The Art Show

Del Kathryn Barton exorcised her rage in her critically acclaimed feature film Blaze, but its aftermath is grief. You wouldn't know it if you cast your eye around her Paddington studio: wide-eyed sylphs, sibyls and sages emerge from minutely detailed canvases where chequerboards, dots and strawberries are laden with new meaning. Much like a cinema auteur, DKB is engaged in a world-building project and it's a place that brims with female power and agency. Who else but Del Kathryn Barton joins The Art Show as Daniel Browning says goodbye after 31 years at the ABC.

Jason Maling works in the expanded field where — through the interface of technology, screens and a sound system — the sonic and the visual are conducted before a live audience. Diagrammatica was inspired by physics diagrams, but it's grown into a beast: part drawing, part durational performance and part musical composition. And it all takes place underground — in a gallery known rather ominously as Slot 9 — sandwiched between two rail lines under Melbourne's commuter transit hub, Federation Square.

Recently on the show we met Filipino artist Pio Abad to hear about his Turner Prize nominated exhibition 'To Those Sitting in Darkness' which re-presented museum objects to reveal hidden histories and the deep legacies of colonialism. Thai-Australian multidisciplinary artist Nathan Beard takes a different, less didactic, approach but, like Pio Abad, is working with cultural objects that are largely unseen. In Beard's case, Buddha heads made for ritual use, squirrelled away in the British Museum. The exoticisation and familiarity of Thai culture has proved to be fertile ground for Beard's artwork — where he gives free rein to his critical approach and his broad, irreverent sense of humour.

Although he's one of Australia's most established, commercially successful and prolific artists, Dale Frank is a reluctant interview subject.Eccentric, reclusive, visionary, trailblazer — a sublime colourist, even a likeable arsehole — these are just some of the ways he's described.Which makes it even more remarkable that he agreed to be the subject of a documentary feature film — a rare thing for a living Australian artist.With a menagerie of exotic taxidermied animals and the odd studio assistant for company, Frank not only produces enormous bodies of work, but he is realising another artistic vision: a botanical garden filled with dry climate species from all over the world.He does all this while managing acute pain from a debilitating illness, and the wear and tear of an embodied artmaking practice that stretches back four decades.

Sydney-based artist Nadia Vitlin works with olfaction — our sense of smell — infusing her artwork, whether it be clay or paint, to create bespoke pieces that mimic the transportive power of scent: one of the most evocative, deeply personal and memory-laden senses humans possess. She experiments in the fourth dimension, and it all began with leaves from the garden and spices you might find in your kitchen. Vitlin's background is in science, a helpful start when you consider that scent is carried in molecules, which bypass our brain's central operating system to work on a different region wired to feel emotions.

Just as historical objects in museum collections embody certain histories — of British imperialism and modernity — they also map loss and disappearance for those in former colonial states.Pio Abad, whose work is "concerned with the personal and political entanglements of objects," has mined the stories embedded in certain cultural material such as kris, ceremonial swords from Mindanao, and a tiara worn by Imelda Marcos, the wife of Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos. The result, To Those Sitting in Darkness, earned the London-based Filipino artist a nod for Britain's most high-profile art prize, but Pio Abad says reviews of the work — and that of other POC nominees — ranged from asinine to borderline racist.s.

They used to lay-buy contemporary art together when they were low-paid gallery workers, forging a business relationship early on.Now, Ursula Sullivan and Joanna Strumpf are one of Australia's most successful art partnerships in terms of the cultural impact of the artists they represent — Tony Albert, Lindy Lee, Polly Borland, ex de Medici, Sam Leach, and Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, to name a few. This year, they're celebrating two decades together at the head of Sullivan + Strumpf.What's even more remarkable is that after 20 years in the commercial gallery business they're still friends.

