Podcast appearances and mentions of Turner Contemporary

Welcome to the second part of a special episode of Over The Top Under The Radar. It's a conversation between Gary and director Steve McQueen. This audio was recorded live at an Intelligence Squared event at Union Chapel in April. Gary and Steve discuss his films, his approach to art and Resistance - the curated exhibition of photographs that debuted at Turner Contemporary in Margate.We are honoured to be able to bring the conversation to our platform, as a thank you for your support of Over The Top Under The Radar. If you enjoy the pod and find value in what we do, please consider donating. The packages start at just £5 plus VAT a month, and if you already donate, please consider upgrading your membership.  Visit Over The Top Under The Radar on Patreon and put your money where your ears are. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to a special two-part episode of Over The Top Under The Radar. It's a conversation between Gary and director Steve McQueen. This audio was recorded live at an Intelligence Squared event at Union Chapel in April. Gary and Steve discuss his films, his approach to art and Resistance - the curated exhibition of photographs that debuted at Turner Contemporary in Margate.We are honoured to be able to bring the conversation to our platform, as a thank you for your support of Over The Top Under The Radar.  If you enjoy the pod and find value in what we do, please consider donating. The packages start at just £5 plus VAT a month, and if you already donate, please consider upgrading your membership.  Visit Over The Top Under The Radar on Patreon and put your money where your ears are. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Steve McQueen is one of Britain's most acclaimed filmmakers and artists. He is the recipient of the Academy Award for Best Picture, two BAFTA Awards, the Caméra d'Or, a Golden Globe, and the Turner Prize. McQueen's work includes his first feature-length film Hunger about Bobby Sands and the 1981 Irish hunger strike, the Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave, the BBC anthology Small Axe, and his most recent film Blitz. In April 2025 McQueen joined us live on the Intelligence Squared stage to discuss the themes of his new book Resistance. Accompanied by a major exhibition of the same name at Turner Contemporary, Resistance is a landmark collection of photographs and essays charting a century of British activism. Speaking alongside author Gary Younge, McQueen explored the power of collective action and uncover the often-overlooked stories of individuals who have been instrumental in forming modern Britain. McQueen discussed how acts of resistance have shaped Britain and the powerful role of photography as a catalyst for change. From the radical suffrage movement in 1903 through key moments including the Battle of Cable Street, the Black People's Day of Action, Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp and the Miners' Strike; onto protests against environmental destruction, struggles for LGBTQ+ and disability rights; and the largest protest in Britain's history: the march against the War in Iraq in 2003. ----- If you'd like to become a Member and get access to all our full ad free conversations, plus all of our Members-only content, just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. For £4.99 per month you'll also receive: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared episodes, wherever you get your podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series - 15% discount on livestreams and in-person tickets for all Intelligence Squared events ... Or Subscribe on Apple for £4.99: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series … Already a subscriber? Thank you for supporting our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations! Visit intelligencesquared.com to explore all your benefits including ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content and early access. … Subscribe to our newsletter here to hear about our latest events, discounts and much more. https://www.intelligencesquared.com/newsletter-signup/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Steve McQueen is one of Britain's most acclaimed filmmakers and artists. He is the recipient of the Academy Award for Best Picture, two BAFTA Awards, the Caméra d'Or, a Golden Globe, and the Turner Prize. McQueen's work includes his first feature-length film Hunger about Bobby Sands and the 1981 Irish hunger strike, the Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave, the BBC anthology Small Axe, and his most recent film Blitz. In April 2025 McQueen joined us live on the Intelligence Squared stage to discuss the themes of his new book Resistance. Accompanied by a major exhibition of the same name at Turner Contemporary, Resistance is a landmark collection of photographs and essays charting a century of British activism. Speaking alongside author Gary Younge, McQueen explored the power of collective action and uncover the often-overlooked stories of individuals who have been instrumental in forming modern Britain. McQueen discussed how acts of resistance have shaped Britain and the powerful role of photography as a catalyst for change. From the radical suffrage movement in 1903 through key moments including the Battle of Cable Street, the Black People's Day of Action, Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp and the Miners' Strike; onto protests against environmental destruction, struggles for LGBTQ+ and disability rights; and the largest protest in Britain's history: the march against the War in Iraq in 2003. ----- This is the first instalment of a two-part episode. If you'd like to become a Member and get access to all our full ad free conversations, plus all of our Members-only content, just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. For £4.99 per month you'll also receive: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared episodes, wherever you get your podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series - 15% discount on livestreams and in-person tickets for all Intelligence Squared events ... Or Subscribe on Apple for £4.99: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series … Already a subscriber? Thank you for supporting our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations! Visit intelligencesquared.com to explore all your benefits including ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content and early access. … Subscribe to our newsletter here to hear about our latest events, discounts and much more. https://www.intelligencesquared.com/newsletter-signup/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Twelve families have been forced to leave their homes after a fire at a block of flats in Gravesend.It broke out in Nursery Grove yesterday afternoon and crews remained at the scene until this morning. Hear from our reporter Alex Langridge who has been there.Also in today's podcast,  there's been a significant increase in the number of emergency food parcels being given out here in the south east.The Trussell Trust says more than 310,000 were distributed in the past year - that's up 56% compared to five years ago. We've been chatting to the charity.You can also hear from the chairman of a foodbank charity in Canterbury on what the situation has been like for them.Dozens of Little Ships that rescued troops from French beaches during world war two are heading from Kent to Dunkirk today.They are recreating the journey made in 1940 to mark the 85th anniversary of Operation Dynamo. We've been speaking to Phil Christodolou who own Quisisana which was involved.A Kent mum has been telling us how she is fulfilling a dream of running her own business after more than a decade of working in care.Jo-Eleanor Matthews has refurbished the former Blind Company building on London Road in Teynham, turning it into a cafe. She's been speaking to reporter Joe Crossley.Margate's Turner Contemporary gallery has launched creative sessions to promote play and creativity in young children.They've teamed up with Save the Children to create the Tiny Turnips workshops for zero-to-24-month-olds.In sport, Maidstone United have released seven players following their National League South play-off final defeat.Vice-captain Jordan Higgs and long-serving defender Raphe Brown are among those leaving the club.

This week, we're taking on a subject that affects the majority of the arts workforce— gender inequity in the industry. Women make up the backbone of the art world, but they continue to face barriers when it comes to work-life balance, pay, and career progression. So, what does the data actually tell us about the state of the industry? And, more importantly, what can be done to change things for the better? To answer those questions, we're unpacking key findings from a major survey conducted by Artnet News in collaboration with the Association of Women in the Arts (AWITA). More than 2,000 people responded to the call, with an additional 140 participating in a follow-up survey, ultimately providing an informative look at how women experience the art world—from hiring and pay to mentorship and bias. Joining Editor-In-Chief Naomi Rea, to break it all down is our News Editor Margaret Carrigan, who has been leading this project since last year. Margaret recently moderated a panel discussion on the topic in London with three industry powerhouses who shared their own experiences: gallerist Sadie Coles, India Phillips from Bonhams, and Clarrie Wallis, director of public institution Turner Contemporary. As the editor of our four-part editorial series on the findings, linked below, Margaret is perfectly positioned to break down the statistics and offer actionable advice on how the industry can do better for women, today.  

This week, we're taking on a subject that affects the majority of the arts workforce— gender inequity in the industry. Women make up the backbone of the art world, but they continue to face barriers when it comes to work-life balance, pay, and career progression. So, what does the data actually tell us about the state of the industry? And, more importantly, what can be done to change things for the better? To answer those questions, we're unpacking key findings from a major survey conducted by Artnet News in collaboration with the Association of Women in the Arts (AWITA). More than 2,000 people responded to the call, with an additional 140 participating in a follow-up survey, ultimately providing an informative look at how women experience the art world—from hiring and pay to mentorship and bias. Joining Editor-In-Chief Naomi Rea, to break it all down is our News Editor Margaret Carrigan, who has been leading this project since last year. Margaret recently moderated a panel discussion on the topic in London with three industry powerhouses who shared their own experiences: gallerist Sadie Coles, India Phillips from Bonhams, and Clarrie Wallis, director of public institution Turner Contemporary. As the editor of our four-part editorial series on the findings, linked below, Margaret is perfectly positioned to break down the statistics and offer actionable advice on how the industry can do better for women, today.  

Contemporary artist Tanoa Sasraku unearths complex relations with British landscapes and natural resources, connecting environments from the north coast of Scotland to South West England, and flagging colonial extractivism in Ghana, through their series of Terratypes (2022-Now). Dartmoor: A Radical Landscape runs at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) in Exeter until 23 February 2025. Tituba, Who Protects Us? runs at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris until 1 May 2025. A major solo exhibition of Tanoa's work opens at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London in October 2025. For more about Invasion Ecology (2023), co-curated by Jelena Sofronijevic for Radical Ecology, and Southcombe Barn on Dartmoor, listen to the episodes with the exhibition's artists: - Ingrid Pollard, on expanded photography, Blacknesses, and British identities, in Carbon Slowly Turning (2022) at the Turner Contemporary in Margate: pod.link/1533637675/episode/e00996c8caff991ad6da78b4d73da7e4 - Hanna Tuulikki, on selkies, Scottish folklore, and performance, in Avi Alarm (2023): pod.link/1533637675/episode/21264f8343e5da35bca2b24e672a2018 You can also read about Hanna's installation, ⁠under forest cover (2021)⁠, at City Art Centre in Edinburgh: gowithyamo.com/blog/edinburghs-environmental-exhibitions-the-local And hear about Fern Leigh Albert's activist photographic practice, now on display at RAMM. - Ashish Ghadiali - whose film Can you tell the time of a running river? (2024), from the series Cinematics of Gaia and Magic (2023-Now), also features at RAMM - in the episode from Against Apartheid (2023) at KARST in Plymouth: pod.link/1533637675/episode/146d4463adf0990219f1bf0480b816d3 For more about Ibrahim Mahama's 2024 exhibition at Fruitmarket in Edinburgh, drawing from archives, and mineral extraction in West Africa, hear the artist's episode about Sekondi Locomotive Workshop (2024): pod.link/1533637675/episode/ed0be49d016ce665c1663202091ce224 PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: ⁠instagram.com/empirelinespodcast⁠ And Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936⁠ Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/empirelines

We meet Anya Gallacio (b. 1963, Scotland), an artist renowned for her innovative use of organic, ephemeral materials – ranging from chocolate, ice, wax, apples, flowers and chalk – and for her explorations of transformation, change and impermanence. Throughout her practice, Gallaccio has significantly reshaped understandings of contemporary sculpture.Anya Gallaccio: preserve is her largest survey exhibition to date at Turner Contemporary, Margate. The exhibition spans three decades of Gallaccio's radical practice, restaging several iconic sculptures in addition to a new site-specific commission. It reveals the artist's consistent rethinking of the relationship between art and the environment by presenting works that connect with Kent's natural heritage.Due to the temporal nature of her work, much of Gallaccio's practice is best known through documentary photographs and memory. This exhibition introduces her sculptures and large-scale installations so that a new generation can engage in their references to environmental sustainability and preserving fragile ecosystems.Renowned for her innovative use of organic, ephemeral materials such as apples, flowers and chalk, and for her explorations of transformation and impermanence, Gallaccio has reshaped our understanding of contemporary sculpture.Complementing Gallaccio's exhibition, Turner Contemporary has developed an extensive school programme in partnership with the artist. This programme, titled An Apple a Day, aims to explore Kent's countryside, heritage, and history through the lens of the apple and county's apple orchards. Inspired by the work of Californian chef and food activist Alice Waters, Gallaccio seeks to embed nature across everyday teaching in primary schools.In collaboration with Kent Downs National Landscape, DEFRA and Lees Court Estate, this project underscores Turner Contemporary's commitment to sustainability and celebrates the relationship between art, ecology, and agriculture in Kent. By engaging students with the rich heritage of the region's apple orchards, the programme fosters a deeper appreciation for nature and promotes environmental stewardship from an early age.Anya Gallaccio: preserve runs until 26th January 2024 and is free to visit. Curated by Melissa Blanchflower, Senior Curator, Turner Contemporary.Visit: https://turnercontemporary.org/whats-on/anya-gallaccio-preserve/Follow @TurnerContemporaryThanks to @ThomasDaneGallery Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Artist and sculptor Permindar Kaur moves between the Black British Arts Movement, the Young British Artists (YBAs), and Barcelona in the 1990s, exploring the ambiguities of Indian and South Asian cultural identities, Nothing is Fixed is an idea that has grown from ⁠Permindar Kaur's 2022 exhibition at The Art House in Wakefield⁠. For their latest, in Southampton, the artist brings together the public and the private, transforming the various gallery spaces into bedrooms of a home. Beds, chairs, tables, and teddy bears - ambiguous, often unsettling, domestic objects - populate the space, as well as never-before-shown works on paper, which underline the role of drawing in their sculptural practice. Born in Britain to Sikh parents of Indian heritage, Permindar is often exhibited in the context of the Black British Arts Movement, showing with leading members of Blk Art Group like Eddie Chambers. The artist also describes their wider interactions with the ⁠YBAs, exhibitions in Japan, and influences from their formative years of practice in Barcelona, Spain, Canada, and Sweden. We discuss encounters with artists like Mona Hatoum and Eva Hesse, Helen Chadwick and Félix González-Torres, and more surrealist storytellers like Leonora Carrington and Paula Rego, alongside the material-focussed practices of Arte Povera. We trouble the category of ‘British Asian artists', exploring Permindar's work with and within particular Indian and Punjabi diasporic communities in Nottingham, Sheffield, and Glasgow, in Scotland. With series like Turbans, Permindar describes how their practice has changed over time, navigating questions of identity, representation, and the binary of non-/Western/European art practices. They share their research on a site-specific public sculpture for Southampton's yearly Mela Festival, a long-established event which represents, rather than ‘reclaims' space for, different South Asian cultures - and lifelong learning, from younger artists. Permindar Kaur: Nothing is Fixed ran at John Hansard Gallery in Southampton until September 2024, closing with the launch of an exhibition book of the same name, supported by Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai. Sculpture in the Park is on view at Compton Verney in Warwickshire until 2027. Kaur also presented work in A Spirit Inside, an exhibition of works from the Women's Art Collection and the Ingram Collection, at Compton Verney until September 2024. Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024 opens in venues across Plymouth on 28 September 2024, and travels to the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London from 15 January 2025. For more, you can read my article in gowithYamo. Hear curator Griselda Pollock, from ⁠Medium and Memory (2023)⁠ at HackelBury Fine Art in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/37a51e9fab056d7b747f09f6020aa37e Read into Jasleen Kaur's practice, and the Turner Prize 2024, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/jasleen-kaur-interview And other artists connected to Glasgow, including Alia Syed (instagram.com/p/C--wHJsoFp6/?img_index=1), and ⁠Ingrid Pollard, in the episode from Carbon Slowly Turning (2022)⁠ at MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, the Turner Contemporary in Margate, and Tate Liverpool, and Invasion Ecology (2024): pod.link/1533637675/episode/4d74beaf7489c837185a37d397819fb8. For more about toys and unsettling ‘children's stories', hear Sequoia Danielle Barnes on Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby (2024) at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop: pod.link/1533637675/episode/2b43d4e0319d49a76895b8750ade36f8 And listen out for more from Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024 - coming soon. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: ⁠instagram.com/empirelinespodcast⁠ And Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936⁠ Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/empirelines

John Boorman talks to Samira about his 1974 science-fiction, fantasy film Zardoz as it is screened on its fiftieth anniversary at the BFI and his novel on which it is based is republished. He discusses the craft of film making and reflects on the film he wishes he'd made with Elvis. British artist Anya Gallaccio welcomes us into her London studio as she prepares for three major exhibitions: a major retrospective at the Turner Contemporary in Margate, a stores she's pained entirely with chocolate in her hometown of Paisley and a permanent AIDS memorial due to be unveiled in London in 2027. And, the folk singer and social media sensation The Halfway Kid, otherwise known as Saeed Gadir, discusses his upcoming album Myths In Modern Life and performs live in the studio. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Ruth Watts

Artist and academic Sequoia Danielle Barnes redresses the ugly side of kitsch and ‘cute' toy cultures, telling histories of trickster rabbits from Peter Rabbit to Bugs Bunny, appropriated from Black Southern American folklore from the 16th century to now. With ceramics, fabrics, and super sticky slugs, Sequoia Danielle Barnes' new installation is an Afro-surrealist retelling of Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby, a folktale developed by her enslaved ancestors after being ripped from Africa and displaced in Alabama, in the United States - the place she grew up before pursuing her practice in ‘transatlantic' institutions. Here, stories about figures like Uncle Remus, Uncle Ben, and Aunt Jemima, often first told as a means of action guidance for outsmarting slavemasters, were mainstreamed into 20th century pop art and cultures. Sequoia's exhibition takes its title from the 1946 film, Song of the South, a nostalgic representation of the antebellum, pre-Confederate South, revealing how ‘cuteness' masks anti-Black racist tropes and propaganda. We discuss how popular consumption of Western/European films, TV adverts, and commercials can perpetuate forms of oppression and marginalisation, including racialisation, infantilism, violence, and the cannibalisation of enslaved peoples. Sequoia tells of her interest in ‘Tellytubby lore', how children's cartoons and animations can sustain critical traditions of surrealism, and why younger people more readily engage with her work than adults. From her creepy and uncanny collectibles, we discuss why major institutions protect and preserve golliwogs, golly, and ‘piccaninny' dolls, and Sequoia's ‘Black radical art practice' in spaces like CCA Glasgow, Fruitmarket, and the National Museum of Scotland. Sequoia shares her subversive influences from the Black diaspora, including Faith Ringgold, Betye Saars, Robert Colescott,and Eddie Chambers. With Theaster Gates, Patrick Kelly, Joe Casely-Hayford,, we explore Afrofuturism, and find entanglements in their own practice, between works with textiles, fashion, and pottery. Beneath the dark humour and sweet surfaces of their works, Sequoia speaks of connections between contemporary consumption and capitalism, and historic sugar cane plantations. exposing how legacies of colonialism, slavery, and global trade still shape society today. Sequoia Danielle Barnes: Everything Is Satisfactual runs at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop until 28 August 2024. The exhibition is part of Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF) 2024, which continues in Scotland until 25 August 2024. For more about Black Southern Assemblage, hear Raina Lampkins-Felder, curator at the Souls Grown Deep Foundation and Royal Academy in London, on the Quiltmakers of Gee's Bend (20th Century-Now): pod.link/1533637675/episode/2cab2757a707f76d6b5e85dbe1b62993 Read about Sonia Boyce's Feeling Her Way (2022), her Golden Lion-winning British Pavilion (2022), at the Turner Contemporary in Margate, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog-post-app/feeling-her-way-sonia-boyces-noisy-exhibition And read about Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF) 2023, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog-post-app/edinburgh-art-festivals-reckoning-with-the-citys-colonial-legacies EDITOR: Alex Rees. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: ⁠instagram.com/empirelinespodcast⁠ And Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936⁠ Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/empirelines

