What does it mean to be idle?

FromThe Art Show

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What does it mean to be idle?

FromThe Art Show

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54 minutes

Released:

Mar 25, 2020

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Podcast episode

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Turner prize winning artist Helen Cammock reflects on the art of being idle, for Creation in Isolation we check in with members of the Australian arts community adapting their work as a result of COVID-19, and self-described 'propaganda' artist Jonas Staal explains what propaganda art is, how it works, and why he wants to see more of it.

Released:

Mar 25, 2020

Format:

Podcast episode

Titles in the series (100)

Artists tell us how they create and why they do it. From artists’ studios, exhibitions, and live issues, we take art out of the white cube and into your ears.

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Hisham Matar on art, grief and healing: In A Month in Siena, Hisham Matar travels to Tuscany to look at the city's ancient paintings. In the process, he finds himself grieving for his father who disappeared 30 years prior. by The Art Show
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100 years of Bauhaus: Last year marked the centenary of the Bauhaus school, which revolutionised art and design. We revisit the legacy of the school in Australia, and meet a costume designer making bodysuits for Beyonce. by The Art Show
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Collecting art on a budget: We speak to a couple of art experts who insist you don't need to be a big spender to get started collecting art, drop by the studio of Australian artist Patricia Piccinini, and hear about a very special piece of art that connects Melbourne man Guido Melo to Brazil. by The Art Show
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Life as a contemporary artist in Australia: Ed speaks to three guests about issues affecting contemporary artists working today, including pay and funding, gallery representation, and attitudes within and towards the art industry. by The Art Show
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The art and life of Joy Hester: This year marks 100 years since the birth of Australian artist, Joy Hester. We celebrate the milestone by reflecting on Hester's art and probe the question: when everything is now 'curated,' what does the word actually mean? by The Art Show
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Kirsten Lyttle on connecting to culture through photography: Mixed media artist, Kirsten Lyttle, reflects on the ways her arts practice continues to bring her closer to cultural identity. We meet the Serpentine Galleries Curator of General Ecology, Lucia Pietroiusti, and hear about some treasured 'bounce back' Japanese dolls called okiagari-koboshi. by The Art Show
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Critiquing the 'colonial propaganda' in our museums: When you go to a museum, do you ever wonder how the objects were acquired? Alice Procter is an Australian art historian who wants us to critique what she terms the 'colonial propaganda' within our museums. by The Art Show
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Maree Clarke on maintaining cultural practices: After three decades in the visual arts world, Maree Clarke's practice continues to evolve, inspired by places and objects, and even roadkill! by The Art Show
52 min listen
What does it mean to be idle?: Turner prize winning artist Helen Cammock reflects on the art of being idle, for Creation in Isolation we check in with members of the Australian arts community adapting their work as a result of COVID-19, and self-described 'propaganda' artist Jonas Staal explains what propaganda art is, how it works, and why he wants to see more of it. by The Art Show
54 min listen
Del Kathryn Barton on the dangers of losing touch with our child selves: Del Kathryn Barton discusses her debut feature film Puff, and the dangers of losing touch with our child selves. by The Art Show
52 min listen
Confronting our fraught family histories: Megan Evans is a multi-disciplinary artist and curator whose art examines Australia's colonial history, looking at the impact that history has had on her own life and the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. by The Art Show
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Djon Mundine on creating Aboriginal memorials: Djon Mundine OAM is a writer, curator, activist and self-described 'occasional artist'. He reflects on the importance of creating memorials to Aboriginal people across Australia, including the regions. by The Art Show
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The surreal homes of Ian Strange: For a decade, Australian artist Ian Strange has been making art that investigates our complex relationship to the notion of 'home'. by The Art Show