It was while researching the provenance of a child's boomerang, found in topsoil near the site of Melbourne Zoo, that Kimberley Moulton found the key to her curatorial vision for We Are Eagles, the latest edition of the TarraWarra Biennial. The Yorta Yorta curator worked with artefacts and other historical material at Melbourne Museum for years before moving into contemporary art in her current role at the Tate in London. Kim explains how that boomerang unearthed a long-buried and disturbing history and earned its place in the biennial, which includes 20 new commissions from artists such as Lisa Hilli, Shireen Taweel, Iluwanti Ken, Nathan Beard and Warraba Weatherall.

The Lebanese-born Australian artist Khaled Sabsabi joins The Art Show exclusively to talk about the profound impact of the decision to unceremoniously dump him as Australia's representative artist to the 2026 Venice Biennale. The decision exposed the arts funding body Creative Australia to claims of political interference, racism and censorship — emptying Australia's Pavilion in Venice after our most successful outing ever in 2024 and leading to a series of open letters from different parts of Australia's arts community which called for Sabsabi's reinstatement.In this exclusive conversation, Sabsabi shares the highs and the lows of his selection and removal, talks about the work that was called into question by the Liberal Senator Claire Chandler, and explores the ideas that are behind his proposed work for the Venice Biennale.The Art Show has made multiple requests to speak with the CEO of Creative Australia, Adrian Collette, and that invitation remains open.

For Kamilaroi artist Warraba Weatherall, art that isn't a catalyst for something—that isn't driven by critique of gatekeeping museums, the criminal justice system, or the wilful historical amnesia and complacency—isn't worth making. Warraba has just unveiled his first institutional solo at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art, laying bare his politics in a manifesto of simmering rage catalysed into monumental sculptures, anti-monuments, and a tense 8-minute film that explores the violence of the archive.

In art, verisimilitude — representing things as they appear — is something like telling the unvarnished truth and it makes perfect sense that it's the form in which Vincent Fantauzzo is most comfortable. His first commercial artworks were actually counterfeit 50 dollar notes, just one of the uncomfortable truths which he tells in his new autobiography, Unveiled. Although his childhood in the outer suburbs of Melbourne was wracked by endemic poverty and a distant but physically and emotionally violent father, it was undiagnosed dyslexia that almost beat this Jack Rennie-trained boxer.But Fantauzzo has gone on to great success, and while his representational style isn't wildly popular with critics, his portraits are perennial people's choice award winners at the Archibald Prize.

Robert Andrew's artwork features simple robotic machines, with a stylus that impulsively draws or leaves a trace; not so much artificial intelligence as incidental happenstance. Although he works with technology, Andrew has always been deeply inspired by country. So it made sense that he was invited to make work for a new group exhibition at Bundanon, the timeless yet scarred landscape that figured in the paintings of its previous owner, Arthur Boyd.Robert and Daniel chat about wombats, watercourses, and the mother of all road-trips.

Nici Cumpston has played a transformative role at the Art Gallery of South Australia. Over the past 16 years she has driven First Nations curatorial practice to new heights, shaping what began as a biennial exhibition into a festival of contemporary Indigenous art that surveys artmaking across the continent.As Tarnanthi reaches its tenth anniversary, Nici has accepted a new challenge overseas — becoming the first Indigenous director of one of the world's great collections of Aboriginal art housed at Kluge-Ruhe at the University of Virginia.

When questions were raised in Federal Parliament about two artworks by Khaled Sabsabi from 2006 and 2007, it was enough to convince Creative Australia to dump the artist from next year's Venice Biennale. The board hoped to avoid a "prolonged and divisive" public debate, but the unparalleled move to rescind the invitation to Sabsabi to represent Australia risks creating has had the opposite effect: compromising artistic freedom and the appearnance of arms-length independence of the arts funding agency.Art historian Rex Butler and barrister Paris Lettau, contributing editors of the art magazine Memo, lend an art historical perspective to the debate.

Driven by their mission statement to create a queer wonderland, Will and Garett Huxley are true polymorphs. A real-life couple who rival camp predecessors Gilbert and George, Will and Garett Huxley talk about their long-term collaboration and the transformation and reinvention that exemplifies queer experience. Garrett speaks about finding his voice as a Gumbaynggir and Yorta Yorta person ahead of The Huxleys' performance at the First Nations concert gala, Blak & Deadly.

