown on the Caribbean island of Barbados, Whittle moved to Birmingham in the UK as a teenager before studying at the Glasgow School of Art—she still lives in Glasgow today but spends some of her time in Barbados. This relationship between her native Caribbean and her Scottish hometown have informed her work from the start, in terms of exploring her own identity and its connection with the histories of colonialism, slavery and systemic racism. Whittle's acclaimed films are a collage of disparate moving images, including found archival material, footage shot on an iPhone and extraordinary performances filmed in beautiful high definition, among other things. In this conversation, she explains her instinct to collaborate with performers, artists and writers, reflects on her love of the art of Frida Kahlo and Hilma af Klint, among many others, and discusses the music she adores, by artists as diverse as Dancehall queen Patra and the late opera singer Jessye Norman. Plus, she answers our usual questions, including the ultimate one: what is art for? This episode is sponsored by ARTIKA.
Links for this episode
Shows:
Alberta Whittle: Reset at Jupiter Artland
business as usual: hostile environment at Glasgow Sculpture Studios
Life Support at Glasgow Women’s Library
Sonia Boyce’s exhibition In the Castle of My Skin at MIMA, Middlesborough
Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now at Tate Britain
Sex Ecologies at Kunsthal Trondheim
Discussed in the interview:
The Guardian newspaper’s reporting on the Windrush scandal
Frida Kahlo at Tate Modern, 2005—room guide
Louise Bourgeois at The Easton Foundation
Denzil Forrester at Stephen Friedman Gallery
Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA)
Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg
Kamau Brathwaite at the Poetry Foundation
Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake: On Blackness and Being
Dionne Brand at Penguin Random House
Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work
Jessye Norman’s Spirituals on Spotify and her Spotify page
Tumi Mogorosi’s Project ELO on Spotify and his Spotify page
Alberta Whittle’s blog about her Fresh Milk residency in Barbados, including the fete posters
Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln perform Tears For Johannesburg & Triptych (Prayer, Protest)
Constantin Brancusi’s Endless Column at the World Monuments Fund
Alberta Whittle’s "accomplices":
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Tino Sehgal talks to Ben Luke about his unique work, which transforms the space in which it is shown through the power of movement and sound. Sehgal, who is based in Berlin, moved to art from dance after studying choreography alongside economics. His latest show, at Blenheim Palace, commissioned by the Blenheim Art Foundation, features his work from the last 20 years staged amid the Baroque palace and its gardens. It features interpreters or participants who enact "constructed situations" ranging from group work, where they sing in unison or move in formation, veering from slow controlled movement to dance or even game-playing, to more intimate pieces involving individuals or duos—but always directly engaging the viewer as a participant. Sehgal discusses the structures that underpin his work, making art that exists only in the moment or memory rather than as an object or through documentation, and why he sees it more in the tradition of sculpture and installation than performance art. He reflects on his early encounters with the art of Joseph Beuys and Yves Klein, his interest in the work of Antoine Watteau, the powerful effect of the works of radical theatre director Christoph Schlingensief and choreographer Felix Ruckert, how he regularly returns to William Forsythe's work In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated, and his response to the Belgian producers Soulwax and their 2manydjs project. And he responds to the questions we ask all our guests, including the ultimate question: what is art for? This episode is sponsored by ARTIKA.
Links for this episode:
Tino Sehgal at Blenheim Art Foundation
Tino Sehgal at Globart Art Academy, Melk Abbey
Joseph Beuys’s 7000 Oaks in Kassel
Jean-Antoine Watteau’s paintings in the Louvre
Xavier Le Roy, Product of Circumstances and context at tate.org.uk
Felix Ruckert and a performance of Hautnah (1995)
Excerpt from In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated by William Forsythe from its original performance in 1987, featuring Fanny Gaïda and Sylvie Guillem, Opéra National de Paris
John Maynard Keynes, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren
John Kenneth Galbreath’s The Affluent Society
2manydjs: Soulwax’s official YouTube channel
Ode to Joy, Friedrich Schiller poem
The Robots on Kraftwerk’s YouTube channel
Sock It to Me on Missy Elliot’s YouTube channel
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Oscar Murillo talks to Ben Luke about the defining cultural experiences and influences of his life. Oscar first shot to fame in the art world with paintings that attracted huge attention in 2013—canvases with loose, scratchy, expressive marks, patches of pure colour, and daily dust and grime from the studio, scrawled with words such as "burrito", "yuka" and "chorizo". But he has also consistently made works in sculpture, installation, performance and film. At the heart of his work is an engagement with language, with the nature of labour and production, with the movement of people and with fluid cultural identities. He discusses his major project Frequencies, in which children from more than 350 schools in 34 countries across the world were sent canvases that were affixed to desks, so that children could draw and write on them, consciously or unconsciously, over several months—and how the project relates to his own work. He talks about his ongoing interest in class as well as race, in relation to his Colombian background. He picks out the artists and musicians that have most influenced him, discusses the dual influence of La Paila, the village in Colombia in which he grew up, and London, to which he emigrated when he was 11 and made his career in art. And he answers the questions we ask all our guests: what are the essential rituals in his working life? If he could live with just one work of art, what would it be? And what is art for? This episode is sponsored by ARTIKA.
