Confronting our fraught family histories

FromThe Art Show

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Confronting our fraught family histories

FromThe Art Show

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Length:

53 minutes

Released:

Dec 16, 2020

Format:

Podcast episode

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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.

Released:

Dec 16, 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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The long journey to Slow Art: Savanhdary Vongpoothorn on the family stories and mythical sagas at play in her meditative Slow Art. Plus, step into the outback landscapes of painter Zhou Xiaoping. And two artists discuss a new artwork about an environmental tragedy. 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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The tricks and turns of Marcel Duchamp: When Marcel Duchamp brought a bicycle wheel on a stool into the gallery, he turned ideas of sculpture and authorship on their head. We reflect on the legacy of this great 20th century figure and meet a couple of contemporary art innovators working today. 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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Creativity and the gig economy: Have you ever rented out a room in your house to a stranger? If you have, you've been part of the gig economy - that growing sector that promises ease and flexibility to consumers. But what are the costs of working this way? And what might artists learn from looking closely at the gig industry? by The Art Show
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Marking skin with Julia Mage'au Gray: Across Oceania, tattoos or markings are a cultural statement of who you are. Julia Mage'au Gray is an Auckland-based dancer, photographer and filmmaker from Papua New Guinea who is reviving Melanesian skin marking. by The Art Show
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Art history greats reimagined on social media: From Kahlo to Klimt, Monet to Matisse... If famous artists from history were alive today, what would they post to their social media? by The Art Show
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COVID-19 and visual art: The Australian artist Sally Smart talks about her planned exhibition and the impact of COVID-19 on artists worldwide. For Home is Where the Art Is, we journey to Polynesia to learn about a garment from Tuvalu called the titi, and we meet renowned APY Lands artist, Robert Fielding. by The Art Show
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Jerry Saltz on How to Be an Artist: We speak with Pulitzer prize-winning American art critic, Jerry Saltz about his new book How to Be an Artist, and find out how Quandamooka country on North Stradbroke Island inspires the art of Megan Cope. 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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Reflecting on touch in an era of isolation: Touch is a huge part of the way we experience the world, so how are our lives being reshaped in this era of physical distancing without touch? We explore these ideas with American photographer Robert Andy Coombs and Australian artist Michelle Vine. by The Art Show
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What does masculinity look like in Australia today?: Greg Semu and Alun Rhys Jones explore what the ideal of masculinity looks like in contemporary Australia. A clock from the 19th century is counting down to doomsday. And Brian Tucker checks the books at Australia's remote Aboriginal art centres. by The Art Show
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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
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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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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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Sandra Hill on art and reconciliation: Sandra Hill was 6 years old when she was taken from her family in 1958. As part of the stolen generation, it wasn't until years later that Sandra found herself able to reconnect with her culture and community through art. 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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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
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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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Callum Morton on monuments, art and activism: Artist Callum Morton turns his attention to the Sirius Building in The Rocks in Sydney, and reflects on the nature of monuments and activism, in light of the Black Lives Matter protests taking place across the world. 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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Lindy Lee on finding belonging as an artist: Lindy Lee reflects on what it means to belong as a Chinese Australian artist living and working in Australia today. by The Art Show
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Lisa Hilli on how her black experience shapes her creativity: Pacific Melanesian artist Lisa Hilli shares how her black experience shapes her creativity, from the texture of her afro hair to capturing the joy of black sisterhood, it's all embedded in her art. by The Art Show
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An African Australian art collective making space where there was none: Areej Nur co-founded Still Nomads to create room for the wealth of artistic talent in the African diasporic community. She tells us why it's been such a success and what it exposes in Australia's art scene. Plus, how are artists who are parents making work right now, especially during a pandemic? 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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Palestinian-Saudi artist Dana Awartani + Anna Park flip the script: Saudi-Palestinian artist Dana Awartani studied at a famously conceptual art school, before learning traditional Islamic crafts and principles, like sacred geometry. Now Dana is exploring the destruction of build heritage in the Arab world, most recently the devastated city of Gaza. Her work is being shown at Adelaide's Samstag Museum of Art and at the Venice Biennale. Rosa visits the Melbourne studio of ceramic artist Georgia Harvey. Taking influences from Mesopotamian art and our cross-cultural obsession with lions, Georgia tells us about her 'cauldron' of inspiration. Artist Anna Park was first exposed to American culture through Disney. By the time her family migrated from Korea to Utah, USA, she was a keen observer and prodigiously talented drawer. Anna's satirical and masterful charcoal drawings capturing online life, are the focus of Look, Look. Anna Park, at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. 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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A graphic designer in the spotlight + Adelaide's art biennial: Visnja Brdar's art motto is “The more nothing, the better”. She is one of this country’s most internationally successful graphic designers, the child of Croatian migrants who took her solo agency from Melbourne to New York, head-first into the competitive world of international branding -- and she's the subject of the first significant art survey of a female graphic designer in Australia, Visnja Brdar: Design Exalted at MUMA. Inner sanctum is the title of the 2024 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art. Rosa Ellen speaks with three of the artists taking part: Lawrence English, George Cooley, Ruha Fifita and curator Jose Da Silva. The chamber music is ‘All Flesh is Fire’, sung by the Adelaide Chamber Singers, composed by Anne Cawrse, conducted by Christie Anderson, recorded by Jakub Gaudasinski. by The Art Show
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How psychoanalysis influenced the art of Louise Bourgeois: Motherhood, childhood wounds and Freudian nightmares preoccupied the great sculptor Louise Bourgeois, who was especially iconic to younger followers in the latter part of her life. One of them was Philip Larratt-Smith, who became her literary archivist. He talks to Daniel about the importance of psychoanalysis on the artist. A new exhibition of Louise Bourgeois is on at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. My thing is... the 'souvenirs' of consumerism. Artist Joyce Lubotzky takes plastic things from the rubbish and puts them in the art gallery. It's part of a tradition of artists asking viewers to reconsider consumer waste as something permanent, not transitory. (Like a bit of trash talk? Listen to our special episode on art made from rubbish.) The National Gallery of Victoria recently purchased 27 boomerangs from the 24-year-old artist Keemon Williams, an emerging talent whose bold, empowered, queer portraits exemplify black by The Art Show
54 min listen
Why are hundreds of ancient Thai relics locked in legal limbo?: A culture that flourished 3,500 years ago in Thailand. They made jewellery and ceramics, not war. You may never have heard of Ban Chiang —That’s possibly because the objects that tell the story of this fascinating archaeological site are in limbo, caught between voracious collectors, tomb-raiding locals and undercover federal agents. Art historian Dr Melody Rod-ari tells Daniel the story. My Thing is... Black Histories. Prince made 'Purple Rain' famous, but five years later in 1989, a group of Cape Town anti-apartheid protesters claimed it for themselves when police fired water cannons at them, dyed purple. The Purple Rain Protest is one event in southern African resistance that's inspired artist Roberta Joy Rich in her latest work, The Purple Shall Govern. Meet the designers behind DNJ Paper, a textile research project and clothing label making garments out of paper! Rosa meets Daphne Mohajer va Pesaran and Jake Nakash by The Art Show
54 min listen
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
54 min listen

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Confronting our fraught family histories

Confronting our fraught family histories

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