After rising to prominence locally in the early 2000s, Ricky Swallow left Australia and built an international art career with his small-scale, often intimate bronzes.  Speaking from LA, Ricky talks about his unconscious move towards abstraction, his first foray into public art for Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art, and the profound impact of the recent California fires.

What began as a living archive of queer Black British experience in the early 2000s has morphed into visual memoir for the interdisciplinary artist Topher Campbell.Told through three of his arthouse films including the uncompromising Fetish (2018) where he walks the streets of New York completely naked, an Afrofuturistic sculpture and intimate sound work composed of missed WhatsApp messages, Campbell isn't afraid to take risks.His installation at the Tate Modern, My rukus! Heart (2024) is both radical history of queer blackness and an ode to his community, as well as the formative collaboration with rukus! Federation co-founder, photographer Ajamu X.

Latai Taumoepeau is an artist who thinks big. Not only is her subject matter expansive—the impact of global warming and rising sea levels in the South Pacific—increasingly she produces works of remarkable scale.Deep Communion sung in minor (ArchipelaGO, THIS IS NOT A DRILL), which premiered at Venice as part of Re-Stor(y)ing Oceania and is now on at Artspace in Sydney, uses musical scores and sculptural interactive machines that simulate paddle boards to bring the immediacy of the climate crisis to the forefront. It's a ritual and ceremony for our times, steeped in tradition; a call to action; and a love letter to her ancestral homeland of Tonga.

Blurring the line between commercial and high art, self-described Brisbane bogan CJ Hendry is a social media phenomenon. Her seductive, hyperreal drawings of luxury and consumer goods, combined with marketing nous and a flair for self-promotion, have earned the New York-based expat a global following and commercial success. While the core of her practice is drawing, CJ also mounts elaborate conceptual exhibitions that tweak her audience's innate sense of childlike wonder, and that's where she says her most creative work gets done. But is it art, and who gets to decide?

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

Daniel catches up with Archibald Prize winner Laura Jones, who painted author Tim Winton. Painter and sitter share a passion for WA's Ningaloo reef and its survival amid climate crisis. Unusually, Laura's own portrait is also on display  –  she entered it in the concurrent Sulman Prize, on at the Art Gallery of NSW. Interviewing visual artists is just one of the things that Jennifer Higgie has mastered in her decades-long career at the helm of Frieze magazine and as a writer, reviewer and podcast host. Daniel speaks with London-based Jennifer as her new podcast series for the National Gallery of Australia is released. Listen to Jennifer and Daniel's conversation about women artists and the spirit world.

Ceramicist Vipoo Srivilasa's work is beautiful, playful and highly technical…and he's having a moment, featuring in several exhibitions during 2024 including the MAKE Award, Generation Clay and re/JOY. His work is a beacon of light and happiness in dark times.Maria Madeira escaped the Indonesian invasion of Timor Leste in 1975, to end up in a refugee camp in Portugal. In 2005 she returned as the first artist to hold a solo exhibition there, ever. Now the artist, who came to Australia in 1983, is representing Timor Leste at the Venice Biennale.

The artist RONE was always attracted to street art's impermanence. He's since moved beyond street art and into large scale installations, involving space, sound, music, light and large scale art pieces, that breathe life into the rooms of decaying mansions and inside spaces. RONE's "Time" was on at AGWA Centenary Galleries in Western AustraliaFor four decades Judy Watson has been making layered, ethereal art about profound and difficult subjects: frontier violence, dispossession and ecological destruction. From her beginnings with the famed Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative, to lithographs and her monumental public artworks, Daniel spoke to Judy Watson at her largest survey show at the Queensland Art Gallery, ‘mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri: Judy Watson'.