Contemporary artist Beatriz Milhazes collages arabesques from Baroque Portugal and Brazil's many indigenous communities, tracing religious and natural patterns in Roman Catholicism, Islamic architectures, and the islands of Japan, through Casa de Maria (1992). Known for her colourful, large-scale abstract paintings, Beatriz Milhazes' practice reflects how Brazilian culture has long ‘assimilated' plural influences, particularly the effects of Portuguese and Spanish colonial rule between the 17th and 19th centuries. Arches, doors, stained glass windows, and burnished golds, drawn from churches across South America, recur as motifs in works spanning forty years. Beatriz layers ruffles and rosettes, precursors to the circles in her more recent paintings, from royal Hispanic costumes, and textiles found in city markets and Carnival parades. Her studio overlooks Rio de Janeiro's botanical garden, another construct of colonial rule, and environment which inspires her creations. For the artist, flowers are both ‘natural' and ‘plastic' bodies - like the water, and ‘salty sea breeze' which connects her home in Brazil and the coastal cities of Britain, where her work is currently on display. Beatriz outlines the centrality of nature in popular and indigenous cultural production, and interest in ornamental ‘body drawings' by women in the Kadiwéu tribe. She shares how she adapts the concept of collage to painting on canvas, calling on Western/European modernism, geometric abstraction, and ‘scientific research' into colour for her exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2024. From a kimono in the collection of the V&A, a diplomatic gift from the emperor of Japan, Beatriz travels to her Yellow Flower Dream (2018) for the 'Art House Project' on Inujima - an island in the country's Seto Island Sea, also recreated in Kensington, at Japan House London. We touch on more histories of migration in São Paulo, home to Japan's largest diasporic community, and the ‘union' of cultural, economic, and ecological regeneration taking place across continents today. Beatriz Milhazes: Maresias runs at Tate St Ives in Cornwall until 29 September 2024. For more, you can read my article from the first exhibition at the Turner Contemporary in Margate in 2023, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/colour-and-abstraction-beatriz-milhazes-at-margates-turner-contemporary For more from Tate St Ives in Cornwall, hear curator Morad Montazami on the Casablanca Art School (1962-1987). For more from Japan House London, hear curator Hashimoto Mari on Hasegawa Akira's Antique French Military Uniform with Kumihimo (2021), and read about WAVE: Currents in Japanese Graphic Arts (2023), in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/wave-currents-in-japanese-graphic-arts-at-japan-house-london PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast And Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

We meet curator and writer Gemma Rolls-Bentley to discuss her exciting new book Queer Art, recorded in front of a live audience at the Turner Contemporary in Margate.Gemma's debut book Queer Art; From Canvas to Club and the Spaces Between is out now. With nearly 200 artworks selected by leading LGBTQI+ curator Gemma Rolls-Bentley, this book mixes the high-brow with the low, gallery stalwarts with Instagram stars, and the racy with the fabulous. This is a unique celebration of queer life – a must-have for the LGBTQI+ community, art lovers and anyone interested in the culture surrounding queer identity. The twentieth century saw key shifts for the LGBTQI+ community across the western world: from the Stonewall uprising to the first pride parades and homosexuality law reforms. The years following these milestone moments have seen queer life face new challenges, celebrations, injustices and liberations. As ever, this journey has been closely mapped by art and culture. Artists working across all mediums from painting, performance, digital and beyond have captured key moments, from the HIV/AIDS crisis and the rise of drag, to marriage equality and the fight for trans liberation.Gemma was born and raised in South Yorkshire. She spent her early years living on a farm and then in a village on the Yorkshire/Derbyshire border at the edge of Sheffield, where her parents still live. She left when she was 18 to go to Edinburgh University to study Maths & A.I. but graduated with a degree in Art History instead. When she moved to London to do an MA at the Courtauld Institute of Art she discovered that everyone in the art world was posh. She changed her surname to Rolls-Bentley on Facebook as a joke and it stuck. Gemma curated her first exhibition when she was a student in Edinburgh, a group show of fine art students in an abandoned travel agents. She's been curating ever since.She's spent almost two decades working passionately to champion diversity in the field. Curating exhibitions and building art collections internationally, her curatorial practice amplifies the work of female and queer artists as well as providing a platform for art that explores LGBTQ+ identity.Gemma is a creative consultant and advisor for brands, organisations, and cultural projects, in addition to teaching at numerous institutions including the Royal College of Art, the Glasgow School of Art, and Goldsmiths. She spent a decade working at the intersection of art and technology, holding positions of Chief Curator at Avant Arte and Curatorial Director at Artsy. Prior to that she spent 6 years working at Damien Hirst's studio, where she learned a lot about the art world (and what she wanted to help change).She co-chairs the board of trustees for the charity Queercircle, and sits on the Courtauld Association Committee. She was previously a trustee for Deptford X. In 2011, Gemma launched the arts arm of the East London Fawcett Group and ran their 2012-2013 Art Audit campaign.Recent curatorial projects include Tschabalala Self's first public art project at Coal Drops Yard in London, the Tom of Finland Art & Culture Festival, and the Brighton Beacon Collection, which is the largest permanent display of queer art in the UK. In 2023, she curated the group exhibition Dreaming of Home at Leslie Lohman Museum of Art in NYC, and she is the host of the museum's new podcast series.Follow @GemmaRollsBentley Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this special episode, EMPIRE LINES returns to Ingrid Pollard's 2022 exhibition, Carbon Slowly Turning, the first major survey of her career photographing Black experiences beyond the city and urban environments, in the English countryside. It marks the artist's participation in Invasion Ecology, a season of contemporary land art across South West England in summer 2024, questioning what we mean by ‘native' and what it means to belong. Since the 1980s, artist Ingrid Pollard has explored how Black and British identities are socially constructed, often through historical representations of the rural landscape. Born in Georgetown, Guyana, Ingrid draws on English and Caribbean photographic archives, with works crossing the borders of printmaking, sculpture, audio, and video installations. Their practice confronts complex colonial histories, and their legacies in our contemporary lived experiences, especially concerning race, sexuality, and identity. Curated by the artist and Gilane Tawadros, Carbon Slowly Turning led to Pollard's shortlisting for the Turner Prize 2022. From its iteration at the Turner Contemporary in Margate, Ingrid exposes the pre-Windrush propaganda films beneath works like Bow Down and Very Low -123 (2021), her plural influences from Maya Angelou to Muhammad Ali, and playing on popular culture with works in the Self Evident series (1992). As a Stuart Hall Associate Fellow at the University of Sussex, and with a PhD-by-publication, the artist discusses the role of research in her media-based practice. Finally, Ingrid opens her archive of depictions of African figures 'hidden in plain sight' in English towns and villages - from classical portraiture, to ‘Black Boy' pub signs. Ingrid Pollard: Carbon Slowly Turning ran at MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, the Turner Contemporary in Margate, and Tate Liverpool, throughout 2022. The exhibition was supported by the Freelands Foundation and Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, and the episode first released as part of EMPIRE LINES at 50. Invasion Ecology is co-curated by Jelena Sofronijevic for Radical Ecology, and Vashti Cassinelli at Southcombe Barn, an arts space and gardens on Dartmoor. The central group exhibition, featuring Ingrid Pollard, Iman Datoo, Hanna Tuulikki, Ashish Ghadiali, Fern Leigh Albert, and Ashanti Hare, runs from 1 June to 10 August 2024. The wider programme includes anti-colonial talks and workshops with exhibiting artists, writers, researchers, and gardeners, reimagining more empathic connections between humans, plants, animals, and landscapes. Ingrid will join EMPIRE LINES in conversation with Corinne Fowler, Professor of Colonialism and Heritage in Museum Studies at the University of Leicester, Director of Colonial Countryside: National Trust Houses Reinterpreted, and author of Our Island Stories: Country Walks through Colonial Britain (2024), in July 2024. For more information, follow Radical Ecology and Southcombe Barn on social media. You can also listen to the EMPIRE LINES x Invasion Ecology Spotify playlist, for episodes with Paul Gilroy, Lubaina Himid, Johny Pitts, and Imani Jacqueline Brown, plus partners from the University of Exeter, KARST, CAST, and the Eden Project in Cornwall. Ingrid Pollard's Three Drops of Blood (2022), commissioned by talking on corners (Dr Ella S. Mills and Lorna Rose), also explores representations of ferns, botany, and folk traditions in Devon's historic lace-making industry. First exhibited at Thelma Hubert Gallery in Honiton, it is now part of the permanent collection of The Box in Plymouth, where it will be displayed from 19 October 2024. SOUNDS: no title, Ashish Ghadiali (2024). PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast And Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

Artist LR (Lisa) Vandy shows EMPIRE LINES the ropes in a studio visit to Chatham's Royal Navy Dockyard in Kent, unravelling entangled imperial and industrial relationships, dance in the African diaspora, and women's work in abstract sculpture. In 2022, sculptor LR (Lisa) Vandy relocated her studio from the city of London to Chatham Ropery which, with original machinery from the 19th century, has preserved traditional practices and knowledges. Rope became essential to Britain's burgeoning maritime industry during the Georgian and Victorian eras, tied to the construction of empires, colonial hierarchies, and sites of slavery. Building in collaboration with the resident Master Ropemakers, her sculptures allude to and playfully subvert the media's historic associations and legacy now. From her five-metre-high figure for Liverpool's Canning Dock, to her new, smaller body of works, Lisa walks through her collection and archive on Kent's waterfront. Born in Coventry in the Midlands, she shares her experiences of growing up ‘by the sea' in Sussex as a young person of Nigerian and Irish heritages, and the racialised exclusion some face from leisurely pursuits in natural environments. Inspired by Barbara Ehrenreich's 2006 book, Dancing In The Streets, Lisa unravels ‘collective joy' and the central role of Black women. We see how dance has been used to resist oppression across continents, with spirit dances, raves, festivals, and carnival masquerades, interests shared by contemporaries like Theaster Gates, Hew Locke, Romuald Hazoumè, Zak Ové, and Hassan Hajjaj. Straw-fibre figures recall Grain Mother deities, corn dollies, and Kumpo, spinning dances from the Casamance (Senegal) and Gambia. With her ongoing series of Hulls, comprised of found objects, boats, and fishing floats ‘plundered' from DIY stores, we discuss her interest in the ‘underbelly of empire', knotty relationships between rail, sail, and transport, and ‘migrant crises' in the Mediterranean Sea today. Drawing on her research in museum collections, ancient silverwares, and indigo trade routes, Lisa moves on the discussion about globalised 'African masks' as symbols of ‘aggressive protection'. We discuss gender and identity, and how her curvilinear copper sculptures challenge conventional representations of the ‘female form'. Dynamic drawings of tornados tell of her designs for statues in the landscape - role models for those subject to the male gaze - exposing the empowering potential of contemporary art. Plus, Lisa shares why her tactile public artworks are designed to be destroyed. LR Vandy: Twist runs at the October Gallery in London until 25 May 2024. Dancing In Time: The Ties That Bind Us, commissioned by Liverpool Museums for the International Slavery Museum's Martin Luther King celebrations in 2023, stands at the Historic Dockyard Chatham in Kent until 17 November 2024. On harvest rituals, hear episodes about Ashanti Hare's performances at Against Apartheid at KARST in Plymouth (2023) and Invasion Ecology on Dartmoor (2024), and Learning from Artemisia (2019-2020), by Uriel Orlow and Orchestre Jeunes Étoiles des Astres, at the Eden Project in Cornwall. For more photographs of Black experiences in English coastal towns, and about the transatlantic ‘Triangular Trade' between Europe, Africa, and the Americas, hear Ingrid Pollard on ⁠Carbon Slowly Turning (2022)⁠ at Turner Contemporary in Margate. For more women working in port cities, read into: Lisetta Carmi: Identities, at the Estorick Collection in London. Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle of Thread and Rope, at Tate Modern in London. And hear Chris Spring on ‘African' textiles and Thabo, Thabiso and Blackx by Araminta de Clermont (2010)⁠ at the British Museum in London. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Editor: Alex Rees. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast And Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

We're starting today's episode with reaction to the shock political news that Natalie Elphicke has defected to Labour.The Dover MP released a statement criticising the Prime Minister's record on tackling small boat crossings - saying he's 'failing to keep our borders safe and secure'.Hear from a leading charity in Dover that works with asylum seekers, we have also spoken to the leader of Dover District Council and Rochester and Strood rep Kelly Tolhurst.Also in today's podcast, drivers have reported having to queue for an hour to pay to get out of a car park in Folkestone after new charges were introduced.Cameras have also been installed at the site on Sandgate Road. Kate joins us with the details.Volunteers at a youth club in north Kent have started a petition after it was forced to close.The facility on Hall Road in Northfleet is one of a number across the county that have shut - as the county council creates 'family hubs' instead. Hear from a teenager who worked there, and a mum whose son used to go along.A Kent school's been given funding to take children to visit an art gallery, as figures show more than a quarter of pupils across the country haven't been on a school trip.Long Mead Community Primary in Tonbridge took the Year 4 and 5 classes to the Turner Contemporary in Margate.And in football, there'll be an open-top bus parade this weekend to celebrate Bromley's pomotion into league two...They beat Solihull Moors on penalties in their final at Wembley.

Artist and curator Lubaina Himid unravels entangled histories of transatlantic slavery and textile production, across continents, and Britain's museum collections, via Lost Threads (2021, 2023). Lubaina Himid considers herself ‘fundamentally a painter', but textiles have long been part of her life and practice. Had she stayed in Zanzibar, the country of her birth in East Africa, she may have become a kanga designer, following a pattern set by her mother's interest in fashion, and childhood spent around department stores in London. First commissioned by the British Textile Biennial in 2021, and installed in Gawthorpe Hall's Great Barn, her 400m-long work Lost Threads' flows in a manner reflective of the movement of the oceans, seas, and waterways which historically carried raw cotton, spun yarn, and woven textiles between continents, as well as enslaved people from Africa to pick raw cotton in the southern states of America, and workers who migrated from South Asia to operate looms in East Lancashire. Now on display in Bath, the rich Dutch wax fabrics resonate with the portraits on display in the Holburne Museum's collection of 17th and 18th century paintings - symbols of how much of the wealth and prosperity of south-west England has been derived from plantations in the West Indies. Lubaina talks about how the meaning of her work changes as it travels to different contexts, with works interpreted with respect to Indian Ocean histories in the port city of Sharjah, to accessible, participatory works in Cardiff, and across Wales. We consider her ‘creative interventions' in object museums and historic collections, ‘obliterating the beauty' of domestic items like ceramics, and her work with risk-taking curators in ‘regional' and ‘non-conventional' exhibition spaces. We discuss her formative work within the Blk Art group in the 1980s, collaboration with other women, and being the first Black artist to win the Turner Prize in 2017. And drawing on her interests in theatre, Lubaina hints at other collections and seemingly ‘resolved' histories that she'd like to unsettle next. Lubaina Himid: Lost Threads runs at the Holburne Museum in Bath until 21 April 2024. For more about Dutch wax fabric and ‘African' textiles, hear the British Museum's Dr. Chris Spring on Thabo, Thabiso and Blackx, Araminta de Clermont (2010). For more about Claudette Johnson, hear curator Dorothy Price on And I Have My Own Business in This Skin (1982) at the Courtauld Gallery in London. Hear artist Ingrid Pollard on Carbon Slowly Turning (2022) at the Turner Contemporary in Margate. Hear curator Griselda Pollock from Medium and Memory (2023) at HackelBury Fine Art in London. And for more about the wealth of colonial, Caribbean sugar plantations which founded the Holburne Museum, hear Dr. Lou Roper on ⁠Philip Lea and John Seller's A New Map of the Island of Barbados (1686)⁠, an object in its collection. Recommended reading: On Lubaina Himid: gowithyamo.com/blog/the-revolutionary-act-of-walking-in-the-city On Maud Sulter: gowithyamo.com/blog/reclaiming-visual-culture-black-venus-at-somerset-house On Sonia Boyce: gowithyamo.com/blog/feeling-her-way-sonia-boyces-noisy-exhibition On Life Between Islands at Tate Britain: artmag.co.uk/the-caribbean-condensed-life-between-islands-at-the-tate-britain WITH: Lubaina Himid, British artist and curator, and professor of contemporary art at the University of Central Lancashire. Himid was one of the first artists involved in the UK's Black Art movement in the 1980s, and appointed MBE and later CBE for services to Black Women's/Art. She won the Turner Prize in 2017, and continues to produce work globally. ART: ‘Lost Threads, Lubaina Himid (2021, 2023)'. SOUNDS: Super Slow Way, British Textile Biennial (2021). PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast And Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

Decolonial thinker Professor Paul Gilroy joins EMPIRE LINES live in Plymouth, to chart thirty years since the publication of The Black Atlantic, his influential book about race, nationalism, and the formation of a transoceanic, diasporic culture, of African, American, British, and Caribbean heritages. Published in 1993, Paul Gilroy's The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness explores the interconnectedness of Black diasporas and communities across Western/Europe. He argues that the experience of slavery and colonisation, racism and global migration has shaped a unique Black cultural identity that transcends national borders. By examining the cultural contributions of Black individuals in music, literature, and art, Paul suggests that the Black Atlantic remains a site of resistance and creativity. Highlighting the plural and complex experiences of Black people throughout history and today, he challenges the notion of a singular, essential Black identity. We consider some of the transdisciplinary artist-activist-academics referenced in his texts, including W.E.B. Du Bois, Stuart Hall, and James Baldwin, to more contemporary figures, like Nadia Cattouse, bell hooks, and June Jordan, and Angeline Morrison. Plus, Paul talks about his early interests in music journalism, research into Black jazz and blues music, as well as British folk and country songs - and even Eminem. We consider Paul's engagements with Critical Race Theory (CRT), and Cultural Studies in Birmingham in the Midlands, and how his practice challenges ideas of Black nationalism, Afro-centrism, and political Blackness. We discuss too his ideas about afro-pessimism and planetary humanism, and how capitalism, militarism, and the environment has changed over the last thirty years. A self-described ‘child of Rachel Carson', he details his support for Extinction Rebellion, and the obligation of older generations to find hope in an era of climate and ecological crises. Finally, Paul describes his ‘Creole upbringing' in north London, connecting with his Guyanese heritage in the multicultural, cosmopolitan city, and how his mixed parentage shaped his relationship with rural landscapes, including the south-west of England, from where we speak. This episode was recorded live at the Black Atlantic Symposium in Plymouth - a series of talks and live performances, celebrating the 30th anniversary of Paul Gilroy's formative text - in November 2023: eventbrite.co.uk/e/black-atlantic-tickets-750903260867?aff=oddtdtcreator For more, listen to Ashish Ghadiali on the exhibition Against Apartheid (2023): pod.link/1533637675/episode/146d4463adf0990219f1bf0480b816d3 For more about Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s – Now (2021-2022) at Tate Britain in London, read my article for Artmag: artmag.co.uk/the-caribbean-condensed-life-between-islands-at-the-tate-britain/ For more about Ingrid Pollard, hear the artist on Carbon Slowly Turning (2022) at the Turner Contemporary in Margate: pod.link/1533637675/episode/e00996c8caff991ad6da78b4d73da7e4 For more about the Quiltmakers of Gee's Bend, listen to Raina Lampkins-Felder, curator at the Souls Grown Deep Foundation and Royal Academy in London: https://pod.link/1533637675/episode/2cab2757a707f76d6b5e85dbe1b62993 WITH: Professor Paul Gilroy, sociologist, Founding Director of the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism & Racialisation at University College London (UCL), and Co-Chair of the Black Atlantic Innovation Network (BAIN). He won the Holberg Prize in 2019. ART: ‘'The Black Atlantic, Paul Gilroy (1993-Now) (EMPIRE LINES Live in Plymouth, with Radical Ecology)' PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast And Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

