'It was like I'd been plugged into the mains': Bruce Munro's lights + the search for a Hong Kong street artist

How do you capture African fashion? And When Solidarity is Not a Metaphor: Fashion is not a luxury; it’s a crucial part of the social fabric of many African countries. Capturing this diversity in an exhibition was the monumental task for Christine Checinska, the Senior Curator of African Textiles and Fashion at the Victoria & Albert Museum, UK. Africa Fashion is touring the world, bringing diverse voices from the African diaspora to the forefront. Among these voices is photographer Suleiman Thomas, whose portraits of the African Australian fashion community reflect the local scene’s unique style. Many armed conflicts never penetrate the Western media bubble, leaving liberation struggles unnoticed. How do displaced artists living in asylum bring attention to these civil wars? A poignant example is the exhibition When Solidarity Is Not A Metaphor, a collateral experience at this year’s Venice Biennale. Join curator Natasa Petresin-Bachelez, along with artists Nge Lay from Myanmar and Sa by The Art Show

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What happened to Thailand's Ban Chiang relics? Plus Judy Watson's life of art: 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. For four decades Judy Watson has been making layered, ethereal art about profound and difficult subjects: frontier violence, dispossession and ecological destruction. From her beginnings with the famed Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative, to lithographs and her monumental public artworks, Daniel speaks to Judy Watson at her largest survey show at the Queensland Art Gallery, ‘mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri: Judy Watson’. The stories in this episode were first broadcast in 2023 and March 2024. by The Art Show

54 min listen

Alphonse Mucha and the popularity of Art Nouveau: Great conversations with visual artists, gallery and museum directors and curators. by The Art Show

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Laura Jones wins the Archibald portrait prize + Jeremy Deller: Big-name conceptual artist - four words you don’t often hear together. But Jeremy Deller is one - he’s a household name in Britain, but a few years back he sparked controversy here when he made giant wax candles of Rupert Murdoch and son Lachlan, and let them burn. The Turner Prize-winning artist also orchestrates mass public spectacles that bridge the worlds of contemporary art and pop culture. Daniel catches up with Archibald Prize winner Laura Jones, who painted author Tim Winton. Painter and sitter share a passion for WA's Ningaloo reef and its survival amid climate crisis. Unusually, Laura's own portrait is also on display – she entered it in the concurrent Sulman Prize, on at the Art Gallery of NSW. Brent Harris' psychologically-driven artworks are often described as haunting and even ‘brooding’. So, if you haven’t ever seen his paintings– would it surprise you to know they’re also colourful and cartoonish? More by The Art Show

54 min listen

Remembering trailblazing artist Destiny Deacon: We remember the life of the iconic artist Destiny Deacon, with curator Natalie King, and a cast of friends who sent us voice memos. She was the first artist to creatively reuse Aboriginal kitsch - and to make it the stuff of high art. A cultural icon, she was an outlier - a quirk of the artworld - whose strikingly original vision and prolific output found her an international audience. Plus, a studio visit with Alexander Brown, an artist who gave up interior design to focus on sculpture made from only recycled material – and minimal intervention. He's part of an exhibition about Aluminium at Craft Victoria. by The Art Show

54 min listen

Blak art and Destiny Deacon + an Abstract friendship: Kimberley Moulten, an adjunct curator at Britain's Tate gallery, specialising in First Nations art and Kate ten Buuren, a Taungurung curator, walk us through the public installation Blak Infinite for Melbourne's winter arts festival, RISING. The artist Destiny Deacon, who passed away last week, first coined 'Blak' to reclaim a word often weaponised against Aboriginal people in Australia. Rosa speaks with the Art Show's own Daniel Browning, who knew Destiny, about the artist's influential work and daring humour. Work mentioned include Whitey's Watching and Eva Johnson -- Portrait . In the 1930s Grace Crowley taught at a private painting school and met Ralph Balson, a house painter. The two struck up a lifelong painting practice that moved into 'pure abstraction', together playing an important role in the art movement in Australia. We look at their work and still-undefined relationship with curator Beckett Rozentals, for a new exh by The Art Show

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

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John Akomfrah at the Venice Biennale + mentors in art and life + Zeno Sworder: Daniel meets the British filmmaker and artist Sir John Akomfrah, who is representing the UK at the Venice Biennale with his work Listening All Night to Rain. Mentors can have many guises. For Miriwoong artist Jan Griffiths, Tiwi artist Johnathon World Peace Bush and Gomeroi Yinarr artist Sophie Honess, they each chose someone who could offer them artistic guidance as well as cultural knowledge. The resulting works were commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria for a show called My Country. Producer Stacy Gougoulis visits the home studio of children's book illustrator Zeno Sworder, whose book My Strange Shrinking Parents was a hit of 2023. 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