Archie Moore won the top honour at one of the world's most prestigious and oldest art festivals – the Venice Biennale -- for a monumental work showing thousands of years of family lineage, and invoking lives lost under the colonial state.Monsignor Alberto Rocca is an Italian priest and art curator who has a singular job: accompanying pages from Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus, to the other side of the world. This Codex is the largest collection of Leonardo's drawings and notes, made up of thousand pages.  After spending so much time with Leonardo's works  as curator of the Ambrosiana Library in Milan, Rocca has some theories about the Renaissance polymath.'Unshakable destiny' was how democracy and self-rule was supposed to manifest for the people of Hong Kong, according to the last British Governor. Nikki Lam has been working on a trilogy of art films about that promise, as personal tragedy and the impact of the city's new laws alter her relationship to her homeland. The unshakable destiny is on at the Centre for Contemporary Photography.

Great conversations wiIn her complex installations, featuring dozens on objects and materials, Sarah Contos imbues and perceives a sensuality within everyday objects. She explores the mind, the womb, the soul and the belly of her major new exhibition, Eye Lash Horizon.Monica Rani Rudhar explores how art has deepened her connection with her family and explains the deeply personal root of her large-scale jewellery.And Mark Smith and Anthony Fitzpatrick celebrate 50 years of Arts Project Australia, as they discuss Intimate Imaginaries, a major survey at TarraWarra Museum of Art that includes colourful murals, vibrant textiles, ceramic recreations of domestic scenes, and paintings both abstract and figurative. th visual artists, gallery and museum directors and curators.

One of the most influential artists in the world, Cao Fei has documented China's rapid urbanisation and digital revolutions for over two decades. In a new exhibition at AGNSW, My City is Yours, she traces the connections between major cities like Beijing and Sydney, and explores how the digital and physical worlds connect.And Karen Rogers and Sean Richard Smith share the collaborative process behind printmaking. How does this act of translation change or expand a work of art, and what is the relationship between artist and printmaker?

The histories our families share can be in the stories we tell, the food we eat, the objects that are passed down from one generation to the next. Finding our own place in those histories can be difficult, but it can also be exciting and crucial. How are Australian artists from the Asian diaspora creating their own stories? And how are they reckoning with the charged history of museum collections?Leyla Stevens uses her camera as a tool to engage with interconnected webs of song, performance, and environmental reverence. In her work, deeply beautiful sequences of Balinese jungles are punctuated with the sonic intensity of cicadas and visions of shadow puppetry.While referencing objects and materials specific to his Chinese heritage, Remy Faint considers big questions: What are the limits of painterly abstraction? How can painting be used to gesture towards cultural multiplicity? And how can you learn about yourself and your family through creating artworks?The music in this episode is taken from Leyla Stevens' video work, PAHIT MANIS, night forest, which is on display at the Art Gallery of NSW

A time-travelling, multi-regional journey through the histories of ceramics that explores how contemporary artists are politicising this elemental medium.Nell has said that “all my life is a practice", but what does that mean for the work she creates? And how has her latest piece, a quilt featuring work by 400 people, changed her perspective on collaboration?Glenn Barkley looks back at the many histories of ceramics, shares his favourite skewer, and discusses the impact of the “Anglosphere mind virus.”

The self-portrait is perhaps the most ubiquitous image of the modern era, but how do contemporary artists use the portrait, not just to reflect themselves or their subject, but to shift our understanding of who we are and who we can be?Atong Atem takes us into her practice of self-portraiture, exploring how the history of beautification has inspired her images, and why a love for interior design has been an important influence.And acclaimed contemporary artist Joan Ross explains why fluorescent yellow became central to her work, and how she is reframing the colonial context of the portrait.Those trees came back to me in my dreams is on at the National Portrait Gallery until February 2025

Public art comes with big price tags and excites popular opinion, but what does it actually take to produce such large work and how does art change our experience of the public sphere?Justene Williams takes a chainsaw to her art and to the idea that women in public should be passive, with giant feminine statues that are inspired by the sheela na gig carvings of the middle agesLindy Lee discusses her major new work, Ouroboros, at the National Gallery of Australia. And for most artists, the idea of the audience climbing all over their work would be a nightmare, but for Mike Hewson, it's the whole point. Mike has created playgrounds across Australia that bring an artistic approach to the park and invite children and parents to accept a bit of risk into their lives.