Photographer Armet Francis documents African diasporic cultures across ‘The Black Triangle', and captures the co-founding of the Association of Black Photographers in London, now Autograph ABP, 35 years ago. For over four decades, Jamaican-British photographer Armet Francis has taken portraits that celebrate the resilience and survival of African diasporic cultures. Having immigrated with his family as a young child in the 1950s, he was part of the post-Windrush generation, acutely aware of his ‘cultural displacement' and ‘political alienation' as the only Black child in his school in London Docklands. Drawing on the transatlantic slave trade route, between Africa, the Americas, and Europe, Armet developed the idea of ‘The Black Triangle' to guide his photographic practice from 1969, as a means to connect with the rich and diverse pan-African communities. Armet details his ‘social documentary' approach, his experiences as one of the first Black photographers to shoot fashion, and how he challenged exotic tropes in commercial, white photography and advertising. He shares images of Notting Hill Carnival, Brixton Market, and tributes to those who protested the injustice of the New Cross Fire in 1981. Armet retells the unlikely story of taking Angela Davis' photograph at the Keskidee Centre, his engagement with activists like Malcolm X and Stuart Hall, and how he had to ‘become Black' before he could becoming politically conscious and active in civil rights movements. Armet was also the first Black photographer to have a solo exhibition at The Photographers' Gallery in London when The Black Triangle series was exhibited there in 1983. Five years later, he co-founded the Association of Black Photographers, now Autograph ABP, where he has represented the series in 2023. To mark both anniversaries, he talks about what it was like founding the institution, working with the likes of David A Bailey, Mark Sealy, and Charlie Phillips, and his ongoing practice in the archives, keeping record of the important contributions - and canons - of British history. Armet Francis: Beyond The Black Triangle runs at Autograph ABP in London until 20 January 2024. Hear from many more artists and photographers who've worked with Autograph on EMPIRE LINES: Ingrid Pollard on Carbon Slowly Turning (2022) at Turner Contemporary in Margate: pod.link/1533637675/episode/e00996c8caff991ad6da78b4d73da7e4 Curator Florence Ostende on Carrie Mae Weems' series, From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995–1996), at the Barbican in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/b4e1a077367a0636c47dee51bcbbd3da And curator Alice Wilke on Carrie Mae Weems' Africa Series (1993), at the Kunstmuseum Basel: pod.link/1533637675/episode/d63af25b239253878ec68180cd8e5880 Johny Pitts on Home is Not a Place (2021-Now) at The Photographers' Gallery in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/70fd7f9adfd2e5e30b91dc77ee811613 John Akomfrah on Arcadia (2023) at The Box in Plymouth: pod.link/1533637675/episode/31cdf80a5d524e4f369140ef3283a6cd For more from Autograph's contemporary programme, hear photographer Hélène Amouzou and curator Bindi Vora on Voyages (2023), on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/a97c0ce53756ecaac99ffd0c24f8a870 WITH: Armet Francis, Jamaican-British photographer. He is a co-founder of the Association of Black Photographers in London, now Autograph ABP. ART: ‘The Black Triangle, Armet Francis (1969) (EMPIRE LINES x Autograph)'. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Editor: Nada Smiljanic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast And Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

Curator and filmmaker Ashish Ghadiali connects climate science, contemporary art, and activism, cultivating a radical, cultural ecology in the countryside of south-west England, in their multidisciplinary exhibition, Against Apartheid. As environmental crises disproportionately affect Black and brown communities, and the resulting displacement often racialised, should we consider these states of ‘climate apartheid'? And could contemporary art help to bridge the gap between science and academics, and everyday action guidance? Against Apartheid, a multidisciplinary exhibition in Plymouth, puts these practices, histories, and geographies in conversation, from vast wallpapers charting global warming, to an intimate portrait of Ella Kissi-Debrah, and plantation paylists collected by the Barbadian artist Annalee Davis, linking land ownership in Scotland and the Caribbean from the 19th century Abolition Acts. Other works affirm how historic ecologies of empire – African enslavement, the middle passage, and the genocide of Indigenous peoples - continue to shape our present and future, in the geopolitics of international borders, migration, and travel. Activist and filmmaker Ashish Ghadiali talks about his work as ‘organisation', not curation, and how we can resist the individualisation that prevents effective collective political action. From his background in film, he suggests why museums and exhibitions might be better places for screenings than cinemas, outside of the market. We discuss why both rural countryside and urban city landscapes should be considered through the lens of empire, drawing on ‘post-plantation' and anti-colonial thinkers like Paul Gilroy, Françoise Vergès, Sylvie Séma Glissant, and Grada Kilomba. We relocate Plymouth's global history, a focus since #BLM, reversing the notion of the particular and ‘regional' as peripheral to the capital. We explore the wider arts ecology in south-west England, and how local connections with artists like Kedisha Coakley at The Box, and Iman Datoo at the University of Exeter and the Eden Project in Cornwall, also inform his work with global political institutions like the UN. Against Apartheid runs at KARST in Plymouth until 2 December 2023, part of Open City, a season of decolonial art and public events presented by Radical Ecology and partners across south-west England. For more, join EMPIRE LINES at the Black Atlantic Symposium - a free series of talks and live performances, celebrating the 30th anniversary of Paul Gilroy's formative text - which takes place from 24-26 November 2023: eventbrite.co.uk/e/black-atlantic-tickets-750903260867?aff=oddtdtcreator Part of JOURNEYS, a series of episodes leading to EMPIRE LINES 100. For more on Ingrid Pollard, hear the artist on Carbon Slowly Turning (2022) at the Turner Contemporary on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/e00996c8caff991ad6da78b4d73da7e4 For more about climate justice, listen to artist Imani Jacqueline Brown on What Remains at the End of the Earth? (2022) at the Hayward Gallery on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/639b20f89d8782b52d6350513325a073 WITH: Ashish Ghadiali, Founding Director of Radical Ecology and Co-Chair of the Black Atlantic Innovation Network (BAIN) at University College London (UCL). He is the Co-Chair and Co-Principal Investigator of Addressing the New Denialism, lead author on a publication on climate finance for COP28, and a practicing filmmaker with recent credits including Planetary Imagination (2023) a 5-screen film installation, for The Box, Plymouth, and the feature documentary, The Confession (2016) for BFI and BBC Storyville. Ashish is the curator of Against Apartheid. ART: ‘Radical Ecology, Ashish Ghadiali (2023)'. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. EDITOR: Nada Smiljanic.

EPISODE 1831: In this KEEN ON episode, Andrew talks to John Kampfner, author of IN SEARCH OF BERLIN, about the enigmatic German capital on the edge of the worldJohn Kampfner has had a 30-year career in international public life spanning media, global affairs, politics and arts. He is the author of seven books. He began his journalistic career as a foreign correspondent with the Daily Telegraph, first in East Berlin where he reported on the fall of the Wall and unification of Germany, and then in Moscow at the time of the collapse of Soviet Communism. He went on to work for the FT and BBC. As Editor of the New Statesman from 2005 to 2008, he took the magazine to 30-year circulation highs. He was Society of Magazine Editors Current Affairs Editor of the Year in 2006. He now writes regularly for newspapers such as the Guardian, FT and Der Spiegel. He has made many programmes over the years for BBC Radio 4 and World Service and regularly appearances on European broadcasters. His new book, In Search of Berlin, is published in October 2023. Prior to publication, it has received an array of critical acclaim. His previous book, Why the Germans Do It Better, went immediately onto the Sunday Times and Amazon best-sellers list. Another best-seller, Blair's Wars (2003), is now a standard text in schools. His fourth book, Freedom For Sale (2009), was short-listed for the Orwell Prize. A regular speaker at international conferences, he has worked with Chatham House, including setting up its UK in the World programme. He is a Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. For the past two years, he has been Chair of Young Königswinter, which brings together the next generation of German and British public figures. In the arts world, he is Chair of the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration. For eight years he was founder Chair of Turner Contemporary, one of the country's most successful art galleries. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate for his services to the arts by Bath Spa University in 2019.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Curator Dorothy Price outlines the figures of Claudette Johnson, a founder member of the Black British Art Movement (Blk Art Group), and one of the first ‘post-colonials' practicing in Wolverhampton, Birmingham, and the Midlands from the 1980s to now. Ever so-slightly-larger than-life, Claudette Johnson's drawings of Black figures reflect the status of their artist. A founding member of the Black British Arts Movement or BLK Art Group in the 1980s, she was a leading figure in a politically-charged creative community - called the first ‘post-colonials' by Stuart Hall, for being born and raised in Britain. Johnson worked closely with fellow ‘post-Windrush' contemporaries include Eddie Chambers and Keith Piper, Ingrid Pollard and Maud Sulter, Marlene Smith and Lubaina Himid - but her work has been relatively underrepresented. As the artist's first public monographic exhibition opens in London, curator Dorothy Price talks about her practice in the Wolverhampton Young Black Artists Group - which predated the YBAs - and formative speech in the First National Black Arts Conference in 1982. Dorothy shares personal insights from the groundbreaking ICA exhibition, The Thin Black Line, and Claudette's complex position as a Black European artist of African and Caribbean descent. Drawing on the Courtauld's permanent collection, we see the artist's work with African masks, sculptures, and conventional representations of Black women, challenging the colonial foundations of Western European modernism, and reappropriating the ‘Primitivism' of the likes of Pablo Picasso and Paul Gauguin to state her place in art history. We also discuss her contemporary practice, and how the history of the Black British Arts Movement can decentre the contemporary ‘Brixtonisation' of the singular Black experience, drawing attention to cities in Wolverhampton, Birmingham, and the Midlands. Claudette Johnson: Presence runs at the Courtauld Gallery in London until 14 January 2023. For more, you can read my article. For more about Keith Piper, hear curators Jake Subryan Richards and Vicky Avery on Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance (2023) at the Fitzwilliam Museum on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/a5271ae2bc8c85116db581918412eda2 For more on Ingrid Pollard, hear the artist on Carbon Slowly Turning (2022) at the Turner Contemporary on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/e00996c8caff991ad6da78b4d73da7e4 For more about the ‘Brixtonisation' of the Black British experience, listen to artist Johny Pitts on Home is Not A Place (2021-Now) at The Photographers' Gallery on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/70fd7f9adfd2e5e30b91dc77ee811613 For more on Hurvin Anderson, hear Hepworth Wakefield curator Isabella Maidment on his Barbershop (2006-2023) series on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/5cfb7ddb525098a8e8da837fcace8068 Recommended reading: On Lubaina Himid: gowithyamo.com/blog/the-revolutionary-act-of-walking-in-the-city On Maud Sulter: gowithyamo.com/blog/reclaiming-visual-culture-black-venus-at-somerset-house On Sonia Boyce: gowithyamo.com/blog/feeling-her-way-sonia-boyces-noisy-exhibition On Life Between Islands at Tate Britain: artmag.co.uk/the-caribbean-condensed-life-between-islands-at-the-tate-britain/ WITH: Professor Dorothy Price, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and Critical Race Art History at The Courtauld, London. She is also Editor of Art History, journal of the Association for Art History, and founder of the Tate/Paul Mellon Centre's British Art Network subgroup on Black British Art. Dorothy is the co-curator of Presence. ART: ‘And I Have My Own Business in This Skin, Claudette Johnson (1982)'. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 And Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

The British artist has edited In The Offing – a new group exhibition at the Turner Contemporary in Margate. He joins us to chat about Manchester's music scene, his experimental NTS show, ‘90s adventures in New York, Margate's class anxiety, being suspicious of art, his repulsion to Britpop and how The Face magazine won his heart. Follow THE FACE on ⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠.

In this special episode, we delve into the Meet Me at the Museum archive to pull out highlights from our visits to museums near the coast, including writer and art historian Katy Hessel at the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden in St Ives, author and podcaster Robert Diament at the Turner Contemporary in Margate, and actor and comedian Mawaan Rizwan at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The weekend's biggest discussion topics with Emma Nelson. CNN's Europe editor Nina Dos Santos reviews the papers, Monocle's Helsinki correspondent Petri Burtsoff defends Finnish summers, and an interview with Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes, whose exhibition, “Maresias”, opens at the Turner Contemporary in Margate today. 

Siobhan Davies is a contemporary dance pioneer who has witnessed and contributed to the development of the British dance scene over the past 50 years. Having originally studied visual arts, Siobhan discovered contemporary dance in 1967, when she began to take classes with the Contemporary Dance Group, which later became London Contemporary Dance Theatre. In 1969, she started performing with the company, and by the seventies she was choreographing for them. Siobhan has had many different chapters of her career, from joining forces with Richard Alston and Ian Spink to form Second Stride, one of the most influential independent British contemporary dance companies of the 1980s, to taking a year's sabbatical in America on a Fulbright Arts Fellowship, from working as an Associate Choreographer for Rambert to founding the Siobhan Davies Dance Company. Siobhan's work is marked by her interest in presenting dance in visual art and gallery spaces, and throughout her career she has worked with venues including Victoria Miro Gallery, the ICA, the Whitworth Gallery, Glasgow Museum of Modern Art, and Turner Contemporary. In the mid 2000s, she opened Siobhan Davies Studios in South London, a base for her research that has become a place not only of dance activity but of traffic between dance and other fields. Two years ago, Siobhan stepped down as artistic director of Siobhan Davies Studios. Since then she's been busy with various personal projects, from being appointed as an Associate Professor at C-dare Coventry University to traveling as an artist to the High Arctic with the Environmental organization Cape Farewell. She's also created ‘Transparent', a film that unravels the complex processes underpinning her 50 years of work in dance. Premiered at the BFI London Film Festival, the film is going to be shown at Sadler's Wells on 20th April and will be followed by a post show talk. Ahead of the screening, I couldn't wait to speak to Siobhan to find out what we can expect, reflect on her extensive career, and discuss her plans for the future.

WELCOME BACK TO SEASON 9 of The GWA PODCAST! This week, we interview one of the most influential and groundbreaking artists alive, SONIA BOYCE! Born and raised in London, where she still lives today, Boyce has been taking the art world by storm since the 1980s when she and other trailblazing artists – such as Lubaina Himid and Claudette Johnston – emerged collectively onto the art scene as the Black Arts Movement. Putting images of women and their stories centre stage, they exhibited in shows such as Five Black Women in 1983 at the Africa Centre, Thin Black Line at the ICA in 1985, and The Other Story at the Hayward in 1989.  Since then, Boyce's indefatigable practice – spanning drawing, printmaking, photography, installation, video and sound – has constantly evolved, focusing on collaboration, often with an emphasis on improvisation as she works with other artists to create immersive installation environments. Taking on a broader ethos of "collage" and what it means today – both literally and metaphorically – Boyce's practice has brought together a multitude of people, places and perspectives to provoke invaluable conversations about the world we live in today. Often involving sound pieces, when I find myself amongst one of Boyce's works, it becomes easy to lose oneself inside this very special, unusual but gripping world.  Since 2014 Boyce has been a professor of Black Art and Design, at the University of Arts London. In 2016, she was made a Royal Academician, in 2019 received an OBE for her services to art, and of course in 2022 became the winner of the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale, which she won for Feeling her Way – an immersive exhibition filled with bejewelled wallpaper and improvisatory song by women musicians – which is currently on view at Turner Contemporary in Margate before travelling to Leeds and later the Yale Centre for British Art.  https://turnercontemporary.org/bio/sonia-boyce/ https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/sonia-boyce-obe-794  https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/mar/19/hylas-nymphs-manchester-art-gallery-sonia-boyce-interview  https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/sonia-boyce-ra-magazine-venice-biennale  https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/13/arts/design/sonia-boyce-venice-biennale.html https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001f0q7/imagine-2022-sonia-boyce-finding-her-voice  Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael  Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/ -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY OCULA: https://ocula.com/

We're back offline, and inside Banned., a new exhibition blending archive and present-day photography at the Turner Contemporary in Margate. Curator Sabina Desir joins Anita, Mark, and Julie - three children of Black and Indigenous American airmen stationed at RAF Manston in the 1950s - to imprint their portraits of racial identity and ambiguity in Britain. Between 1951 and 1958, 2500 US Air Force servicemen and women were stationed at RAF Manston, near Margate. 200 were African American, and others were from non-white Indigenous and ethnic groups. After finding a 1957 newspaper article in the East Kent Times which downplayed the level of segregation imposed on British soil - and the furious responses this triggered from residents at the time - curator Sabina Desir began to reach out to those in the community today. Anita, Mark, and Julie, portrayed on the walls by local artist Richard Birch, share their lived experiences of tracing their ancestry - some, all the way back to Cherokee chiefs. Plus, Sabina exposes the different perceptions of the post-war Windrush generation, new connections in Charlie Evaristo-Boyce's pop art series, and the power of representing these people in the same place where they were banned. Banned. runs at the Turner Contemporary in Margate until 8 May 2023. WITH: Sabina Desir, curator of Banned. She is the Artistic Director and Creative Producer of the Ramsgate-based Freedom Road Project. Anita Stokes, Mark Mahan, and Julie Wing are all children of Manston US Air Force Servicemen, working with the Banned. project. ART: Children of the Manston US Air Force Servicemen Print Series, Richard Birch (2023) IMAGE: 'Anita Stokes, Mark Mahan, and Julie Wing, in front of their portraits in Children of the Manston US Air Force Servicemen Print Series, Richard Birch (2023)'. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES at: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

Sonia Boyce's exhibition, Feeling Her Way, won the top prize at the Venice Biennale international art fair. As the sound, video and wallpaper installation arrives at the Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate, Sonia tells Samira why she wanted to form her own girl band and help them to achieve imperfection through improvisation. Director Colm Bairéad on his film The Quiet Girl – a small scale Irish-language drama, but the highest grossing Irish-language film in history, and the first to be nominated for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars, and BAFTA nominated for Best Film Not In The English Language and Best Adapted Screenplay. Equity general secretary Paul Fleming and freelance theatre director Kate Wasserberg discuss the ongoing problem of low pay and poor conditions in the UK theatre sector. Artistic director and chief executive of Oldham Coliseum, Chris Lawson, discusses the decision to cancel its programme of shows after losing its Arts Council England funding. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Eliane Glaser Main Image - Sonia Boyce courtesy of the artist and Simon Lee Gallery. Photographer: Parisa Taghizadeh

In this week's episode of London Calling, Toby collects his 50 quid and then he and James debate whether 2022 will be the year we return to normal or "The Great Reset" will continue apace. What lies ahead in politics? What's the line of succession in Scotland, what does the conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell hold for the powerful around the world and what are the chances of Boris surviving until the end of 2022? With a new year comes the Honours List including the controversial pick for Tony Blair; resolutions (although James hasn't made any); and, in Culture Corner, the Turner Contemporary in Margate, The Power of the Dog (Netflix) and Roadrunner (available on most PPV services), a documentary about Anthony Bourdain.