54 min listen

Nicholas Mangan makes art from phosphate, coral and bitcoin: Nicholas Mangan is drawn to the stories behind some of our most contentious commodities: phosphate from Nauru, copper from Bougainville and cryptocurrency, which Nick compares to an ancient form of stone money from Yap, a Micronesian island. Nick takes the viewer into these histories through sculptural installations and intriguing films. His survey exhibition World Undone is now on at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. My Thing is… GPS Art. ABC science reporter Belinda Smith makes art on the run, creating increasingly detailed pictures of animals on GPS maps, that she then matches with perfect puns, via her Inst account @animalpunruns. First broadcast May 2023. A teapot made by the South Australian ceramic artist Bruce Nuske is a beautiful thing to behold: ornate, whimsical, exquisitely crafted – and importantly, it can also pour a hot cup of tea… if you’d dare put it to use! Bruce's teapots and vessels are also ste 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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Katy Hessel never stops looking for the great women artists: Katy Hessel's podcast and bestselling book on the great women artists ride the wave of interest in a parallel cannon of art, where women have long been missing. So, what sparked her work correcting the record, and what has changed since she started? Katy is appearing at Sydney Writers Festival and other book events in Australia in May. Ellen Dahl ventured out to a frozen archipelago in the Arctic Ocean to take photos. The striking images won her Australia's National Photography Prize. She speaks to Daniel about her motivations to show climate change in action, and the influence of her Sami heritage. Read about her win here. My Thing is... the ocean. They describe grief as being a wave - it can hit you when your back’s turned. Julia Ciccarone knows that. The Melbourne figurative painter also finds peace in the water, particularly the open sea. by The Art Show

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Who reaps the profits from Aboriginal art re-sold overseas?: Australia's art resale royalty scheme was supposed to help artists (or their families) get a small percentage when paintings were re-sold at auction for big bucks, particularly Indigenous artists. But it hasn't gone according to plan. ABC national business reporter Emilia Terzon tells Daniel about her year-long investigation into what many says is an unjust state of affairs. For four decades Judy Watson has been making layered, ethereal art about the most profound and difficult subjects in Australian art: truth-telling, violence and ecological destruction. From her beginnings with the famed Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative, to her monumental public artworks, Daniel speaks to Judy Watson at her largest survey show at the Queensland Art Gallery. 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

54 min listen

An artist paints her lush Far North home, plus the secrets of Vermeer: Great conversations with visual artists, gallery and museum directors and curators. by The Art Show

54 min listen

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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The artist who takes you to West Africa, through sound and taste: Emeka Ogboh used years of field recordings to create layered soundscapes of his hometown, Lagos in Nigeria. When he moved to Berlin, he added music and combined the sounds of both global cities in critically acclaimed albums. Now Emeka is in nipaluna / Hobart for Mona Foma, where he's making work with the locals – including 2023 Tasmanian of the Year John Kamara. My Thing is... the chickenosaurus. As a teenager, JESWRI took to tagging to 'disrupt' the omnipresent advertising in his inner-city neighbourhood. But unlike many of his mates, JESWRI turned his graffiti into a career that's led to gallery commissions, community murals of Indigenous heroes and –ironically– advertising. The 'chickenosaurus' is his latest art project for Not Natural at the Science Gallery Melbourne. Artist-inventor Jessie French has turned dried algae into a plastic product that perhaps could one day replace one of the more toxic plastic product by The Art Show

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The power couple behind this year's Sydney Biennale: So, you're given the keys to Australia's largest visual art festival, what next? Romanian-born curator Cosmin Costinas and Colombian Inti Guerrero are the co-directors of the Sydney Biennale. The art power couple tell us how they got to know Australian art and how they selected 116 artists from dozens of countries to showcase a world of contemporary art in this year's Biennale Ten Thousand Suns. My Thing is... the 'olla'. Ceramic artist Richilde Flavell has been inspired by the ancient plant watering jug, the olla, to make artworks about motherhood and the body. Her exhibition Ok! Motherhood is on at Yarilla Arts and Museum in Coffs Harbour. This year marks 100 years of Surrealism! Much more than just Salvador Dalí's melting clocks, Surrealism was a revolutionary set of ideas and aesthetics that formed in the aftermath of the trauma of WWI. Robert Zeller is a contemporary Surrealist painter and author of New Surrealism: The Uncanny by The Art Show