Links for this episode:
Oscar Murillo at David Zwirner
Frequencies, presented by Artangel, until the 30 August 2021
By Means of a Detour, a book co-published by Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge and the Kunstverein in Hamburg
Jannis Kounellis at Cheim & Read
Monet’s Water-Lilies at l’Orangerie in Paris and Murillo’s Surge paintings, made partly in response
Hans Haacke’s Der Pralinenmeister (The Chocolate Master)
Our podcast, A brush with… Julie Mehretu
Fela Kuti on Spotify and his song VIP (Vagabonds in Power)
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Ellen Gallagher talks about her life and work through the art, literature, music and other cultural experiences that have profoundly affected her. She tells Ben Luke about the extraordinary opportunity she had to live with an original Keith Haring print while at Oberlin College, Ohio; her love of Diego Velázquez and Stanley Brouwn; the influence of the Afrofuturist mythology of the Detroit techno band Drexciya; how Herman Melville, in his novels and novellas, wrote more perceptively about race than he is often credited with, and much more. And, of course, she answers the ultimate questions we ask in each episode: if you could live with just one work of art, what would it be? And what is art for? This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects.
Links for this episode:
Ellen Gallagher at Hauser & Wirth
Ellen’s page for the Sonsbeek 20-24 quadrennial
Matisse: The Fabric of Dreams, His Art and His Textiles
Keith Haring's Untitled (1982), The Keith Haring Foundation
Velázquez’s Infante Felipe Prospero (1559) at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Headrest: Female Caryatid Figure (19th century) by the Master of the Cascade Coiffure
Ellen Gallagher’s Ecstatic Draught of Fishes (2020) at Hauser & Wirth, London
Pieter Paul Rubens’s Miraculous Draft of Fishes in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne from the Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Cologne
The Art Newspaper’s report on the racist joke beneath Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square
Oscar van den Boogaard on Stanley Brouwn in Frieze magazine
Go-go legend Chuck Brown on Spotify
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat
Maryse Condé at World Editions
Ode à la Guinea by Aimé Césaire and more on Césaire at the Poetry Foundation
Léopold Sédar Senghor at the Poetry Foundation
Drexciya’s Futuristic Electro—a guide, by Albert Freeman at Bandcamp and Drexciya on Spotify
Herman Melville at Penguin Books
Alice Coltrane’s album Kirtan: Turiya Sings
Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone, BBC Radio 6 Music
Jan Mostaert’s Portrait of an African Man (Christophle le More?) (1525-30)
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Ben Luke talks to Doris Salcedo about her life and work through the artists she most admires, the writers she returns to and the music she listens to. She recalls her epiphany when confronted with the works of Francisco de Goya, and how his empathy with the victims of war and violence prompted her own aim to give voice to the voiceless in the Colombian civil war and beyond. She talks about the influence of Paul Celan's poetry, which she quotes directly in her Unland series. She describes how Joseph Beuys's public sculpture gave her an example of a sensitivity to place that she has employed in her many memorable public works. Plus she reveals a secret to her studio life that she has never shown in public and answers our usual questions: if you could live with just one work of art, what would it be? And what is art for? This episode is sponsored by Cork Street Galleries.
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Ben Luke talks to Jenny Saville about her cultural experiences and their effect on her work and life. We learn about how her uncle inspired her to explore the Old Masters and match their ambition, how having children hugely affected the way she works, the visit to an artist’s studio that changed her life, the epic poetry that drives her painting into new territories, the strange rituals in her daily practice. Ultimately, we explore in depth her passion for art and the compulsion to respond to the world through paint. This episode is sponsored by Cork Street Galleries.
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In the inaugural episode of The Art Newspaper's podcast series of conversations with artists, host Ben Luke talks to Michael Armitage about his life and work through his cultural experiences: the artists, living and long gone, who he most admires; the art he has pinned to his studio wall; the museum that holds endless inspiration; the writers he returns to; the music he plays as he paints in the studio; the rituals of his daily practice. We learn about the unique fusion of East African and European culture at the heart of Armitage's paintings, explore the ways that the art of the past can infuse the present day; and ultimately ponder the wonderful, yet at times absurd, act of painting. This episode is sponsored by Cork Street Galleries.
Links for this episode.
Michael Armitage at White Cube
Meek Gichugu at Red Hill Art Gallery
Chalenge van Rampelberg at Urban Africans
Goya’s Black Paintings in the Prado
Our podcast, A brush with… Julie Mehretu
Velázquez’s Immaculate Conception at the National Gallery
Chinua Achebe article in the New Yorker
Titian’s Pietà in the Accademia, Venice
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Introducing A brush with... a podcast by The Art Newspaper. In each episode, the host Ben Luke has a conversation with a leading artist, exploring their life and work through their cultural experiences, asking the questions you've always wanted to: who are the artists, historical and contemporary, they most admire? Which are the museums they return to? What are the books, music and other media that most inspire them? And what is art for, anyway?
Excerpts featured in the trailer are from A brush with…
Doris Salcedo
Kehinde Wiley
Roni Horn
Charles Gaines
Do Ho Suh
Ragnar Kjartansson
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En liten tjänst av I'm With Friends. Finns även på engelska.