The three-way conversation begins with introductions from guest curator Daniela Perazzo, then delves into the notion of intimacy and touch in life and in performance, discussing Charlotte's new work Written in the Body, and moving into how practices of wellness and support can exist within artistic work. Finally, we discuss the role of language in Charlotte's work. This is the first episode in a two part mini-series on the theme of 'Re-enchanting British dance,' guest-curated by Daniela Perazzo and supported by Kingston University. Both episodes are three-way conversations between an invited artist, a member of the podcast team, and Daniela Perazzo. Bios: Charlotte Spencer is a choreographer, teacher, curator, mentor and performer. She initiates all projects for Charlotte Spencer Projects, often working across art forms and in outdoor environmental contexts. Charlotte was recipient of a Bonnie Bird Choreographic Development Award in 2020. She has received commissions from The Place, Wellcome Collection, Greenwich Dance, Trinity Laban, Salisbury International Art Festival, South East Dance, Jerwood Galleries, Turner Contemporary, Siobhan Davies Dance and Brighton & Hove Libraries. Charlotte was a Sadler's Wells Summer University Artist 2015-18 led by Jonathan Burrows and Eva Martinez, and Artist Activator at Greenwich Dance 2014-17. She has worked closely with Siobhan Davies Dance since 2010 on a variety of projects, notably leading Next Choreography 2014-16 - their choreography programme for Young People. Charlotte was a priority artist for Dance Dialogues 2 2012-14 and Tour d'Europe des Choreographes 2010/2011. Charlotte graduated from London Contemporary Dance School in 2003 with a 1st Class BA (Hons). She is also in the midst of building a house in Brighton and hanging out with her young child.Petra Söör (collaborator, Written in the Body) is a dancer, maker and facilitator, working in a range of contexts including with Fevered Sleep, Charlotte Spencer Projects, Simone Kenyon, Robert Clark, Robin Dingemans, Carrie Cracknell and the National Theatre. Alongside solo work her own practice often proposes collaborative processes within a diversity of environments, projects include Sleeping a Walking Mountain and Undanced Dances, currently evolving interests in person-centred approaches to movement, tactile pedagogy and different modalities of touch to support health and wellbeing.Louise Tanoto (collaborator, Written in the Body) is a dance-artist based between Belgium and the UK. She trained at Laban and was a member of Transitions 2007. Louise is currently touring with Oona Doherty and Daniel Linehan as well as Charlotte Spencer Projects. Her performance credits within the UK include; Gecko, J Neve Harrington, Requardt & Rosenberg, Tilted Productions, Lost Dog, Damien Jalet and Hussein Chalayan. In Europe she has performed for Kabinet K, Eszter Salamon, Thierry de Mey, Ugo Dehaes, T.R.A.S.H (Netherlands) and was a member of Fabulous Beast. Louise is also a mother. Julia Pond is a choreographer, researcher and teacher. An expert in Isadora Duncan technique and repertory, her contemporary research interests and performance are at the intersection of dance and politics. Her fictional company and performance project, BRED, explores notions of value and productivity. Julia is also a TECHNE-funded PhD student at Kingston University, for her project exploring re-articulations of 'value' towards sustainability through dance and movement knowledges. Daniela Perazzo is a dance and performance scholar with a specialist interest in the intersections of the aesthetic and the political in interdisciplinary movement practices and experimental dramaturgical processes. She joined Kingston University London in 2014, having previously taught at the University of Surrey. She is a Senior Lecturer in Dance and Postgraduate Research Coordinator for the Department of Performing Arts and the School of Arts. Her first monograph, Jonathan Burrows: Towards a Minor Dance, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2019.Read more and links: https://www.charlottespencerprojects.org/ Full creative team credits for Written in the BodyConcept & Direction: Charlotte SpencerPerformance: Petra Söör and Louise TanotoSound: Alberto Ruiz SolerDramaturgy: Orrow Amy BellDesign: Bethany WellsCostume: Shanti FreedLighting: Marty LangthorneProducing support: Pip Sayers & Lou RogersPhotography & Film: Rosie PowellAudio Description: Shivaangee AgrawalBSL: Katie FenwickThe 'making' of movement and words : a po(i)etic reading of Charlotte Spencer's Walking Stories (Article by Daniela Perazzo)https://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/id/eprint/37237/Im/possible choreographies : diffractive processes and ethical entanglements in current British dance practices. Dance Research Journal, 51(3), pp. 66-83. ISSN (print) 0149-7677 (Article by Daniela Perazzo) https://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/id/eprint/43913/

We're celebrating fifty episodes of EMPIRE LINES, with three specials recorded offline and in the museum space – this time in the Turner Contemporary in Margate, for their latest exhibition Ingrid Pollard: Carbon Slowly Turning. Artist Ingrid Pollard explores her career of photographing Black experiences, beyond the city and urban environment, to the English countryside. Since the 1980s, artist Ingrid Pollard has explored how identities of Britishness and Blackness are socially constructed, through history and the rural landscape. Drawing on British and Caribbean photographic archives, her works cross boundaries in photography, sculpture, film and sound, confronting complex, often racist histories. She discusses how pre-Windrush propaganda films inspired works like Bow Down and Very Low -123 (2021), her influences from Maya Angelou to Muhammad Ali, and exposing those Black experiences often 'hidden in plain sight'. Ingrid Pollard: Carbon Slowly Turning runs at the Turner Contemporary in Margate until 25 September 2022. Part of EMPIRE LINES at 50, featuring three exhibitions ahead of their final weekend. See the episode notes for links to the last tickets, and the other episodes on Malangatana Ngwenya and Althea McNish. PRESENTER: Ingrid Pollard, Guyanese-born British artist, photographer, and researcher. She uses portraiture and traditional landscape imagery to explore social constructs like Britishness, race, and sexuality. She was Stuart Hall Associate Fellow at the University of Sussex (2018), and has been shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2022. ART: Self Evident, Ingrid Pollard (1992). IMAGE: 'Self Evident'. SOUNDS: Water Features. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES at: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

The English seaside is a feast for the senses; isolating just one, this sound project juxtaposes a serene seascape with the technicolour of tourism. Recorded in Margate, Kent in July 2022. Our journey begins atop white cliffs, descending to decadent adventures on the white sands. A thunderstorm forces us into boutiques and amusement arcades, before reemerging into evening petrichor. Special thanks to the Turner Contemporary and Ingrid Pollard for their support in this recording of the intensely sonic exhibition Carbon Slowly Turning.

Episode Summary:In this episode we are interviewing Scottish artist Katie Paterson, on the occasion of the biggest iteration to date of Future Library project in Oslo, and one of her most political works to date, Requiem, which opened in Edinburgh in April. Katie explains: “I've always made artworks that deal with nature and time and climate, but this is the first that isn't afraid to be political and confrontational... It is both celebratory and mythical, and yet it is also the saddest work I've ever made, mourning life lost and expressing a dystopian vision.” Making a quiet and gestural artwork, Katie refers to herself as a whispering activist, calling for awareness of distance with nature. Requiem tells the birth and life of our planet in a single object – an object that uses dust gathered from material dating from pre-solar times to those of the present. Katie's visionary project Future Library is one of the best examples of how artist can contribute to global crisis. “A forest has been planted in Norway, which will supply paper for a special anthology of books to be printed in 100 years time. Between now and then, one writer every year will contribute a text, with the writings held in trust, unread and unpublished, until the year 2114. The manuscripts will be held in a specially designed room in the new public library, Oslo.”“The crisis is not imminent; the crisis is here” George MonbiotThe Speaker:Katie Paterson was born in Glasgow in 1981. She studied at Edinburgh College of Art and the Slade School of Art, London, and is widely regarded as one of the leading artists of her generation working at the nexus of art and science. Recent and upcoming projects include solo exhibitions at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Turner Contemporary, Margate; NYLO, Reykjavik, and in June 2022 at Galleri F15 in Moss, Norway. Also in June, her 100-year artwork Future Library will celebrate the contributions of the last 3 writers to be commissioned and the opening of the Future Library room in the new Deichman Library in Oslo. A major new outdoor commission Mirage, for Apple's headquarters at Cupertino in California, will be unveiled later this year. Katie Paterson has been represented by Ingleby since 2010.Follow Katie's journey on InstagramHosts: Farah Piriye, ZEITGEIST19 FoundationSign up for ZEITGEIST19's newsletter at https://www.zeitgeist19.comFor sponsorship enquiries, comments, ideas and collaborations, email us at info@zeitgeist19.com Follow us on Instagram and TwitterHelp us to continue our mission and to develop our podcast: Donate

Emily Peasgood Composer, sound artist, artist, author Awards Ivors Composer Award for Sonic Art (2018) Emily Anne Peasgood is an Ivors Composer Awards winning English composer and sound artist.  Emily creates research-led and site specific interactive artworks for galleries and outdoor public spaces, ranging from large-scale community events to intimate sound installations. Her work aims to transform how we perceive our environment by creating invitations to connect with people and places that are forgotten, overlooked, or surrounded by histories that can be remembered and celebrated through sound and music. She is best known for her work in outdoor public locations with specific communities of people, often using innovative technology and design that visitors can interact with. Her work is magical, evocative and memorable.   Emily was profiled by the I as the Hip Op Composer. In 2017 she delivered the TEDx Folkestone talk "Emily! Don't do that!". Emily  was awarded a PhD by Canterbury Christ Church University for her thesis Leading with Aesthetic: Creating Accessible, Inclusive and Engaging Musical Artworks Through Experimental Processes in the Community and is a composition tutor at Canterbury Christ Church University. Dr Peasgood is a co-author of The Work of the Military Wives Choirs and The perceived effects of singing on the health and well-being of wives and partners of members of the British Armed Forces: a cross-sectional survey. Works In 2014, Emily created Landscapes a choral work responding to the landscape artworks of J. M. W. Turner and Helen Frankenthaler. It premiered at the exhibition Making Painting: J.M.W. Turner and Helen Frankenthaler at Turner Contemporary. In 2016 she premiered Lifted at Turner Contemporary. In the same year she premiered BIRDS, a sung and spoken word piece observing feminine ritual and behaviour through the lens of a documentary film narrator and Crossing Over, a piece commissioned by Turner Contemporary to premier as part of its event commemorating the Zong massacre as depicted on J.M.W. Turner's painting The Slave Ship (1840).   Halfway to Heaven won the prize for Sonic Art at the 2018 British Composer Awards (renamed the Ivors Composer Awards). In the same year, the "eerily evocative" Requiem for Cross Bones featured at MERGE Bankside and created The Illusion of Conscious Thought for the East Hill Cliff Railway and West Hill Cliff Railway in Hastings as part of the Coastal Currents Arts Festival. In 2019 Never Again was nominated for an Ivors Composer Award in the category of Community or Educational Project. In 2017 Emily Peasgood was nominated in the same category for BIRDS and other Stories and Crossing Over. Visit www.emilypeasgood.com for more info and links To support the podcast and get access to features about guitar playing and song writing visit https://www.patreon.com/vichyland and also news for all the creative music that we do at Bluescamp UK and France visit www.bluescampuk.co.uk For details of the Ikaro music charity visit www.ikaromusic.com Big thanks to Josh Ferrara for the music  