Australian designer Marc Newson has helped to define the shape of our world today. But what are the artworks that inspired his approach and shaped his world?NGV Curator Laurie Benson takes you into the history of Rodin's The Thinker and explores what happens when a work of art becomes a cultural phenomenon.Jason Phu shares his latest Phuism.And chef and restaurateur Kylie Kwong shares the deeply personal story of the artwork that watched over customers at her restaurant Lucky Kwong.

Tim Winton is one of Australia's greatest writers, but this year he found himself at the centre of the art world when Laura Jones' portrait took out the Archibald Prize. From his earliest experiences in a gallery to some of the earliest examples of art in Australia, Winton shares the work that's helped to shape his own keen observations of nature and our own place in it.Two guards from the Art Gallery of NSW explain what it takes to keep the work safe and introduce us to their own favourite paintings.And Lucienne Rickard discusses her new durational work, Wreck, and why she's chosen to erase her own art, leaving only ghostly shadows behind.

Adam Weinberg ran the Whitney Museum of American Art, one of New Yorks most iconic art spaces, for over 20 years. And he is a quintessential New Yorker.More artful poetry from millennial slashie Jason Phu.A peek into the studio of another real life artist partnership in the Blue Mountains of NSW, Claire Healey and Sean Cordeiro. They will be exhibiting shortly here, and in 2025 at The Tokyo Art Fair

One of the most salacious art scandals to hit the global art market is that of the Wildensteins. Author and journalist Rachel Corbett brings us her New York Times investigation of this secretive and flawed family dynasty that stretches back five generations.Poet and sculptor Jason Phu with more of his artful silliness.Plus the idea of artists, romantically partnered with other artists is a powerful narrative. Nabila Nordin and Nick Modrzewski join us from LA.

Curator and art writer Micheal Do is sitting in for Daniel Browning for the next five weeks.Author Markus Zuzak takes us back to 2005, to a wintery day in Vienna where an artwork by a little known German/Austrian painter Werner Berg found and transported him. Micheal and Markus discuss art, writing and memoir - his latest book is Three Wild Dogs and The Truth.Angelica Mesiti's arresting and monumental immersive piece The Rites of When startles and entrances Micheal Do at the Tank at the Art Gallery of NSW.Poet, sculptor and painter Jason Phu presents one of his classic poetic Phu-isms And we visit a very tidy studio in Western Melbourne where artist Darren Wardle divulges his obsession: ruination.Images left to right:Detail from Werner Berg Vor Der Auferstehung (Before the Resurrection) (1965)Detail from screenshot of Angelica Mesiti The Rites of When (2024)Detail from Darren Wardle Slumlord (2016)

Cressida Campbell and Margaret Preston (1875-1963): two beloved printmakers inspired by Ukiyo-e, the Japanese woodcut genre whose influence swept through western art. Rosa speaks to Cressida and Geelong Gallery senior curator Lisa Sullivan about Ukiyo-e and Preston, for a new exhibition connecting all three printmaking styles.Art History professor Roger Benjamin joins us to talk about the Gina Rinehart portrait drama. Khaled Sabsabi moves fluidly between the genres of music and visual art, but his art always has the same goal: to make meaningful work, to make society better. After many years of community development  work and thought-provoking installation artwork made from his studio in Western Sydney, Khaled was honoured with a 2023 Creative Australia award, and a residency at the prestigious American Academy in Rome.This program first aired Wed 22 May 2024  

Helen Molesworth is a curator and writer who became widely known for her hit podcast Death of an Artist, about the artist Ana Mendieta, whose husband sculptor Carl Andre was charged then acquitted of her murder in the 1980s. Carl Andre died last week, and Helen has a book of collected art writing out: Open Questions: Thirty years of writing about art.Daniel visits the backyard studio of Olana Janfa.  The Ethiopian-Norwegian artist started painting relatively recently but his distinct voice, drawn from his life as a refugee in Norway and migrant in Australia, is humour-filled, popular and incisive.Brent Harris' psychologically-driven artworks are often described as haunting and even ‘brooding'. So, if you haven't ever seen his paintings– would it surprise you to know they're also colourful and cartoonish? More Betty Boop than Edvard Munch's The Scream. He takes producer Rosa Ellen through his studio, in preparation for Brent Harris: Surrender & Catch, on at Tarra Warra Museum of Art.This program first aired Wed 7 Feb 2024