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Olafur Eliasson's disappearing glaciers: Two decades ago, artist Olafur Eliasson hired a plane to fly across Iceland so he could document the epic glaciers of his homeland. When he returned years later, many of the glaciers were completely unrecognisable. Or had disappeared altogether. by The Art Show
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Aretha Brown on confidence in activism and art: What role does confidence play in becoming a visual artist? We find out with First Nations Aboriginal activist and artist, Aretha Brown. by The Art Show
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John Kaldor on what's next and who he's excited by now: Since successfully bringing Christo's Wrapped Coast to Australia, John Kaldor has become one of the country’s most significant collectors and private patrons. Where to next, and who is he excited by now? by The Art Show
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Brook Andrew is leading artists in urgent times: Brook Andrew's passions have never been contained to the artist's studio, from his interest in the anonymous sitters of early ethnographic photographs and memorials to the lives lost in Australia's frontier wars, to the repatriation of Aboriginal remains. Brook speaks to guest host Rosa Ellen about what drives him and what he set out to do as the first Indigenous artistic director of the Biennale of Sydney, which he renamed NIRIN. by The Art Show
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Sebastian Smee on criticism during COVID: Pulitzer prize-winning Australian art critic Sebastian Smee on finding new ways to work as a critic during the pandemic, being an ally and how he came to art. by The Art Show
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Body talk: Julie Rrap's creative journey around the female form: Artist Julie Rrap has been preoccupied with the female body since the 1980s, so what is her take on the changing politics of the body happening in visual art right now? Painter Ash Keating tells us about his favourite tool of the trade - the fire extinguisher! - as part of our Artist's Tools series. Plus, an artist couple who turned lockdown into video art. by The Art Show
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Prison, pokies and colour: Three artists who turned art into therapy: Damien Linnane was serving a prison sentence when he took up art as mental health therapy, going on to edit the magazines for prisoners Paper Chained and working on a PhD. Damien is the curator of a new art exhibition at Boom Gate Gallery at Sydney's Long Bay gaol, showing art from people incarcerated around the world. My Thing...is using art to talk about gambling harm. All his life, Nelson Nghe has seen up close the harm caused by gambling on poker machines, or 'tiger machine' in Chinese language. It's cost members of his family and his wider community a lot -- even homes. Nelson explores this in his powerful installation artwork I Bet You, on display at The Institute for Australian and Chinese Arts and Culture (IAC). Triple J's Stacy Gougoulis visits an exhibition of the late Gunditjmara, Yorta Yorta and Barkindji artist Josh Muir, who died at age 33 in 2022. In his neon street art-style prints and projections by The Art Show
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Archie Moore wins at the Venice Biennale + Leonardo Da Vinci + Nikki Lam: Archie Moore has won the top honour at one of the world's most prestigious and oldest art festivals – the Venice Biennale-- for a monumental work showing thousands of years of family lineage, and invoking lives lost under the colonial state. Monsignor Alberto Rocca is an Italian priest and art curator who has a singular job: accompanying pages from Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus, to the other side of the world. This Codex is the largest collection of Leonardo's drawings and notes, made up of thousand pages. After spending so much time with Leonardo's works as curator of the Ambrosiana Library in Milan, Rocca has some theories about the Renaissance polymath. 'Unshakable destiny' was how democracy and self-rule was supposed to manifest for the people of Hong Kong, according to the last British Governor. Nikki Lam has been working on a trilogy of art films about that promise, as personal tragedy and the i by The Art Show
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Jennifer Higgie on the art of interviewing artists: Interviewing visual artists is just one of the things that Jennifer Higgie has mastered in her decades-long career at the helm of Frieze magazine, as a writer, reviewer and podcast host. Daniel speaks with London-based Jennifer as her new podcast series for the National Gallery of Australia is released. Listen to Jennifer and Daniel's conversation about women artists and the spirit world. In 2007, a group of 'new media' artists came together in India's largest city to form CAMP, a studio with a rooftop cinema. In early-2000s Mumbai, experimental digital media didn't fit into an existing art scene. CAMP founders Ashok Sukamaran and Shaina Anand tell Daniel how they started and why they remain fiercely non-commercial. Ashok and Shaina are in Australia for PHOTO 24 festival. Larrakia artist Gary Lee has led a powerfully creative life including pioneering work in Indigenous queer sexual health during the AIDS epidemic. The new book Heat by The Art Show