Robert Diament, co-host of the Talk Art podcast, explores Turner Contemporary in Margate with his friend Naomi Evans, co-founder of Everyday Racism. As they bring their perspectives to different exhibitions in this visually striking gallery, they discuss their love of Margate, how the arts scene has developed in the town, and how their work and interests led them to each other. They also consider how some of the artists on show respond to the sea, following in the steps of the gallery's namesake, artist JMW Turner. Notes: The exhibition Wayfinder: Larry Achiampong & JMW Turner curated by Larry Achiampong is at Turner Contemporary until 19 June 2022. The exhibition Sirens: Sophie von Hellermann and Anne Ryan is on until spring 2023. Visitors with a National Art Pass enjoy 10% off in the shop at Turner Contemporary. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What you'll learn in this episode: How we can examine almost any political topic through the lens of jewelry Why it's important that jewelry be embraced by academia, and how every jewelry enthusiast can help make that happen (even if they're not in academia themselves) Why a piece of jewelry isn't finished when it leaves the hands of its maker How matt works with collaborators for their column, “Settings and Findings,” in Lost in Jewelry Magazine How jewelry has tied people together throughout time and space About matt lambert matt lambert is a non-binary, trans, multidisciplinary collaborator and co-conspirator working towards equity, inclusion, and reparation. They are a founder and facilitator of The Fulcrum Project and currently are a PhD student between Konstfack and University of Gothenburg in Sweden. They hold a MA in Critical Craft Studies from Warren Wilson College and an MFA in Metalsmithing from Cranbrook Academy of Art. lambert currently is based in Stockholm Sweden and was born in Detroit MI, US where they still maintain a studio. They have exhibited work nationally and internationally including at: Turner Contemporary, Margate, Uk, ArkDes, and Sven-Harrys Konstmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden, Museo de la Ciudad, Valencia , Spain and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, US. Lambert represented the U.S in Triple Parade at HOW Museum, Shanghai, China, represented the best of craft in Norway during Salon del Mobile, Milan, Italy and was the invited feature at the Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece during Athens Jewelry Week. Lambert has actively contributed writing to Art Jewelry Forum, Garland, Metalsmith Magazine, Klimt02, Norwegian Craft and the Athens Jewelry Week catalogues and maintains a running column titled “Settings and Findings” in Lost in Jewelry Magazine. Additional Resources: matt's Website matt's Instagram Photos: Brooches 2019 Made in collaboration with Maret Anna Sara Image credit: Talya Kantro https://maretannesara.com/pile-power/ Pile Power is a new, elaborative section of Máret Ánne Saras bigger body of work: Pile O ?Sápmi. The project has developed into a multi prong exploration using the remaining material from Sara´s Pile O' Sápmi as shown in Documenta 14. Sara invited matt lambert to enter a dialogue with the intent for finding methods to use all available material that was remaining from earlier pieces. Matt Lambert is recognized through international exhibitions in platforms such as craft, jewelery, performance, design, sculpture and fashion, and has been listed on the top 100 designers for jewelry and accessories by the Global Jewelry and Accessories Council as well as receiving the Next Generation Award from Surface Design Association.  Sara invited Lambert to collaborate using the materials remaining from the Pile O´ Sápmi project after finding a connection through a conviction for socio-cultural sustainability as well as minority comradery between indigeneity and queerness. The Pile Power collaboration is producing larger performative objects using the remaining jaws of the reindeer skulls used in Saras earlier work, as well as more wearable works from the remaining reindeer-porcelain skulls that Sara commissioned to her Pile O' Sápmi Powernecklace shown at Documenta 14. Both of these veins of working promote the conversation around sustainable practices of indigenous  peoples. In Pile Power, body and material form a new basis for approach for themes addressed in the Pile O ?Sápmi project. Based on creative dialogue, a thematic jewelry collection will nomadically carry a new segment of an urgent discourse through bodies and humans. the integumentary system as dialogical fashion installed at  IASPIS Stockholm Sweden 2017 8 x 5.5 x 3 feet Comprised of 15 wearable objects temporal drag only accepting gaudy currency, saving for kitsch omega and sugar free nirvana installed at  IASPIS Stockholm Sweden 2017 10 x 5.5 x 2.5 feet Comprised of 55 wearable objects Tools of Ignorance As installed at Pried The Society of Arts + Crafts Boston MA USA, 2019 Transcript: matt lambert doesn't just want us to wear jewelry—they want us to question it. As a maker, writer, and Ph.D. student, matt spends much of their time thinking about why we wear jewelry, who makes it, and what happens to jewelry as it's passed from person to person. They joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the inspirations behind their work, why jewelry carries layers of meaning, and why wearing jewelry (or not wearing it) is always a political act. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. Today, my guest is Matt Lambert, who is joining us from Stockholm. Matt is a maker, writer and performer currently pursuing a Ph.D. Matt's jewelry journey has taken them from country to country. If you haven't heard part one, please go to TheJewelryJourney.com. Welcome back. You're still making though, right? matt: I am. I am definitely still making. It has not left my bones. It will probably never leave my bones, but it is something I constantly question, like what does it mean to make? What are we making? Sharon: Do you think about where you're making your jewelry? Like you were just in a show in Finland. matt: Those objects also push an interesting thing into play. I was having some hand problems because of Covid. I sleep in a very precarious position for my hands, and I was losing feeling in my right hand because I have an anxiety disorder. When I'm stressed, I basically ball up my hand, and I was pinching a nerve. I was thinking about Covid, the spike in the Black Lives Matter Movement, so many other incredible layers of politics and body awareness and attempts to consciously raise our awareness of what's going on in the world. So, I started a dialogue with someone who's trained in a lot of work but specifically in box making, which is a totally different skillset. We share knowledge of material, and I cast my hands in different gestures of resistance or solidarity. There are three that are new, which is the fist for resistance, the peace sign, and the opening/offering hand. I cast them, and I worked with the box maker to make jewelry boxes for my hands that are actually wearable on my hands. There's a hole, and I can buckle a box around my hand. A lot of my work questions what jewelry is. Is this jewelry? Is my hand the jewel, or is the box that's worn around my hand the jewel? I'm interrogating what a piece of jewelry is or what could it be. I also spoke at KORU7, the Finnish jewelry triennial, which was very meaningful to show and speak at because that's the first place I ever went outside of North America. I told myself, “I'm going to be here one day,” and I got into the exhibition, so that was very emotional. Then they sent me an invite to ask if I would speak, and that was a proud moment. These are milestones in my career, and I have gratitude for the invitations. They mean something in that way of feeling herd, or at least wanting to be listened to for a moment. Sharon: I saw the boxes on Instagram, and I thought, “Oh, those are beautiful boxes,” but I was going, “O.K., do you stick your hand in them or wear them around? What do you do with them?” The leather was beautiful. I thought, “Wow, gorgeous purse!” matt: Those are probably more theoretical and abstract works in jewelry, but it's questioning self-care and preservation. When we make gestures, when we show someone the peace sign or we have the fist of resistance or we offer someone something, do we mean it? Are we trying to freeze it in time? When does a gesture become shallow? It becomes commodified. Through jewelry, when you just consume it, when does our body also become that? It was me saying, “Hey, jewelry can talk about this,” and a lot of my work now is saying jewelry can do this. I call it a not-so-solo show that will be going up in the spring at Bornholm, which is a craft center on an island that is technically Danish. It's between Denmark and Germany. I'll have a larger solo show, but it's a not-so-solo show. It will talk about the different collaborations I have with Masada, who's indigenous, Sámi. Our work is talking about the rights of indigenous people, and there will be new collaborations: one set I've already been doing, one of the hand boxes will be there as well, and the work I do with the choreographer Carl Berg. It's me playing with the elasticity of what jewelry is. There's always some sort of wearable thing, but then it's like, is that the work? Is it a marker of the work? Does it represent my research? Is it a token of that? Is it a souvenir? It's also challenging you as the wearer. When you wear my work, to me, you're also carrying what I stand for, what I believe in or what I'm doing, so we share something together. When people ask, it gives you an opportunity to share the possibility of jewelry, and that's also what I love. When you wear my necklace, I want to know what you tell people. The best part is when I'm with people and someone goes, “What do you do?” at a dinner party, and whoever I'm with that knows me usually loves looking at that person. They go, “What do I do?” Sharon: That's not an easy question to answer. What do you say? matt: I don't. I literally look at the person next to me. I go, “What do I do?” And I love the multiplicity because my work exists. I teach now. I write. I will be announcing being an editor for publications. There are always 12 projects. I make wearables. I make unwearables. I work with dancers. I work with choreographers, so I'm a performer now. There isn't an easy way, and that's a challenge under capitalism. We want to define people by what they do, especially in a U.S. context. It's not super common in Europe to be defined by what you do as it is in the U.S., so it's challenging. I'm just me. I exist. That comes with its own set of consequences, but you're talking about someone who wants to know. It's also a very liberating space to be in. Sharon: Yes, I can see how it would be the most satisfying answer if I'm asking what you do at a party. Let me ask you this, because you mentioned Lost in Jewelry Magazine. Is that only an online publication? matt: Yes, that came out through Day By Day, which is a gallery in Rome. She approached me because she comes from a design background and has graphic design experience, and she discovered jewelry and became an addict like me. I think some people find it and it's like the back of your head falls off, and you want to read as many books and info and see everything you can. I see you at all these events too, and there's always something to learn. She wrote me and said, “Hey, you have a voice. What do you want to do with it? Could I give you space, and what would it look like?” So, I proposed a running column called Settings and Findings. Sharon: What did you mean by that, Settings and Findings? matt: It's a play on words. There are categories if you go to purchase materials for jewelry. A setting is what usually would hold a stone, but it's word play. You have a table setting.  What are you holding on to? What are you making space for? And a finding is a component in jewelry, but it's also what you're discovering. I write about different people that have different projects. I like research projects, collaborations or specific bodies of work, looking at things that aren't in the main canon. I often give people a space to say, “What are you setting and finding for this particular moment or for this project?” It's a way to also show that we are doing artistic research, whether we're aware of it or we frame it as that or not. It's become a tool for me to see how different people talk about their research. There are some coming up that are poems. Some people have written beautiful, long things, or sometimes I help them write it. It's finding that balance, since not everybody writes, but it's working with and taking time with someone or a group of people to talk about research in the field, about using the word research. It's a thing to point to in my Ph.D. as well. It's an investigative tool. Normally when you do academia, you do what's called literature review. You say what exists in the books. It's a way for me to say, “This is research that already exists. This is stuff that's happening.” I'm not alone in this and people might not contextualize it in an academic way, but I'm using my position to contextualize in that way if they aren't. I'm putting it in a space so they can say, “This is research. We don't need academia to do research as jewelers, but we could frame it as that.” Sharon: I can understand the settings and what are you holding onto. The findings are what you're finding out about yourself or the pieces you're making? matt: Really, whatever you want. I think there's one article up by Viviana Langhoff who writes jewelry and adornment theory. She wrote a very beautiful, more poetic piece of writing about settings. She has built a platform to talk about equity and inclusion for diversity in the field, both in fine jewelry and in art jewelry, and she mixes the two in her space. She has a gallery in Chicago. The findings are about what you find when you do that. What is happening because you're doing that? What are you discovering or what have you discovered through your work? She's somebody who has created a space. So, what happens? How does the community respond? Who comes into that? If it's an individual person, what have you learned by making this work? Where are you at now? You did this. You felt the urge. What are you holding onto? Your finding is what you find out there, where the setting is or what you could share. It's purposely ambiguous because it's to invite commercial jewelers and groups and galleries and spaces and art jewelers to share a space. There are some coming up where it's like four sentences, and then there are people that have written me an essay. That's what I think is beautiful, that we all can exist together in this one location. Sharon: It's interesting. As I said, I hadn't ever seen it before, Lost in Jewelry. Let me ask you this, because in introducing you or when you were writing the introduction, I need a translation of this. You're described as a nonbinary trans collaborator and co-conspirator working towards inclusion, equity and reparation. I don't know that means, I must say. matt: Yes, my body, as I identify, I am white; I am part of the colonial imperial system in that way. I identify as nonbinary, which is under the trans umbrella, as in transgender. Primarily, from where my body stands, I don't believe in the gender construction. Like I said, my original background is in human sexuality and the psychology of it. It's not a conversation I'm interested in defining, which then leaks into jewelry and gender and who wears jewelry. As we're talking, that's probably a big reason why jewelry also interests me. Co-conspirator and collaborator— Sharon: I get collaborator. Co-conspirator— matt: Co-conspirator, I'm interested in working with people that have goals or missions or focuses that are towards equity and decolonizing. I'm for reparations, and so I work, like I already mentioned, in the fight for indigenous rights in Scandinavia and Norway. The co-conspirator, that's a goal. It's conspiring to say, “This is what we need to do.” I'm on the equity train, and people that are seeking to find that and use jewelry as a vehicle, I want to co-conspire with those people to figure out what projects need to happen, what happenings need to happen to do that. I want to see jewelry do that, and I want to selfishly keep it in jewelry and see what happens when we do that through jewelry, because I think it's where the potential is. I think jewelry's the best from where I sit, and with my knowledge of these things, I want to see that happen. One of the other pieces for Settings and Findings is by SaraBeth Post, who's a Penland resident in glass who is making necklaces out of simple glass pendants, but she was auctioning them off to raise funds for certain court cases or for other notable movements within Black Lives Matter. That's a way of using more commercially-driven, wearable work to move to a different area. There are so many incredible ways to use jewelry. It disrupts and it challenges, and that's why I'm excited about jewelry. Sharon: Do you think everything you're saying about jewelry and how it affects people, the connections—the mining and the metal and all that—do you think it's more accepted where you are in Europe? Are you in an environment where people talk about this, or do people look at you like, “What are you talking about?” matt: The United States, as far as talk about equity and those conversations, is very ahead of where it is, but that's also because the U.S. is founded on imperialism and slavery, so it has no mechanism of denial. There are places in Europe that have that, and there are other places that do not. So, yes and no would be the answer. It depends on whom I'm speaking with or where we're at. It is challenging because in the U.S., these are more contemporary conversations than we're having where I'm based now in Sweden. They also exist differently because their history and involvement in colonialism and imperialism is different. It exists. That's actually what I wrote my thesis on for my critical craft master's. I was looking at examinations of the history museum in Sweden and representation within it. It's a different conversation, so that's been a challenge, but it's a great learning experience for me because not everybody has the same knowledge. I think these conversations add an academic level. You see jewelry in a room and academics are like, “Wait, what? You want to play with jewelry?” Sometimes I find myself in this weird gray space, because you're fighting a different wave, like, “Yes, let's do this.” How do you make it make sense for everybody? I'm excited to see more people do what they love to expand the field so all of us can home in on exactly what we love doing. But it is a challenge right now because the conversations, there's a lot of potential we could say in them. They've been going on, but I think there's still a lot of potential. I think that's the amazing thing with this idea around jewelry. Is it a field? Is it a format? What is it? What can we do with it? Sharon: As you're making things, are you thinking about how you can express some of this through what you're making? I'm thinking about the laser-cut leather necklace. To me, it's a fabulous necklace. That's why I say I'm fairly shallow. It's a fabulous necklace; I don't look at it and go, “What does it mean in terms of equity?” Do you think about those things? Are you trying to express these things through your jewelry? matt: I think I'm more in the camp of my body lives, breaths, eats and sleeps this, so whatever I make, it's already going to be there. I don't make things with the idea of “This going to be about this.” It's more of, “What do I feel in my body and is this going back to being a craftsperson?” Sharon: You're saying that because of who you are and because it's what you live and breathe, it's in your jewelry. You don't have to say, “Oh, I think if I braid the leather this way, it means A, B, C.” matt: Yeah, no. I think there's a lot of talk in the world now about being authentic and living your authentic life and going down those rabbit holes, but I think there are many different ways to be a craftsperson. I think you could love a material and use it throughout your whole life; I think there could be people that can stretch across them. I think we need everybody to sustain and talk about it as a field. I have a deep concern about jewelry being a field and how we continue that. I think how we broaden that is the biggest thing, not coming from a point of scarcity. I'm at a point in my career where I trust my body. It's the same as trusting your gut. Also, sometimes, it just makes you feel good. There's nothing wrong with art if it just makes you feel good. When I made that leatherwork, I knew nothing about computers. I had briefly worked and tried to be a woodworker. It was not for me. I like my fingers. I don't like getting up at 4 a.m. I tried to work for a prestigious cabinet making company. I have a lot of respect for woodworkers; it's just not a frame of craft that I can make or produce in. When I went to Cranbrook, they were like, “Oh great, you can go work in the woodshop then.” I worked in the library—you know me; I read everything—which I loved, but then they were like, “Great, woodshop,” and I was like, “Oh, O.K.” and then they were like, “You're going to be the laser cutting technician.” I've made it a point in my whole career to use things that don't plug in. I grew up half my life in the woods where the power went out easily, and I wanted to be able to make my work without an electrical cord. So, that was a challenge, but that series also developed. I was sitting there and thinking about the simple sash chain you get at the hardware store. It's like one-on-one aluminum link, a very affordable, cheap, go-to chain, and then my brain was like, “What if I tweak it and do this and this?” If you look at the leather, it's not mathematically proportionate; it's hand-drawn. It comes from that. Then I was speaking to friends and all of a sudden, it was like, “This is what it could mean.” You see meanings after you do it when it's done. What I also love about that work is that I can't tell you how long it takes, because those pieces are family for me. I would lay out patterns, and then I would buy everybody pizza and beer and call my friends and I would prepare them. They have to be soaked in certain things, and other things we were figuring out the best way to weave. Everyone would sit around in a circle and weave necklaces. For me, it's about family and community and the linking of things. That's for me, but if you like my work because of something else, there is nothing wrong with that.  That's the research I'm interested in now. It matters why we make, but it also matters why we wear and why we buy. How do we talk about all of that together? That is what I think of as the work. As craftspeople, yeah, the work is the object we make, but even after we die, the work continues. How do we think about or frame what it means to you, then, to wear my necklace, and what do you get out of it? What fulfills you could be totally different than what I do, but that adds to what the work is. I think my jewelry is so beautiful because it could have this life. After you wear it, what happens to it? Does somebody else wear it? Do you give it to somebody? That adds another stratum of meaning, so over time, you continuously compress different meanings. Even if it goes behind a museum case—I'm not saying my work will do that—but when people's work goes behind a museum case, when you see it and when a five-year-old sees it versus a 70-year-old, versus someone from one country and another, that's another meaning: how they relate to it, how they could think of themselves wearing it, what they think it's about. It just piles more and more meaning. It all goes back to someone's body, not the body or a body, but all of our bodies. So, all of a sudden, you have objects that have this compression of people. If that doesn't allow you to have a point to talk about equity and humanness and labor and class and all those complex things, that's jewelry. It ties directly to us as people. It's important what you get out of wearing my necklace, why I made it, but it also almost doesn't matter in a way, because we're contributing to the pile. In theory that's called thickening, the thickening of a history. There isn't one history of something; it's historiography. It's the multiple possibilities of something. When you see jewelry, you can project yourself onto it. You can say, “I'm going to wear that to this party. I'm going to wear it to this thing, to this wedding, to a christening, to a birth, to this grocery store.” That's a potential history when you see it, and what if we tied all of those together? Even when you look at an object, that's why I love jewelry. Sharon: Matt, thank you so much. You gave us a lot to think about. I could talk with you for another hour. Thank you so much for being with us today. matt: Yes, it's a super pleasure again. Like I said, you're one of my very first collectors I ran into in Stockholm by happenstance. Sharon: It's a great happenstance. Thank you so much. matt: Thank you, Sharon. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.