This week it's The Art (Nouveau) Show! Flowers, peacocks and sensuous drapes. Bejewelled women entwined in billowing hair and that classic black outline, that turns the dreamy into the bold – the NEW. Despite what we may think about the arts and crafts that came out of Belgium, France and  Czechia at the turn of the nineteenth century, Art Nouveau was considered to be an ultra-modern aesthetic.One artist who defined the style is Alphonse Mucha. We hear from Mucha's great-grandson Marcus Mucha and Mucha Foundation curator Tomoko Sato, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales exhibition Alphonse Mucha: Spirit of Art Nouveau.In South Australia artists like Maude Vizard-Wholohan were part of a newly empowered generation of female art school graduates who produced Art Nouveau designs while living in the first Australian state where women could vote (and the third in the world). Rebecca Evans is curator of design and decorative arts at the Art Gallery of South Australia, and traces the legacy of these artists.This first went to air Wed 19 Jun 2024  

Over the past decade, Ramesh Nithiyendran has become one of the most visible artists of his generation and one of the most hardworking with his signature emoji-like, wildly coloured and often multiple-limbed sculptures making their presence felt across the globe. Daniel drops in on Ramesh as he prepares to unveil his next big solo exhibition - including his magnum opus, a self-deity in bronze.And the first in an occasional series If Not Critical, we meet art critic (and artist) Jack Wilkie-Jans. A trained political scientist, Jack's critical writing explores the power of his country in the art of far north Queensland.

Sasha Huber is Swiss-Haitian… but she lives and works in Finland. She's got a truly interdisciplinary practice - but she does have one particular medium, that's quite unusual - in fact, it's hard to imagine how she makes art from this non-art material. Her medium is the humble staple - not your desk type - she packs a semi-automatic staple gun like the ones tradies use.Sasha's work can be seen at Crepusculum along with artist Petri Saarikko at Gallery Project8 in Melbourne until 14 September.Freya Jobbins is an artist based in regional NSW. Her method of assemblage - the art of making three dimensional pieces from objects that have been discarded  - creates extraordinary and often disturbingly touchable sculptures are made from the flesh coloured parts of toy dolls.Freya is set to have a solo exhibition at Penny Contemporary in Hobart in the new year.It's Poetry Month and to celebrate Radio National is bringing you brand new poems commissioned by Red Room Poetry. Poet, playwright and dramaturge Dylan Van Den Berg's poem Red Face Man is his response to to Benjamin Duterrau's 1840 painting, “Mr Robinson's first interview with Timmy” 

The artist RONE was always attracted to street art's impermanence. He's since moved beyond street art and into large scale installations, involving space, sound, music, light and large scale art pieces, that breathe life into the rooms of decaying mansions and inside spaces. RONE's "Time" is on at AGWA Centenary Galleries in Western AustraliaDan visits artist Manda Lane in her Collingwood studio to see her beautiful and complex paper cut practice that came out of her background as a street artist. Manda has gone from making stencils to make two dimensional images to seeing the stencils as the art itself.

Ceramicist Vipoo Srivilasa's work is beautiful, playful and highly technical…and he's having a moment, featuring in several exhibitions this year including the MAKE Award, Generation Clay and re/JOY. His work is a beacon of light and happiness in dark times.We swing by the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA) in Darwin, where artist Noli Rictor, a Pitjantjatjara man from Tjuntjuntjara in Western Australia, won the overall award for his work on canvas, Kamanti.Plus, the woodcuts, and etchings of the master artist Albrecht Durer connect us with the material Renaissance world in Europe. Daniel speaks with Professor Jenny Spinks from Melbourne University.