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Reviving a Maori artform in a new political climate + doors to an artist's life: We meet the Maori artist who’s single-handedly reviving the lost cultural tradition of barkcloth making. As a right-wing conservative government winds back the prevalence of Maori culture and the teaching of Te Reo Maori, Nikau Hindin is collaborating with artists from across the Great Ocean for the Biennale of Sydney. She explains the complexities and risks in trying to breathe new life into a cultural practice after more than a century. My Art Crush …is Lavinia Fontana. National Gallery of Victoria curator Laurie Benson has long been fascinated by Europe's first professional female artist, 16th C. Baroque master Lavinia Fontana. First broadcast February 2022. Nik Pantazopoulos has been revisiting all the significant doors in his life. The artist started the exercise alongside therapy, digging through his memories to capture the flyscreen door of his childhood home, to the intriguing stall door of a tr by The Art Show
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A Timor Leste artist heads to the Venice Biennale + a Yucky exhibition: Maria Madeira escaped the Indonesian invasion of Timor Leste in 1975, to end up in a refugee camp in Portugal. In 2005 she returned as the first artist to hold a solo exhibition there, ever. Now the artist, who came to Australia in 1983, is representing Timor Leste at the Venice Biennale. A fountain of drool, the realities of catheter bags and people 'seeing but pretending not to see': Yucky is an exhibition developed by artist Sam Petersen that confronts ideas of 'yuckiness' and other prejudices faced by people living with disabilities, those who are chronically ill or neurodivergent. Producer Anita Barraud speaks with Sam, Danni Zuvela, Makeda Duong, Josh Campton and Lorcan Hopper. A transcript of this story is on the Transcript tab above. by The Art Show
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Kandinsky: the visionary artist 'brought back down to earth': Vasily Kandinsky was a pioneer of abstract painting, writing influential theories on spirituality and colour. But for all his correspondence, his inner life can be hidden to art historians, the Guggenheim's Megan Fontanella tells Daniel. And with the discovery of earlier abstract painters like Hilma Af Klint and Georgiana Houghton, does labelling Kandinsky 'the first' still apply? Daniel speaks to Megan on the new eve of an exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW. Inside the Victorian Spiritualist Union in north Melbourne, sits the largest collection of artworks by Georgiana Houghton. Her ecstatic, abstract paintings of spirit messages and visions from the 1860s are truly remarkable. Daniel speaks with Rev Lorraine Lee Tet and Jeff Stewart about the collection and their own beliefs about her art. by The Art Show
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An outback monastery hides the biggest art heist you've never heard of: The town of New Norcia in WA is a monastery in the bush, home to a community of Benedictine monks and a treasure chest of 17th and 16th c. European religious art -- all of which was stolen in a brazen heist in 1986. It's an art crime that RN's Marc Fennell set out to unpack with art historian and fraud expert Dr Pamela James in a new SBS TV series. My Thing is… The Resilience Coat. Rowena and Angela Foong, from the label High Tea with Mrs Woo, have designed a coat for all bodies, all trends and all of life's upheavals, complete with an in-built repair kit. It's been shortlisted for a national craft award. The mining town of Broken Hill might still be best known for Pro Hart and his 'Brush men of the bush' but Barkindji artists David Doyle and Krystle Evans are part of a thriving contemporary art scene influenced by Barkindji stories and art practices. Producer Rosa Ellen visits their respective studios after the by The Art Show
54 min listen
The artist who recreates 'petrichor' plus James Tylor and painting house flies: Catherine Sarah Young is an artist working with science to talk about the climate crisis. Most recently, she's making art about petrichor -- the smell of recent rain emanating from the earth, and what it might be like when fire and flood obliterate it... or what petrichor smells like on Mars! Catherine is the Art Show's ABC RN Top 5 resident. When James Tylor discovered the laborious but beautiful 19th C. photography method of daguerreotype, he found a medium that expressed the darkness of historical memory. Drawing on his Kaurna heritage, James explores the ravages of colonial intrusion on landscape and language, through beauty and craftmanship. Daniel meets the painter Nadine Christensen in her backyard studio and learns why the ordinary - from house flies to front gates, cranes, and acrylic paint -- are worthy of examination on canvas. by The Art Show
54 min listen

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