What you'll learn in this episode: How we can examine almost any political topic through the lens of jewelry  Why it's important that jewelry be embraced by academia, and how every jewelry enthusiast can help make that happen (even if they're not in academia themselves) Why a piece of jewelry isn't finished when it leaves the hands of its maker How Matt works with collaborators for their column, “Settings and Findings,” in Lost in Jewelry Magazine How jewelry has tied people together throughout time and space About Matt Lambert Matt Lambert is a non-binary, trans, multidisciplinary collaborator and co-conspirator working towards equity, inclusion, and reparation. They are a founder and facilitator of The Fulcrum Project and currently are a PhD student between Konstfack and University of Gothenburg in Sweden. They hold a MA in Critical Craft Studies from Warren Wilson College and an MFA in Metalsmithing from Cranbrook Academy of Art.  Lambert currently is based in Stockholm Sweden and was born in Detroit MI, US where they still maintain a studio. They have exhibited work nationally and internationally including at: Turner Contemporary, Margate, Uk, ArkDes, and Sven-Harrys Konstmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden, Museo de la Ciudad, Valencia , Spain and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, US. Lambert represented the U.S in Triple Parade at HOW Museum, Shanghai, China, represented the best of craft in Norway during Salon del Mobile, Milan, Italy and was the invited feature at the Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece during Athens Jewelry Week. Lambert has actively contributed writing to Art Jewelry Forum, Garland, Metalsmith Magazine, Klimt02, Norwegian Craft and the Athens Jewelry Week catalogues and maintains a running column titled “Settings and Findings” in Lost in Jewelry Magazine. Additional Resources: Matt's Website Matt's Instagram Transcript:  Matt Lambert doesn't just want us to wear jewelry—they want us to question it. As a maker, writer, and Ph.D. student, Matt spends much of their time thinking about why we wear jewelry, who makes it, and what happens to jewelry as it's passed from person to person. They joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the inspirations behind their work, why jewelry carries layers of meaning, and why wearing jewelry (or not wearing it) is always a political act. Read the episode transcript here.    Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week. Today, my guest is Matt Lambert, who is joining us from Stockholm. Matt is a maker, writer and performer currently pursuing a Ph.D.    Matt's jewelry journey has taken them from country to country. What sticks in my mind is one of my first encounters with them on an Art Jewelry Forum trip. I saw them in a hotel lobby in Sweden wearing one of their iconic creations, a laser-cut leather neckpiece I flipped over. We'll hear all about their amazing jewelry journey today. Matt, thanks so much for being here.   Matt: Thanks so much for having me, Sharon. It's a pleasure.   Sharon: Your jewelry journey has taken you all over the world. I'm always amazed when I hear how you hop from country to country. So, tell us about it. How did you get into it?   Matt: Originally I was trained as a psychologist.   Sharon: Wow!   Matt: It's kind of strange, but it makes perfect sense for what I do now in human sexuality and gender. I was researching body politics and what it means to be a person and be represented through media or in other cultures. I started off in that community, and I took a metalsmithing course on a whim. There was a woman in one of my classes who was taking it as her art elective. I thought we were going to be making something completely different by forging silver. I was like, “Wait, what? You can do that?” I really fell into it.   I was a researcher for the APA doing government research—   Sharon: APA being the American Psychological—   Matt: The American Psychological Association. After community college, I went on to Wayne State and studied under F.M. Larson for metalsmithing. At the very end, Lauren Kalman joined. She is tenured and was well-known at Wayne State University in Detroit.    The work I was doing was very rigorous. I worked in a rape and trauma research lab with no windows in a basement, and I wasn't finding a way to talk about people and bodies and those things in the ways I had hoped. It was fulfilling me, but not in every aspect of my life.  So, I kept pouring myself into this strange thing of contemporary jewelry.    I never thought I would go to grad school. I wound up going to Cranbrook Academy of Art, which is just 40 minutes down the road from Wayne State. Even then, I thought I was going to go across the country for art school. I fell in love with the program at Cranbrook. Iris Eichenberg, who teaches there, told me, “You have to fail really bad in order to learn what's good and what's good for your practice.” It was so liberating that I could apply all the research I learned and used and still use it today, but to put it and manifest it in jewelry. That opened Pandora's box.    Sharon: How did you decide to go from studying psychology and being at Wayne State to go to such a renowned art school that you don't know? It's for art jewelers, basically.   Matt: Yeah, it's renowned. I think it shares the number one space for metalsmithing and jewelry, and it's renowned also for hollowware and gate making. It has a long history of Americana metalsmithing. With Iris being there for contemporary jewelry, it sounds a little bit pretentious.    The relationship I was in wanted me to stay local. It was like, “You should apply.” I really thought through everything weird and wonderful that I wanted to be doing, and I was like, “If I'm going to stay, then you have to take this all on.” Iris was like, “O.K., let's do it.” Even if didn't work out, it was like, “I can just go back to psychology if this doesn't work.”   Cranbrook has an international reputation which also meant traveling a lot. In between semesters, I was the assistant for Christoph Zellweger, who's based out of Zurich, Switzerland. I don't know if they're still there now, but at the time, I was their assistant in Switzerland during my years there. My partner was Monica Gaspar, so I got a theorist who I also got to work with. Then I kind of traveled everywhere. Before I started at Cranbrook, the first time I was in Europe, we had to go to KORU7, which is the jewelry triennial in Finland. They also do seminars. So, for me, it became a very global, European to North American perspective.   Sharon: I'm always amazed at your country hopping. Was this something you were considered a natural at? Were you finger painting at age five and your parents were saying, “Oh, they're going to be an artist”?   Matt: I do have a background in wildlife illustration. I was homeschooled until sixth grade, but I was put in a lot of enrichment programs, so I did have ceramics; I had languages; I had all sorts of courses and electives. Growing up I trained in something called monart, which is not taught in public school; it's only for private training. It's a way of drawing where you draw from negative space, which I think contributes to my work, as I think through negative space. I was doing a lot of wildlife illustrations. I have quite a few childhood publications, like realistic waterfowl and birds of prey. I dabbled a little bit with Sidney Shelby. The Shelby has an art program for auto illustration, too.   So, there is some of that. I thought I was going to go into drawing and painting before I went into psychology, but I had an evaluation at community college when I started and they kind of broke my dreams. They said I was terrible and said, “You shouldn't be an artist.” I would always say, “If you're told you shouldn't be an artist, you probably should be.” So, I went into psychology as a shelter to do that.    I'm a big advocate for trade schools and community colleges as places to find yourself. I fell in love with metalsmithing there, and I knew I would never leave it. My mother's cousin was actually a former a Tiffany's jeweler, so there is a little bit in the family. She was a cheerleader for me. She was like, “You're doing what? Oh, have you found a hammer and silver? Great.” She trained under Phil Fike, who was at Wayne State University when she was there. It's always interesting what she thinks I do because I'm not a very technical, proper silversmith like she was. When I finally went to school and said I was going to do this officially, she gave me her studio.   Sharon: Wow! You have two master's degrees and now you're working on a Ph.D. Can you tell us about that? One is critical art, or critical—   Matt: Yeah, critical craft theory. I graduated Cranbrook in 2014 from metalsmithing and jewelry, and I had electives in sculpture and textile. At the same time, I should say, I had also apprenticed as a leatherworker doing car interiors, like 1920s period Rolls-Royces, so I had a leather background I was able to bring to Cranbrook. A lot of my work was varied, but there was a lot of leather involved. After that, I had a partial apprenticeship in semi-antique rug restoration. There's a lot of training in leather-working material.   So, I graduated, and I met Sophia. We had met a few times, and then she ended up being the evaluator/respondent for our graduation show. So, she saw my work as I wished it to be, and she offered me a solo show. She said, “An agent is coming to see the gallery. Come help out. Come see this world,” which is how we met.   Sharon: And her gallery is in Sweden, right?   Matt: Her gallery is in Stockholm, yes, in Sweden. I had a show, and that was amazing. There's a government program called IASPIS, which is an invite-only program that the Swedish government runs. It's the international arts organization. I was invited there because they were looking for—they added applied arts, and I was the first jeweler and metalsmith to be there. That's a three-month program where you're invited to live and work, and that gives you great networking opportunities not only with Sweden, but also with Scandinavia at large for museums and shows. I was the first foreigner at Tobias Alm, who was a Swedish jeweler and the first Swedish artist in jewelry to be there. That just upped and changed my life. I got into museum shows and met people and had a career for about four or five years and loved it; it was amazing and I wanted more.    I love theory. I am a theory addict, so I was like, “A Ph.D. is the next logical thing.” I was applying and making finals, but jewelry is a hard sell, if you will, in academia. Warren Wilson College is in North Carolina in the States. There is a think tank out of the Center for Craft, which is located in Asheville, North Carolina, and they deal with all kinds of craft. They're a great epicenter and source of knowledge for American craft discourses. Out of this came this development of this program. They partnered with Warren Wilson College to create a master's, which is a two-year program at Warren Wilson College, which is just 20 minutes away from Ashville.    It's low residency, so there's two weeks per term you'd be in person and the rest you could live anywhere, which was perfect for me because I was traveling so much. So, you do two weeks on campus in the summer and live in the dorm, and then you do two weeks—when I did it, at least, it was with the Center for Craft. We had a classroom there. Namita Wiggers is the founding director, and we got to work with amazing theorists: Linda Sandino, Ben Lignel, who's a former editor for Art Jewelry Forum, Glenn Adamson, the craft theorist, Jenni Sorkin, who lives in California teaching, Judith Lieman—this is an amazing powerhouse. There's Kevin Murray from Australia, who runs the World Crafts Organization. I was a bit part in it. He also edits Garland, which is an Australia-based publication for craft. It was an amazing pulling together of craft theory. At this time, I also thought I was dyslexic, so I was trying to find a new way to write being neurodivergent. Writing has now become—   Sharon: You do a lot of it. When I was looking last night, I could see you've done a lot of writing. My question is, why did you not stop and say, “O.K., I'm going to make things I like”? What was it that attracted you to theory? Maybe it's too deep for me.    Matt: I think we've positioned the Ph.D. to be the next step always, but I don't think academia is for everybody. A master's even, I always questioned, do we as makers always need to be in academia? For me, though, my drive is that I think jewelry is in one of the best theoretical positions to talk about a lot of very difficult contemporary issues. Craft in general, but I think jewelry because it's so tied to the body. It's so blurry because it's design; it's fashion; it's craft; it's art; it's a consumable good; it can be worn. It challenges how we exhibit it. If you need to wear it to experience it, how does a museum show it?    For me, it's this little terror or antagonizer that I think theoretically, from my background, is a great place to stay with, and I think that it's been neglected in certain spaces. It's the only field to not be in the Whitney Biennial. It ties perfectly with certain forms of feminism and queerness, which is the theoretical basis I come to it from, to talk about these things. It can't be always defined, and that's what I love about jewelry. People find it surprising when I'm like, “I love talking about commercial jewelry or production jewelry,” because if that's what turns your gears, what you love to wear or buy or make, I want to know why. I want to see jewelry expand and envelope all of this, so that we can be at the Whitney Biennial. We also could be everywhere else.   Sharon: Can't you do that without the Ph.D.? I'm not trying to knock it. I'm just playing devil's advocate.   Matt: Yeah, I think someone else can do that as well. For me, though, I truly love theory. I love the academics. For me, that is an actual passion. It's what drives me. It's not necessarily the physical making; it's the theory behind why. I'm actually questioning my practice. Should I be making physical objects now, or should I just be celebrating people that make physical objects? My making practice is almost entirely collaborative now, working with other jewelers or performers or choreographers or educators and using jewelry as a way of introducing or as producing an output.    How does jewelry fit into research? I think research output is an interesting thing for me. I can go on about this all day. So, for me, I want to make an academic foothold for jewelry. I want to do that work. I see that as my facet. I don't think everybody needs to go and do that. I want to see everybody find the thing they love as much as I love academia and theory. I want to push on so we can expand the field together.   Sharon: I think that's great. It's great to hear, because it's a strong voice giving credibility to the field, as opposed to, “Oh, you must be interested in big diamonds if you're talking about jewelry.” You're talking about it on a much deeper level. It's hard to explain to people why you like jewelry or jewelry history, so it's good to hear.    Last night—I say last night because I was refreshing my memory—I was looking at one of your articles about the “we” in jewelry. Can you tell us about that?   Matt: Absolutely. I write for multiple publications: Metalsmith Magazine, which is in the U.S. and is part of SNAG, the Society for North American Goldsmiths; Norwegian Craft; Art Jewelry Forum. I run a column called Settings and Findings out of Lost in Jewelry Magazine, which is based in Rome. I also write for Athens Jewelry Week catalogues, which has gotten me into writing a series for Klimt, which is a platform for makers, collectors, wearers, and appreciators based out of Barcelona. They invited me to write a five-part series after they had republished an essay I wrote for Athens Jewelry Week. Those people gave me an amazing platform to write, and then Klimt was like, “What do you want to do?” and I was like, “Five essays about what we do with jewelry.”    One of them is the “we” article. That came from being in lockdown and the theorist Jean-Luc Nancy, who wrote about something called “singular plural.” It's just saying that we don't ever do anything alone, and I think jewelry is a beautiful illustration of that. I moved during the pandemic to do the Ph.D., and I found myself wearing jewelry to do my laundry because I got to do it with a friend. It's so sappy in way, but it's true. It's a way to carry someone else with you, and jewelry is not an act done alone. I mean, we're trained as jewelers. We're trained by someone, so we carry that knowledge with us. We are transmitters as makers, but then we have collectors and wearers and museums and other things, and they need to be worn. It needs to be seen in some fashion or valued or held.    My personal stance is that jewelry, once it leaves my hands as a maker, isn't done. I'm interested as a researcher, as a Ph.D., in how we talk about that space in between. If you wear one of my pieces, and someone listening wears one of my pieces, and that same piece is in a museum, how we understand that is completely different. Jewelry creates this amazing space to complexify, and that's when you talk about bodies and equity and race, sex, gender, size, age. All the important things that are in the political ethos can be discussed through jewelry, and that's the “we” of jewelry.    We have this controversy about the death of the author and authorship doesn't matter, but speaking through craft, we are never alone. To me, it's like I make through the people I've learned through. I am a transmitter to the people that I teach and to me, that's what craft is. Also, craft is a way of looking at the world, at systems, and who we learn from and how we learn. I think jewelry is one of the most obvious “we's.”   Sharon: This is a question that maybe there's no answer to, but is jewelry separate from craft? There's always the question of what craft is. Is craft art? Is it jewelry?    Matt: That depends on whom you ask. I personally do not believe in the art versus craft debate. I am not in that pool. I believe craft is a way of looking at anything in the world. I think craft is learned through material specificity. I usually enjoy metalsmithing. It's through copper or silver, but it's really spending time with something singular to explore its possibility. It's a way of learning how things start, how things are produced, how labor works, where there are bodies and processes, so you can pick up anything in the world and look at anything and see people and humanity. Even through digital technology, someone has to write a program. It gives you a skillset to look at the world, and that's how I approach craft.    You're going to find so many different definitions, but coming from that perspective, that is what I believe, and that's why I think craft is so valuable. To answer if jewelry is craft, yes and no. You can talk about jewelry through craft, but you could talk about jewelry through fashion. You can talk about jewelry through product design. Again, I think that's why jewelry is beautiful and problematic, because it can be so many things at the same time.    Sharon: I'm intrigued by the fact that you're interested in all kinds of jewelry, whether it's art jewelry or contemporary jewelry. When you're in the mall and you see Zales and look in the window, would you say it all falls under that, with everything you're talking about? Does it transmit the same thing?   Matt: Through a craft lens, you can look at any of that. You can go to Zales and the labor is wiped out. You're no longer going to your local jewelry shop. The person is making your custom ring, but when you look at that ring, you have an ability to go, “Someone had to facet the stone and cut it, a lapidary. Someone had to make the bands. Someone had to mine the stone. Someone had to find this material.” It allows you to unpack where objects are coming from and potentially where they're going.    You can understand studio practices because you're relating more directly to a maker, who has more knowledge of where their materials come from, rather than the sales associate at the Zales counter. It's a simpler model, but it is the same thing to me. The way I look at it, that is craft's value to my practice. I'm very careful to say it's my practice because there are so many definitions, but that's what I think is sustainable in this training. You can be trained as a jeweler and not make jewelry, but it's still valuable in your life because you can apply it to anything.   Sharon: I was also intrigued by the title of an article you wrote, “Who Needs Jewelry, Anyway?” So, who does need jewelry?   Matt: Yeah, that's one that kicked it up to the next level. There are moments in my career where I can feel the level upward, like I enter a space that's different. That was an essay that was written for Athens Jewelry Week. That was the first essay I wrote before I had the feature at the Benaki Museum. At Athens Jewelry Week, those women worked their tails off to make that event happen.    I wrote that when I was at the tail end of my second master's, and I was frustrated. I think we see that students are frustrated and people are questioning, especially during Covid, especially during Black Lives Matter, especially during the fight for indigenous rights, do we need jewelry? What does this mean? It's a commodity. It can be frivolous. It's a bauble. It can be decorative. Like, what are we doing? I think that is something we should always question, and the answer for that can be expressed in many ways. It can be expressed from what you make, but also what you do with what you make. How do you live the rest of your life?    There isn't a one-lane answer for that, but that's what that essay was about. We don't need jewelry, but we really do. The first half of the essay is saying what the problem is, but the problem is also where the solutions sit. It's all about how you want to approach it. That is what that essay was saying. You can consume this and wear it; it is what it is, and that's fine. You can participate in systems and learn and discover and know who you are wearing and support them. Wearing jewelry is a political act no matter what jewelry you're wearing. Where you consume is a political act. Political neutrality is still a political statement. That article specifically was for art jewelry, and it was saying, hey, when you participate, when you buy, when you wear, when you make, it means something. You're bringing people with you; what people are you choosing to bring? It was stirring the pot, and it was very intentional to do that.   Sharon: I couldn't answer the question about who needs jewelry. You're asking me, but certainly I can think of people who say, “I don't need it,” who have no interest or wouldn't see the continuum behind a ring or a piece of jewelry.    This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week. 

In this week’s episode of London Calling, Toby collects his 50 quid and then he and James debate whether 2022 will be the year we return to normal or “The Great Reset” will continue apace. What lies ahead in politics? What’s the line of succession in Scotland, what does the conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell hold for the powerful around the world and what are the chances of Boris surviving until the end of 2022? With a new year comes the Honours List including the controversial pick for Tony Blair; resolutions (although James hasn’t made any); and, in Culture Corner, the Turner Contemporary in Margate, The Power of the Dog (Netflix) and Roadrunner (available on most PPV services), a documentary about Anthony Bourdain. This week’s opening sound is of Emma Burnell and Ali Miraj reacting to the New Year’s Honours list courtesy of GBNews.

John Powell-Jones, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley and David Blandy talk about how computer and role playing games help us make sense of the world: unpacking our perceptions of reality, our understanding of morality and our awareness of different communities. They discuss their inspirations, working instinctively with different digital technologies and how embracing difficulty is integral to their work. Find out more about CYBERJUNK here Artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley uses the forms and imagery of video games to create works that consider "what archives have left out and how we can archive now.” Danielle works predominantly in animation, sound, performance and Video Games to communicate the experiences of being a Black Trans person. Danielle's practice focuses on recording the lives of Black Trans people, intertwining lived experience with fiction to imaginatively retell Trans stories. Spurred on by a desire to record the "History of Trans people both living and past" their work can often be seen as a Trans archive where Black Trans people are stored for the future. "Throughout history, Black queer and Trans people have been erased from the archives. Because of this it is necessary not only to archive our existence, but also the many creative narratives we have used and continue to use to share our experiences." Brathwaite-Shirley Brathwaite-Shirley's work has been exhibited at: ICA, London; Arebyte Gallery, London; David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles; Quad, Derby; Science Gallery, London and TATE Modern, London. www.daniellebrathwaiteshirley.com David Blandy investigates the stories and cultural forces that inform and influence our behaviour. Collaboration is central to his practice, examining communal and personal heritage and interdependence. He has developed a gaming art practice writing original RPG's, examining social justice, climate change and posthuman futures. He works in installation, performance, writing, gaming and sound, and has had national and international solo exhibitions of his work. Nominated for the Film London Jarman award with Larry Achiampong in 2018. He has exhibited & performed at venues nationally and worldwide such as Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea; Kettle's Yard, Cambridge; Art Tower Mito, Tokyo; Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum, Helsinki; Tate Modern, London; The Baltic, Gateshead; Turner Contemporary, Margate; Spike Island, Bristol; Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Germany; MoMA PS1, New York, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai. He is represented by Seventeen Gallery, London. www.davidblandy.co.uk

Today, Lucy Branch talks to sculptor, Peter Newman, on the podcast. Peter has exhibited in Trafalgar Square, the Royal Festival Hall and the Hayward Gallery in London, the Turner Contemporary in Margate and at the Guggenheim Museum in Venice. His work was projected onto the exterior of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, in Kanazawa, Japan and can be found all over the world in public and private collections. Join us and BE INSPIRED BY SCULPTURE. You can find images of Peter Newman's work and a transcription of the interview at Sculpture Vulture Blog - SCULPTURE VULTURE Please support the show by purchasing, Bronze Behaving Badly, about the foundations of preserving sculpture and architectural features. Or, one of several novels such as, Restoration Murder, by Lucy Branch. This podcast was brought to you by Antique Bronze

Neelam Saredia-Brayley opened POW! Thanet festival 2021 with 3 poems, which you can rewatch on our youtube. This podcast features Home and The Poetry of Resistance. Neelam Saredia-Brayley is an award-winning poet, captivating audiences for over 9 years. Effortlessly warm and honest, Neelam works with illustrators, musicians and dancers, creating unique, multi-disciplinary performances. She is a slam winner, regular headliner, and appeared on BBC Radio Kent, BBC Upload Festival & CSRfm. Neelam has also appeared at Sofar Sounds Cambridge, 451 City, Jawdance, TongueTANGLE, Margate Literary Festival, bOing! International Family Festival, Canterbury Festival, Marlowe Theatre, Ramsgate Music Hall, ERIC Festival, POW! Festival, Greenbelt Festival, Turner Contemporary, Hammer and Tongue Cambridge, and regularly performs and works with Gulbenkian. In 2020 she was awarded the Apples and Snakes: Jerwood Arts | Poetry in Performance Award, and is developing her project, 'Queer Brown Skin'. Her debut poetry collection is being published by Verve in 2021. @neelam_the_poet on instagram

A Bouillabaisse soup inspired hat paraded by the surrealist artist Eileen Agar in 1948 caused raised eyebrows to the passers-by captured in the Pathé news footage on show in the Whitechapel Gallery's exhibition exploring her career. It's just one of many displays showcasing women's art open this summer at galleries across the UK, so today's Free Thinking looks at what it means to put women's art back on the walls and into the way we look at art history. Shahidha Bari is joined by Whitechapel curator Lydia Yee, by Frieze editor-at-large and podcaster Jennifer Higgie, by New Generation Thinker Adjoa Osei, who specialises in studying the contribution of Afro Latin-American women artists, and by the artist Veronica Ryan. Her work runs from a neon crocheted fishing line, to bronze and clay sculptures, and work made from tea-stained fabrics. Veronica Ryan: Along A Spectrum runs at Spike Island, Bristol, from 19 May 19 to 5 September 2021. Her sculptures responding to the work of Barbara Hepworth feature in Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life at the Hepworth Wakefield 21 May 2021 – 27 Feb 2022, and in Breaking The Mould: Sculpture By Women Since 1945 - An Arts Council Collection Touring Exhibition, which opens at the Longside Gallery at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park 29 May–5 Sep 2021. Eileen Agar: Angel Of Anarchy runs at the Whitechapel Gallery 19 May - 29 Aug 2021, alongside another focus on women artists in Phantoms of Surrealism 19 May - 12 Dec 2021. Jennifer Higgie's book The Mirror And The Palette: Rebellion, Revolution And Resilience - 500 Years Of Women's Self Portraits is out now, and she presents a podcast, Bow Down: Women In Art. Adjoa Osei is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to work with academics to put their research on radio. You can also find exhibitions of The Life And Legacy of Constance Spry at the Garden Museum; Ellen Harvey and Barbara Walker at Turner Contemporary; Infinity Mirror Rooms by Yayoi Kusama at Tate Modern; Charlotte Perriand - The Modern Life at the Design Museum; Paula Rego at Tate Britain; Karla Black at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh; Sophie Tauber-Arp coming to Tate Modern; and Joan Eardley's centenary marked at the Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh. Producer: Emma Wallace Image: Veronica Ryan Courtesy: Alison Jacques, London, and Create, London; photo: Lisa Whiting

In episode 56 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews Loretta Pettway Bennett and Mary Margaret Pettway of the GEE'S BEND QUILTMAKERS! [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] Located in a small, remote and rural community in Alabama, USA, officially known as Boykin, which is surrounded on three sides by river and has a population of around 700, the women of Gee’s Bend have been creating hundreds of quilt masterpieces dating from the early twentieth century to the present day. Electric, off-beat, full of flair, as well as both vivid and vibrant, for decades, the women of Gee’s Bend have adopted a wide range of material for their improvisatory, jazzy and geometric quilts. From denim to old patterned clothes, which they have referred to as, making something shine from something that has been thrown away.  Often quilting - and singing - in groups as they configure their stunning works, some of the women of Gee’s Bend are in the collection of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the contributions of African American artists from the Southern states, of which our guest and quilter extraordinaire, Mary Margaret Pettway is chair.  Although having been quilting for decades, with some claiming the tradition stemming from the 1800s, it has only been in recent years that the women have come to international renown and attention, exhibiting at major museums all over the world, from the Whitney Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, New York’s The Met, Margate’s Turner Contemporary, and now, their first ever solo exhibition in my hometown of London at Alison Jacques Gallery, which shows quilts spanning nearly 100 years. I should add that our guests today are first cousins, who come from an important lineage of female quilters and are showing alongside three generations worth of ancestors.  Described by the New York Times as having created some of “the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced”, the women of Gee’s Bend are rightfully forcing us to readdress the art historical canon, and I couldn’t be more delighted to have them on the show today.  ENJOY!!! FURTHER LINKS! The Gee's Bend website!  https://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/gees-bend-quiltmakers Their show at Alison Jacques Gallery (don't miss if you're in London!) https://www.alisonjacquesgallery.com/exhibitions/192/overview/ More:  https://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/29/arts/art-review-jazzy-geometry-cool-quilters.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHEqYVzSs7U Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Laura Hendry  Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

SURPRISE BONUS! We chat to our friend, leading art advisor Simon Oldfield to discuss the art news hitting mainstream headlines this past week with digital artist Beeple selling his NFT artwork 'EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS' for an astonishing $69.3m at Christie's auction house. As a curator, advisor and lawyer fascinated by the convergence of art and technology, the emergence of NFTs into the mainstream is something Simon has predicted for many years. Twenty years ago he won a national award for his dissertation on the future of intellectual property in the Internet age:"Few people understood the internet, fewer understood my arguments and even those who did thought it was an irrelevance. Dismissed as solutions to problems that would never exist. Well, they were wrong, clearly! Today we are on the cusp on something extraordinary within the art world - the crossroads of art, law and tech. It’s an extremely complex world with major implications for the interaction of a global digital product and national laws. NFTs have enormous possibilities but potentially even greater pitfalls. After years of talking about digital art and its potential, often falling in deaf ears, it is literally all I have been talking about for the past month with #collectors, #artists, #lawyers, #fintech etc. Last week I gave a Zoom talk to over 200 people - heads of major law firms, CEOs, heads of banks etc. about NFTs and how art and the law around it is shaping the future. The wider potential and ramifications for NFTs (non-fungible tokens), the #blockchain, crypto currency, #smartcontracts, #cyrptography is extraordinary - in the literal sense of that word. We are living in the future."A qualified lawyer with a degree and post-graduate diplomas from the University of Exeter and the University of Oxford, Simon also oversees a thriving Curatorial arts and culture programme. Since opening the Simon Oldfield Gallery, he has exhibited influential artists of all disciplines, discovered emerging talent and presented landmark exhibitions, and is currently organising an exhibition of Digital Art. He regularly spearheads collaborations with commercial partners including Burberry, Soho House and Hauser & Wirth, alongside non-profit and philianthropic collaborations with public institutions including the Tate, Turner Contemporary and the Royal Academy of Arts. He chairs and participates in talks and panel discussions on art, literature and culture and has featured in radio and podcasts including Talk Art, Monocle Radio 24 and the BBC. He has also written for various publications including Monocle, Harper's Bazaar and FT Weekend. Follow @Simon_Oldfield on Instagram and his official website at: www.simonoldfield.com/ to discover more! Simon co-founded the non-profit organisation Pindrop with Elizabeth Day (of the How To Fail hit podcast) which is... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On Practice: Walking asks how does walking shape our experience of the city? How can it be used as a tool for resistance and change? Featuring artist Sam Curtis's Changing Play project with children from the Portman Early Childhood centre, Which Way Now? alongside interviews with anthropologist Tim Ingold, campaign group Voice of Domestic Workers and writer Katouche Goll. In this episode of On Practice we highlight the work of two of our long-term partners, The Voice of Domestic Workers and The Alliance for Inclusive Education, ALLFIE.  The Voice of Domestic Workers, is a grassroots organisation made up of multi-national migrant Domestic Workers in the UK.  They work to empower migrant domestic workers to stand up and voice their opposition to discrimination, inequality, slavery and all forms of abuse. You can read more about their support network, campaigns here, donate here, or support by purchasing their new Our Journey book ALLFIE is a Disabled people-led organisation in the UK. They campaign for the right of all Disabled pupils and students to be fully included in mainstream education, training and apprenticeships with all necessary supports. You can find out more about them here. You can stand up for inclusive education by signing their manifesto or help ALLFIE build a better, more inclusive world by becoming a member of the Alliance. On Practice is produced by Reduced Listening. Image credit: Joy Yamusangie Show Notes Sam Curtis is an artist and curator based in London. Working with other people is central to his practice. Through dialogue, walking and making with others; his work explores ideas around agency, autonomy, exchange and labour.   He has exhibited and worked with Seymour Art Collective, Whitechapel Gallery, Edgware Road Project: Serpentine Galleries, Turner Contemporary, CREATE London, The Showroom, Eastside Projects, Arts Admin, Ateliers de Rennes Biennale, Beursschouwburg, News of the World and Pi: Artworks Istanbul. He has an MFA from Goldsmiths College and his work is represented by Division of Labour. He is currently curator at Bethlem Gallery. https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/which-way-now/ Portman Centre The Portman Early Childhood Centre provides education, care and family support services for young children and their families living in the Church Street area of Westminster, North London. These include a nursery school, adult education classes, family support, employment services, parenting groups and workshops. http://www.westminster-ne-centres.co.uk/en/about/  Tim Ingold Tim Ingold is Professor Emeritus of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. He has written about environment, technology and social organisation in the circumpolar North, on animals in human society, and on human ecology and evolutionary theory. His more recent work explores environmental perception and skilled practice. Ingold's current interests lie on the interface between anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. His recent books include The Perception of the Environment (2000), Lines (2007), Being Alive (2011), Making (2013), The Life of Lines (2015), Anthropology and/as Education (2018), Anthropology: Why it Matters (2018) and Correspondences (2020). Voice of Domestic Workers The Voice of Domestic Workers is an education and campaigning group calling for justice and rights for Britain's 16,000 migrant domestic workers. They provide educational and community activities for domestic workers – including English language lessons, drama and art classes and employment advice, and mount rescues for domestic workers stuck with abusive employers. Their work seeks to end discrimination and protect migrant domestic workers living in the UK by providing or assisting in the provision of education, training, healthcare and legal advice. https://www.thevoiceofdomesticworkers.com/  Instagram: @thevoiceofdomesticworkersTwitter: @thevoiceofdws Disabled People Against Cuts Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) is an organisation for disabled people and allies to campaign against the impact of government spending cuts on the lives of disabled people. Formed on 3 October 2010 DPAC promotes full human rights and equality for all disabled people, and operates from the Social Model of Disability. DPAC was formed by a group of disabled people after the 3rd October 2010 mass protests against cuts in Birmingham, England. The 3rd October saw the first mass protest against the austerity cuts and their impact on disabled people - It was led by disabled people under the name of The Disabled Peoples' Protest. https://dpac.uk.net/ ALLFIE ALLFIE is a Disabled people-led organisation, which seeks to build alliances with individuals and organisations who share their vision. They successfully work with Disabled learners and parents and carers across a very wide range of educational needs, backgrounds and experiences and gain strength from that diversity. Their relationships and influence stretch over a wide range of networks and alliances interested in education, inclusion, Disabled children's services, Disabled people's rights and equality, and human rights more generally. They have an impressive track record in successfully influencing change and a positive reputation nationally and internationally. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJWDUmYv2iY Instagram: @disabledpeopleagainstcuts Katouche Goll   Katouche Goll is a disability activist and writer. She is passionate about fostering a productive dialogue about the intersection of Black and disabled identities. A recent first-class grad in BA History, Katouche enjoys sharing the knowledge of her degree through her advocacy for Black disabled young people. Featured on platforms such as Buzzfeed (2016), Kandaka (2017), BBC Radio 1Xtra (2018), TABOU Magazine and BlackBallad (2020). Katouche is also a makeup enthusiast who creates online content to promote diversity in beauty and highlight issues of inclusion. Instagram: @itskatouche

In this episode of "Keen On", Andrew is joined by John Kampfner, the author of "Why the Germans Do It Better", to discuss how Germany and the EU have botched their respective rollouts of the coronavirus vaccine compared to the UK which has dramatically turned the tables on their bitter struggle against the novel virus. As a rule however, John is convinced that Germany has a more grown up political culture than the UK and that over the last 75 years has been able to progress as a nation from it's low point in the immediate aftermath of World War II to a position today where Germany stands out as a world-leading economy. John has had a 25-year career in international public life – spanning media, global affairs, UK politics, education, business, arts and the third sector. He began his journalistic career as a foreign correspondent with the Daily Telegraph, first in East Berlin where he reported on the fall of the Wall and unification of Germany, and then in Moscow at the time of the collapse of Soviet Communism. He went on to become Chief Political Correspondent at the FT and political commentator for the BBC's Today programme and Newsnight. As Editor of the New Statesman from 2005 to 2008, he took the magazine to 30-year circulation highs. He was Society of Magazine Editors Current Affairs Editor of the Year in 2006. In 2002 he won the Foreign Press Association award for Journalist of the Year and Film of the Year for a two-part BBC film on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, called 'The Ugly War'. His film 'War Spin' received considerable publicity. He now writes weekly for the Times and appears regularly in other newspapers such as the FT, Guardian and New European. He has made a number of programmes for BBC Radio 4 and World Service. He frequently appears on the BBC and Sky and has a weekly slot on Times Radio. His new book, Why the Germans Do It Better, published by Atlantic, is his sixth. His previous books include the best-selling Blair’s Wars (2003), now a standard text in schools; Freedom For Sale (2009), which was short-listed for the Orwell Prize in 2010 and in 2014 The Rich, from Slaves to Superyachts, A 2000-Year History. He is a Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. John established the Creative Industries Federation to much acclaim in 2014, providing a single voice for the UK's creative sector. For eight years he was founder Chair of Turner Contemporary, one of the country’s most successful art galleries. He is now Chair of the House of Illustration. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate for his services to the arts by Bath Spa University in 2019. For four years running he was named one of the most influential Londoners in the Evening Standard Progress 1000 survey. Fluent in German and Russian, he regularly speaks at political conferences and cultural festivals around the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week Gary Mansfield speaks to Margo McDaid (@margoinmargate)   Margo McDaid, known on Social Media as Margo in Margate, has accumulated quite a following thanks to her simple, yet extremely inviting and friendly portraits.   Ten years after giving herself the task of creating a painting a day. Margo’s work now sells faster than she can make it. Primarily through the Craft website Etsy, but since the Summer of 2019, they have been a huge success in Martgate’s Turner Contemporary.   Margo’s vintage style portraits are based on no-one, but appear to be everyone & anyone and her use of colour emits a joyful sense of optimism.   For more information on Margo McDaid and his work go to www.etsy.com/uk/shop/margomcdaidart   *Cover Photo courtesy of Hester van Overbeek @ hestershandmadehome   For full line up of confirmed artists go to https://www.ministryofarts.org Email: ministryofartsorg@gmail.com

Russell & Robert meet Jennifer Gilbert, leading curator, gallerist and champion of Outsider Art!As founder of the Jennifer Lauren Gallery, her aim is to champion and exhibit international self-taught, disabled and overlooked artists who create works outside the mainstream art world and art history. Jennifer works closely with UK organisations, studios and communities supporting disabled artists, in order to promote new, unique artists and creators. She is passionate about being a voice and platform for under-represented artists, allowing their voices and talent to shine through. Through her work Jennifer hopes to: demystify what is regarded as art and who can be an artist; stimulate audiences; and continue to challenge the stigma surrounding this field of art. Jennifer is also a Freelance Producer and Curator, often working with and supporting disabled artists, organisations and galleries but also as an access support writer for funding applications for people with access needs. She's a trustee of the Barrington Farm Trust in Norfolk - an organisation supporting learning disabled artists to achieve more in life.Artists mentioned in this episode include Nek Chand, Shinichi Sawada, Madge Gill, Pradeep Kumar, Bill Traylor, James Alison, Henry Darger, Davood Koochaki, Gerry's Pompeii, Misleidys Castillo Pedrosa, William Edmondson and MANY more! We also discuss Jennifer's recent curated group show in London titled 'Monochromatic Minds' and the current group show at Turner Contemporary in Margate called 'We Will Walk' which is free to visit and runs until 6th September 2020.Follow Jennifer on Instagram @j_lgallery and visit her official website www.jenniferlaurengallery.com/ For images of all artworks discussed in this episode visit @TalkArt. We've just joined Twitter too @TalkArt. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to Talk Art, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email talkart@independenttalent.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Barry Lewis is a British photographer and filmmaker who for several decades has worked internationally for numerous prestigious publications from Life magazine to National Geographic. Having originally studied theoretical chemistry, Barry won a scholarship from the Royal College of Art to do an MA in photography and subsequently began his career in style when he won the Vogue Award and worked as a staff photographer for the magazine on a salary of £10 per week.In 1981, Barry co-founded Network Photographers a London-based co-operative photo agency for photojournalists and documentary photographers, based loosely on the Magnum Photos model.As well as photojournalism and portraiture, Barry has directed over 20 documentaries, commercials and art films. His work has been exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum, The Museum of London and The Photographers Gallery, London. Notable exhibitions and awards include Positive Lives (1993), a book and international exhibition about living with AIDS and the World Press Award’s Oskar Barnack Medal for humanitarian photography (1990). In 2019 his images from Butlins in the 1980s were shown at Turner Contemporary as part of the “Resort” show. Since 2010 Barry has worked with musician David Toop and singer Elaine Mitchener to produce the mixed-media production “Of Leonardo” for the Teatro Fondamenta Nuove, Venice. A new version, choreographed by Dam Van Huynh, now tours internationally with a performance at the Purcell Room on the South Bank in September 2018.Barry has published numerous photobooks including Blackpool 1984-1989  (Café Royal books), Butlins Holiday Camp 1982  (Café Royal books), Soho in the 1990s (Café Royal books), Vaguely Lost in Shangri-la: 14 years of the Glastonbury Festival (Flood Publications) and Miami Beach 1985-2000 (Hoxton Mini Press, 2019). On episode 133, Barry discusses, among other things:Chemistry, teaching and the Royal CollegeComing of age in the 60sStarting Network PhotographersAdventures on assignment in Romania  Winning the Oksar Barnack Award for his Copsa Mica storyAlbaniaMiami Beach projectPhotographing strangersMaking filmsOrganising his archiveThe National Memorial for Peace and Justice, AlabamaBLM and London during lockdown Referenced:Bill BrandtTony Ray JonesHomer SykesW. Eugene SmithMike AbrahamsMike GoldwaterJohn SturrockMartin SlavinSue TrangmarColin JacobsonMary Ellen MarkDaniel Meadows Website (in progress) | Instagram | Facebook“I toured China with Elton John and Watford football club. You can’t make these things up. And there were no other photographers. So you had this kind of access and freedom. And just travelling… It was so exciting.”

Tony Hall in his new role as Chair of the National Gallery shares his vision for the gallery's future and the Marquis of Cholmondeley talks about working with Anish Kapoor to mount his exhibition, now open to the public at Houghton Hall in Norfolk. We're breaking out to: Titian : Love Desire Death at the National Gallery till 17 th January 2021 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/titian-love-desire-death Anish Kapoor at Houghton Hall till 1 st November 2020 https://www.houghtonhall.com/?page_id=3181 Ronnie Wood at Ashridge House : 21 st to 27 th August – SOLD OUT please see website for news of more ticket releases https://www.ashridgehouse.org.uk/events/ronnie-wood-x-ashridge-house-art-exhibition/ Turner Contemporary in Margate https://turnercontemporary.org Produced and Edited by Alex Graham

Emma Talbot is an artist based in London and is winner of the 8th Max Mara Art Prize for Women. Through drawing, painted silk hangings, 3 dimensional forms, installation, sound and - most recently - animation, Emma has developed a distinct visual world. . . Her work explores personal subjectivity, which is then cast into the wider context of prevalent contemporary concerns - such as our relationships with nature, our intimate engagement with technology, the way we communicate and power structures. Emma’s work has a hand-drawn, direct quality - using combinations of figurative imagery, painted text and flowing pattern to articulate non linear narratives. . . Recent exhibitions include GEM Kunstmuseum, The Hague, A 2019 ArtNight Commission at William Morris Gallery, London, Tate St Ives, Turner Contemporary and Arcadia Missa New York . . Emma has forthcoming solo exhibitions at Eastside Projects Birmingham, Dundee Contemporary Arts and Kunsthalle Giessen, Germany, The Whitechapel Gallery and Collezione Maramotti. . . You can get in touch with us with opinions and suggestions at: Email - tothestudio@gmail.com Instagram - instagram.com/tothestudio Facebook - facebook.com/tothestudiopodcast . . This podcast features an edited version of the song "RSPN" by Blank & Kytt, available under a Creative Commons Attribution license. http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Blank__Kytt/Heavy_Crazy_Serious/Blank__Kytt_-_Heavy_Crazy_Serious_-_08_RSPN

Mexican documentary Midnight Family follows a family-run private ambulance in Mexico City racing to the scenes of accidents in order to earn a living Masculinities:Liberation Through Photography, is a new exhibition at The Barbican in London, about how masculinity is experienced, perfomed, coded and socially constructed. Actress is the latest novel from Irish author by Anne Enright. A daughter looks back at her sometimes fractious relationship with her famous mother A revival of Caryl Churchill's 2000 play Far Away has just opened at London's Donmar Warehouse Teenage existence is never easy and having superpowers can only make it even more so. I Am Not Okay With This on Netflix is a new series with an adolescent female lead... Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Blake Morrison, Amber Butchart and Stephanie Merritt. The producer is Oliver Jones Podcast Extra recommendations: Stephanie: The Laramie Project Amber: We Will Walk at Turner Contemporary in Margate. And the sauna on Margate Beach Blake: When Time Stopped by Ariana Neumann Tom: Midsommer Main image: Taliban portrait. Kandahar, Afghanistan. 2002 © Collection T.Dworzak/Magnum Photos

As she completes her quintet of Agatha Christie adaptations with The Pale Horse, screenwriter Sarah Phelps discusses why Christie’s supernatural murder mystery attracted her attention when she was looking for a fifth work by the Queen of Crime to turn into television drama. We Will Walk - Art and Resistance in the American South is an exhibition of sculptures, paintings and quilts made by African American artists from Alabama and the surrounding southern states, made mainly during the Civil Rights movement of the '50s and '60s. Art critic Asana Greenstreet reviews the show, which is at Turner Contemporary in Margate and includes many works not seen before in the UK. This week Edward Kamau Brathwaite, the great poet of the Caribbean, died. Brathwaite realised the potential of West Indian vernacular, the beauty of its rhythms and vocabulary, as the language to speak of the Caribbean experience – surf, hurricanes, rum and calypso, the memory of Africa and the history of slavery. The poet Fred D’Aguiar pays tribute. Following the announcement of the death of the writer, academic and cultural critic George Steiner, the writer Robert McCrum - his editor at the Observer newspaper, and the publishing house Faber & Faber – pays tribute to Steiner’s life, work and his legacy as a public intellectual. Presenter Chrystal Genesis Producer Jerome Weatherald

Joining Tom Jackson to discuss the postcards from their pasts are publisher SCOTT PACK (How to Perfect Your Submission, Weightless Fireworks, 21st Century Dodos) and photographer, curator and writer KAREN SHEPHERDSON (Seaside Photographed, Beyond the View: Reframing the Early Commercial Photograph). We encounter photographers photographing photographers, visit model villages inside model villages, and look through the wrong end of a telescope at our parents as children - welcome to the hall of mirrors that is Podcast From The Past at the seaside, in a special episode recorded live at the Turner Contemporary as part of the Margate Bookie 2019. Wish you were here? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Boy in the Dress is a major new musical at the RSC in Stratford based on the book by David Walliams, with songs by Robbie Williams and Guy Chambers, a script by Mark Ravenhill and directed by Gregory Doran. With such a pedigree will it match the success of Matilda? Nick Ahad reviews. The Turner Prize is one of the biggest art prizes in the UK and offers £25,000 to its winner. Front Row goes to the Turner Contemporary in Margate where the Turner Prize exhibition is hosted this year to meet the nominees – Tai Shani, Laurence Abu Hamdan, Oscar Murillo and Helen Cammock - ahead of the winner announcement on the 3rd December. The Radio 4 Christmas Appeal with St Martin in the Fields will be launched on Sunday 1 December. This year, the fundraising gala at St Martin’s will include a performance of The First Nowell by Vaughan Williams with Radio 4 presenters, featuring a modified libretto by Zeb Soanes. He and Em Marshall-Luck, Founder-Director of The English Music Festival and former Chairman of the Vaughan Williams Society, discuss the delights of this rarely performed seasonal work. Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Sarah Johnson

Talk Art Live in London! Russell & Robert meet British artist Helen Cammock, nominated for the Turner Prize 2019 and winner of the 2018 Max Mara Arts Prize for Women. This special episode was recorded live in front of a sold-out audience at Art Assembly in Walthamstow, organised by Art Fund and the National Art Pass. Learn more at: www.artfund.org/talkartHelen Cammock works across film, photography, poetry, spoken word, song, printmaking and installation. We discuss 'The Long Note' (2018), her film that celebrates the involvement of women in the civil rights movement in Derry in 1968. Originally commissioned by Void Derry to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first civil rights march in Derry, Northern Ireland.Cammock produces works stemming from a deeply involved research process that explore the complexities of social histories. Central to her practice is the voice: the uncovering of marginalised voices within history, the question of who speaks on behalf of whom and on what terms, as well as how her own voice reflects in different ways on the stories explored in her work. Cammock’s practice is characterised by fragmented, non-linear narratives. Her work makes leaps between different places, times and contexts, forcing viewers to acknowledge complex global relations and the inextricable connection between the individual and society.You can view Cammock's film 'The Long Note' and a room of screen prints as part of the Turner Prize exhibition at Turner Contemporary, Margate until January 12th 2020. Free entry! https://turnercontemporary.org/whats-on/turner-prize-2019/Recorded live on stage at the Mirth, Marvel & Maud venue on Saturday 23rd November 2019, part of this awesome brand new one-day festival! Follow @ArtFund on Instagram and @TalkArt for images of all artworks discussed in this episode. Use #TalkArtPodcast and #ArtAssembly to tag us in your posts & stories from the day and we'll share our favourites! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Jim's passion for art began in childhood, when his parents encourage him to paint, sculpt and enter competitions on the back of cereal boxes, which happily, he won. As a teenager Jim studied at art collage and it was here that he discovered the performance art of Gilbert & George and Joseph Beuys, which inspired his early adventures in comedy and which has continued to inform his writing and performances throughout his career. Recently seen on your TV discussing the history of Video Art, Jim's own art work is exhibited up and down the country. He is also an ambassador for the Turner Contemporary, home of our special Art is Everywhere show on Tuesday the 3rd of December.

Investigating regeneration and gentrification, the Turner Contemporary, the 2019 Turner Prize exhibition, writer Maggie Gee on her novel Blood, & the town in literature. The seaside town of Margate has both struggled and thrived over the past two centuries – it thronged with holidaymakers from the Victorian era onwards but limped through the latter half of the 20th century and was one of the most deprived parts of the UK before the £17.5m Turner Contemporary opened in 2011. Many hoped that the new art gallery would spearhead change and eight years on there has clearly been growth – the town sometimes jokingly referred to as Shoreditch-on-Sea has been through a wave of gentrification, complete with the common trappings of independent cafés, vintage shops and yoga studios, frequented by an ever-growing artistic community bolstered by regular arrivals of Londoners fleeing the capital. Tourist numbers are up, with the Dreamland amusement park reopening and over 3.2m visitors to the Turner Contemporary reported since its launch. This narrative of a successful arts-led regeneration however ignores that fact that Margate remains in the top 1% of deprived communities in the country and in some wards around half of all children live in poverty. The painter JMW Turner once remarked of Margate that it had the ‘loveliest’ skies in Europe, but can they brighten prospects for the local community, as well as for the artists that flock there? As this year’s Turner Prize comes to Margate for the first time, Philip Dodd looks at whether the arts are a successful driver of regeneration, with Turner Contemporary Director Victoria Pomery and the social artist Dan Thompson, who has looked at people, place and change throughout his career. We reflect on the Turner Prize exhibition itself, and the work of shortlisted artists Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo and Tai Shani. The exhibition runs at Turner Contemporary until January 12th and the winner is announced on December 3rd. The author Maggie Gee’s new novel Blood is set in Margate and the surrounding area of Thanet. A darkly comic crime thriller set in Brexit Britain East Kent where the political atmosphere bleeds into the action. Her imposing protagonist Monica is accused of murdering the tyrannical patriarch of her family – a situation complicated by the fact she’s armed with an axe ready to do just that, when she finds her father’s body. Maggie tells us about Blood and how the local area is a perfect canvas for the story. Margate is hosting several events as part of Being Human, the UK’s national festival of the humanities which runs from November 14th to the 23rd – you can find more information on their website https://beinghumanfestival.org/ Literary historian Professor Carolyn Oulton is hosting a Murder Mystery trail in Margate for Being Human, amongst other things, and has been studying seaside towns in literature during the railway age. She gives us a view of Margate from the Victorian era – a bustling, promiscuous, populist place full of tourists – and the kind of stories set there. Crime and romance reads for the beach did particularly well for the holiday market, with works like Love in a Mist and Death in a Deckchair key tomes in the Margate canon. Producer: Karl Bos

This episode pairs artist Oscar Murillo with the editor Charles Henry Rowell for a conversation about class, race, art, and the African cultural diaspora that is one part history lesson and one part personal history.  Murillo is short-listed for the 2019 Turner Prize and Rowell is the founder and editor of Callalloo, the longest continuously running African-American literary journal.  The Turner Prize exhibition runs through January 12, 2020, at Turner Contemporary in Margate, UK. (The winner will be announced on December 3.) Read more about Callaloo here. 

The photographer Nick Knight meets the architect David Chipperfield. Over the last 30 years, Nick Knight has worked with many of the biggest names in fashion and music, including Alexander McQueen, Lady Gaga and Kanye West. Other commissions include a 90th birthday portrait of Her Majesty the Queen. Sir David Chipperfield has created prize-winning buildings around the world. In Britain, his most notable works include the River and Rowing Museum in Henley, the Hepworth Wakefield gallery, and the Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate. One of his earliest commissions was a house for Nick Knight – where they met for this conversation. Producer: Clare Walker

In episode 56 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed considering food photography and the value of photographic archives and how we can help each other to ensure their survival. Plus this week photographer Iain McKell takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he answer's the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?' Iain McKell grew up in Weymouth, Dorset and began working as a seaside photographer aged 19. He went on to study graphic design at the Exeter College of Art and Design before moving to London in 1979 to work as a designer. His first exhibition of his work was staged in his own studio in 1984 titled Iain McKell LIVE in which members of the public were invited to witness McKell at work, as he photographed members of the alternative comedian collective 'The Comic Strip' and many of the visitors to the show. This was followed in 1985 by an open workshop at The Photographers' Gallery, London showing his work and a documentary film documenting his life in 1984. The success of these events led him to work on advertising campaigns for brands such as Smirnoff and Red Stripe. McKell has been photographing various subcultures since the 1980s, beginning with the documentation of the skinhead culture within the UK and leading on to a similar documentation of Punks, Blitz Kids, and Rockabillies. Images that became his book Fashion Forever: 30 Years of Subculture published by Thames & Hudson in 2004. McKell has also spent over ten years befriending and photographing a group of New Age Travellers. The result of which became his book The New Gypsies published in 2011. He also went on to collaborate with Kate Moss for V magazine as Kate Moss traveled with McKell and spent time with the travellers. In 2012, McKell released his third book, Beautiful Britain: Photographs from the 1970s to the Present. in 2019 his book  New Girl Order was published by Hoxton Mini Press a body of work created as McKell spent two years immersed in a community of young female artists, documenting their unique performances, parties and personalities. He has directed commercials and pop videos and worked on commission for The Sunday Times, Vogue Italia, L'Uomo Vogue and i-D magazine amongst many others. www.iainmckell.com A selection of work from Private Reality will be shown as part of Seaside:Photographed at Turner Contemporary in Margate from May 2019  www.turnercontemporary.org/ Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer in Photography, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2019. He is currently work on his next documentary film project Woke Up This Morning: The Rock n' Roll Thunder of Ray Lowry. His documentary film, Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay can now be seen at www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd47549knOU&t=3915s. © Grant Scott 2019

This episode features to Mishka Henner. Exhibited at MoMA New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Turner Contemporary, Margate, Hasselblad Foundation, Goterborg, and Örebro konsthall amongst others. Mishka talks on aerial imagery, working with tin tin books and his current project using eye tracking technology. https://mishkahenner.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-westphoto-podcast/id1362085780?mt=2 https://anchor.fm/west-photo We are trying out some new things so let us know what you think... get in touch via email: info@westphoto.pictures https://www.westminster.ac.uk/course-search?course=photography

Russell & Robert get the high-speed train to Margate to meet Victoria Pomery OBE, Director of Turner Contemporary. We explore her journey to plan, build & open the museum designed by architect Sir David Chipperfield, which has had over 3 million visitors since 2011 becoming an attraction of national and international importance. We discuss swimming in the sea before work, the incredible light in this seaside town, how art can give people hope and the inspirational history of JMW Turner who lived in Margate in the 1800s and painted more than 100 works, including some of his most famous seascapes, inspired by the East Kent coast. Please leave us a review and rating if you’ve enjoyed this episode! For images of all works discussed in this episode, visit our Instagram @TalkArt See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Scottish artist Katie Paterson's exhibition at Turner Contemporary, Margate, explores our relationship with the vastness and mysteries of the universe, as she works with scientists who have pioneered research on the cosmic spectrum. The artist discusses her fascination with the physical world.So many successful TV shows have non-celebrities at their heart, from documentaries to reality programmes like Made in Chelsea and Great British Bake Off. But how do programme-makers find the contributors who will make interesting viewing? Co-director of production company Drummer TV Rachel Drummer Hay and TV critic Emma Bullimore give their perspective on what makes a good cast. The 2018 Ted Hughes Award highlights outstanding contributions made by poets to our cultural life. Front Row talks to the winner of the £5000 prize, live from the award ceremony, minutes after the announcement is made this evening.As a member of The Beat, Ranking Roger was one of the stars of British Ska, bringing his “toasting” skills to many of the band's big hits. To mark his death, music critic and broadcaster Kevin Le Gendre pays tribute.Presenter: Janina Ramirez Producer: Kate Bullivant

Landing Place poetry at the Turner Contemporary in Margate

A bilingual production of Moliere's Tartuffe at Theatre Royal Haymarket, written by Christopher Hampton and updated to a setting in contemporary Los Angeles sounds like a winning formula. It has had some damning reviews elsewhere in the press; what will our reviewers make of it? Francois Ozon's newest film L'amant Double deals with a Hitchcockian plot line involving twin psychiatrists both treating the same beautiful young woman who is having emotional and relationship problems. They also both happen to be sleeping with her too. It's very slick, stylish and French but is it any good? A final collection of short stories by acclaimed Irish writer William Trevor, who died in 2016, has just been published. We discuss "Last Stories" Animals and Us is the latest exhibition at Turner Contemporary in Margate; it reflects on the relationship between humans and other animals. How well does it deal with such a gargantuan subject? Elmore Leonard's book Get Shorty was made into a successful film in 1995 and is now a TV series starring Chris O'dowd. Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Christopher Frayling, Rebecca Stott and Tiffany Jenkins. The producer is Oliver Jones.

Samira Ahmed talks to percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie, who is inviting the residents of Kings Cross, London to help her create a new musical work over the next twelve months. Lyse Doucet, the BBC's Chief International Correspondent, reviews the film Christine, which stars Rebecca Hall as American newscaster Christine Chubbuck, who killed herself live on TV in 1974. Karen Krizanovich discusses the extraordinary television and film career of Mary Tyler Moore, whose death was announced today. British director Garth Jennings, whose previous films include Son of Rambow and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, ventures into the world of animation with the hit American musical comedy Sing. And Andrea Rose reviews a new exhibition at Turner Contemporary Margate, featuring 40 international artists working with knitting, embroidery, weaving and sewing. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Timothy Prosser.

Front Row - Paulo Coelho, Your Name, Turner Contemporary, the art of writing non-fiction

Internationally-acclaimed writer Paulo Coelho discusses his new novel The Spy, based on the life of the dancer Mata Hari. Coelho is best-known for The Alchemist, an allegorical novel about a young shepherd boy, first published in 1988, which has now sold more than 65m copies worldwide. Your Name is the latest Japanese anime film to attract large global audiences, and is written and directed by Makoto Shinkai, regarded by many as the successor to Studio Ghibli's legendary Hayao Miyazaki. The film, about a teenage boy and girl who wake up and find themselves living in the other's body, is reviewed by Larushka Ivan-Zadeh.Last night the lawyer Philippe Sands won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. His book, East West Street, explores the origins of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide as concepts but it is also a detective story and a thriller. To discuss the art of writing non-fiction, Philippe Sands is joined by Cathy Rentzenbrink who wrote The Last Act of Love, a memoir about her late brother who was seriously injured by a dangerous driver.We explore what happens when a high-profile art gallery turns to the local community of artists and makers to commission a work. Kirsty Lang visits Margate and Turner Contemporary's Studio Group to meet Kashif Nadim Chaudry, the artist they chose to work with on his large-scale textile artwork The Three Graces.Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Marilyn Rust.

Nine years after the last book was published, Harry Potter comes back to life in a brand new stage play by JK Rowling. Henry Hitchings reviews Harry Potter And The Cursed Child.We review listeners' reaction to this morning's debate on the cultural response to Brexit with those who run and fund arts organisations. John Wilson's guests are Victoria Pomery Director of Turner Contemporary in Margate, Fergus Linehan Director of the Edinburgh International Festival, and Councillor Judith Blake Leader of Leeds City Council who are in the process of bidding for European city of culture 2023. Plus, composers Michael Berkeley and Anthony Payne on the world premieres of their large-scale new pieces for the BBC Proms. Presenter : John Wilson Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

Laurie Anderson's film Heart of a Dog explores death and longing through the story of her terrier Don DeLillo's novel new Zero K explores death and longing and cryogenic suspension The revival at London's Young Vic of Joe Penhall's 2000 play Blue/Orange manages to deal in a darkly comic way with paranoid schizophrenia. Jo Brand returns to TV as Kim Wilde - a community nurse coping with financial cuts and family crises in Going Forward. It's dark but is it comic? Seeing Round Corners is a new exhibition at Turner Contemporary in Margate which celebrates the centrality of the circle in art. Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Sarah Crompton, Alex Clark and Robert Hanks. The producer is Oliver Jones.

Jack O'Connell, whose previous lead roles include Starred Up, '71 and Angelina Jolie's Unbroken, discusses his latest film in which he plays a disgruntled New Yorker with a grudge who takes George Clooney's character hostage in the financial thriller Money Monster, directed by Jodie Foster.Seeing Round Corners at Turner Contemporary in Margate explores the role of the circle in art. From sculpture to film and painting to performance, the exhibition brings together works by leading historical and contemporary artists including Leonardo da Vinci, Barbara Hepworth, JMW Turner and Anish Kapoor. Art historian and critic Richard Cork reviews.Jason Solomons rates the contenders for the Palme d'Or as the Cannes Film Festival comes to an end this week.Spymonkey's The Complete Deaths brings all of the killings in Shakespeare's works into one play. Kirsty speaks to actor Toby Park and director Tim Crouch.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Rachel Simpson.

Sarah Whelband from Ugly Duckling Communications www.uglyducklingcomms.com Turner Contemporary https://www.turnercontemporary.org/

Temple is a new play at London's Donmar Warehouse. It imagines what happened behind the scenes when the Occupy Movement took over the steps of St Paul's Cathedral in 2011. Simon Pegg stars in Man Up - an unconventional rom-com about a blind date that goes hilariously wrong. We review 2 new TV Sci-fi dramas: Humans on Channel 4 and Sense8 on Netflix - can they compete with the bigger budgets of film? Ryan Gattis' novel: All Involved is a fictionalised account of the 1992 LA riots which followed the acquittal of policemen for beating African-American Rodney King. 17 separate voices from gang members to firefighters tell their stories Ceramicist Grayson Perry has a retrospective at Turner Contemporary in Margate, it's a selection from more than 30 years of his work Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Lisa Appignanesi, Gabriel Gbadamosi and Michael Arditti. The producer is Oliver Jones.

Andrew O'Hagan talks to Matthew Sweet about identity, capturing memories and the impact of war in his new novel The Illuminations. Eddie Marsan talks about creating his character in the new film Still Life and about how much we know about a person's identity. Critic Charlotte Mullins considers the artists' obsession with capturing their image and that of their friends, as the National Portrait Gallery hosts a series of paintings by John Singer Sargent and Turner Contemporary in Margate looks at the role of the self portrait in the 21st century.

John Wilson with guitarist and songwriter Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders who discusses her new solo album Stockholm. Hynde looks back at being on campus in her native Ohio in 1970 on the day the National Guard opened fire on unarmed students, leaving four dead. As two exhibitions of work by Mondrian open at Tate Liverpool and Turner Contemporary in Margate this summer, the curators discuss Mondrian's art and legacy. Also tonight, we hear from the winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and review a new production of Miss Saigon, which returns to the London stage 25 years after it first opened.

As Margate’s Turner Contemporary gallery celebrates curiosity, the FT’s arts writer does his best to concentrate on the mind’s ability to wander See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With Kirsty Lang. The Handspring Puppet Company, the creators of the award-winning War Horse horses, have turned to Ted Hughes' sequence of Crow poems for their new show, combining puppetry, music, dance and extracts of the verse. It's part of the London 2012 Festival. Bidisha reviews. In the week that Jimmy Carr has apologised for taking part in tax avoidance schemes, the comedy critic Stephen Armstrong explains why successful comedians have always been rich and why they've always needed to hide it. Turner Prize-winning artist Mark Wallinger has a large-scale solo show Site opening at the Baltic in Gateshead this week, to be followed next month by a film commission at Turner Contemporary in Margate, and a collaboration with the Royal Opera House and the National Gallery in London on a new ballet based on paintings by Titian. In his studio Wallinger takes stock of his workload and has the latest news on his plan to erect a 50-metre high statue of a white horse in the Kent countryside. Gordon Ramsay goes to Brixton prison in his new TV series Gordon Behind Bars, as he attempts to set up a successful food business with the prisoners, giving himself a deadline of six months. Rebecca Nicholson reviews. Milos Karadaglic is a classical guitarist from Montenegro. Generally known as just Milos, he was the UK's best-selling classical recording artist last year, and Gramophone magazine's Young Artist of the Year. With a new CD of Latin American music and a BBC Proms concert this summer, he talks about his love for the guitar and the importance of looking after his nails.

Stephen Sackur talks to the newsmakers and personalities from across the globe.Hardtalk is in Margate, a traditional English seaside town, home to the new Turner Contemporary art gallery.Stephen Sackur speaks to Tracey Emin, the artist of international renown who was raised in Margate and has a major exhibition based in her old home town.Her work has always been deeply personal - a frank exploration of her sexuality, her relationships, her life.She has made an extraordinary journey from wild youth to pillar of the cultural establishment - just how blurred is the line between her art and her life?(Image: Tracey Emin unveils her new exhibition at the Turner Contemporary in Margate. Credit: Getty Images)

Writers John Irving and Michael Morpurgo talk about their new novels. Singer and songwriter Rumer discusses her new album. The rapper Plan B aka Ben Drew talks about his feature film debut and the artist Tracey Emin discusses her exhibition of new works at the Turner Contemporary in Margate. And Singer Patti Smith reveals what inspired the songs on her new album Banga

With John Wilson. Novelist and psychogeographer Iain Sinclair reviews Turner and the Elements, a new exhibition at the Turner Contemporary gallery in the artist's old stomping ground of Margate. Alice Coote is one of the world's most acclaimed mezzo-sopranos, famous for taking on the male parts or "trouser roles" in opera. She talks to John about assuming the gait of a man, the demands of being jet-setting soloist, and how a car crash made her realise the importance of music. In 1962 the playwright Joe Orton was sent to prison for six months for defacing books in Islington Public Library. Fifty years later, barrister Greg Foxsmith is staging a re-trial to examine what sentence Orton might have received today. He tells John why. Singer Lana Del Rey releases her debut album on Monday. Although her song Video Games was one of the most acclaimed tracks of 2011, her decadent image has provoked debates about her authenticity and her recent live performances have drawn criticism. Kitty Empire gives her verdict. Producer Ellie Bury.