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

54 min listen

David Shrigley's sublimely silly, dark universe: When you see a David Shrigley picture – at worst, you’ll chuckle, at best you’ll laugh out loud every time you think of it (which is sometimes years later.) The Shrigley universe is filled with badly drawn hands, everyday disappointment, and simple pleasures. In short, it’s sublimely silly and pretty dark. Daniel speaks with the British artist during his Australian visit for the National Gallery of Victoria's Triennial. We meet up with Australian artist Daniel Boyd, fresh from his first major solo exhibition in Europe and who’s just shown his work at the New York gallery that represents some high-flying international artists. And hear from Diana Al-Hadid, the Syrian-born US sculptor who's made stunning artworks in response to two 15th C. paintings owned by the National Gallery of Victoria – audience favourite The Garden of Love and a religious painting by Hans Memling. by The Art Show

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Tacita Dean + Hydraulic Press Girl + conflict avocados: Tacita Dean is one of the UK's most acclaimed artists, best known for working with 16mm analogue film. Daniel speaks with her about recent work on important living artists, and her huge, mesmerising chalk drawings, from her exhibition at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art. My Thing is... getting squished. Actor and choreographer Smac McCreanor went viral for her Hydraulic Press Girl videos, imitating household objects getting crushed by a hydraulic press. Now she's in the art gallery -- featuring in the National Gallery of Victoria's Triennial. In parts of Mexico, a high price is being paid for the world's insatiable appetite for avocados. Artist Fernando Leposse investigates the ecological and social costs of the industry in his art project Conflict Avocadoes. by The Art Show

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An artist paints her lush Far North home + the secrets of Vermeer: Naomi Hobson grew up on some of the most beautiful country on the continent, Cape York Peninsula in far north Queensland, and is named after the hoop pine that grows there. Her southern Kaantju and Umpila culture has always been a driving force in her art, from bold expressive paintings to ceramics and photography. Her series Adolescent Wonderland features teenagers in her small community of Coen, displaying their humour, creativity and brilliance. First aired March 2023. My Thing is ...the Persian poet Hafez. Artist Ali Tahayori always returns to the lyrical poetry of the master Hafez for inspiration in both life and art. Ali works with sparkling hand-cut mirrors that reference the traditional Iranian craft of Āine-Kāri. Through light and mirror, he explores transcendent moments and what it means to be queer and diasporic. First aired February 2023. The 2023 Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam was the by The Art Show

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In the studio with painter Prudence Flint + photos of 'Humpty Doom': Painter Prudence Flint has a career spanning 35 years, best known for enigmatic pictures of female protagonists in surreal domestic scenes. Despite a serious local following, her paintings have proved much more popular overseas, and she only produces around eight a year. All situate the viewer in an intriguing psychological space -- but does the painter ever feel too exposed? A Beginner’s guide to art openings. The art exhibition opening is a rite of passage for artists and art lovers alike, but it can be an intimidating and exclusive social affair. Artists Ming Liew and Thitibodee Rungteerawattananon made a pact to break into the Melbourne art scene by attending as many art openings as they could together, culminating in an art film about the project, by Ming. Rosa tags along to one gallery to see how it’s done. Charles Lai runs a public calendar of the city's visual arts events. First aired July 2023. Humpty Doo i by The Art Show

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Catherine Opie's photos chart life changing decades for LGBTQI subjects + Rosie Westbrook: Daniel speaks with the pioneering US photographer, activist and UCLA Professor Catherine Opie, whose early portraits of her genderqueer community challenged homophobia and moral panic during the heightened atmosphere of the AIDS epidemic. Catherine has gone to become one of America's foremost contemporary fine art photographers. Binding Ties is the first survey of her work in Australia. My Thing is… improvising music to art. Musician Rosie Westbrook is hired by galleries and sometimes artists themselves, to walk around and improvise instrumental music in response to the artworks. Her latest album is Always the Sea. Episode first aired April 2023. by The Art Show

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The rise and rise of the artist-in-residence + Rosa Bonheur: When did artists begin doing ‘residencies’? From the patronage system of Renaissance Italy, to artists’ colonies of the 19th Century and the decades-long stint of an artist-in-residence at the NYC Sanitation Department, researcher Amaara Raheem tells us the history and ideas behind the Artist-in-Residence. Producer Lisa Divissi catches up with the artist-in-residence of Melbourne’s Footscray Railway Station, David Wells. And artists Nicole Barakat, Nikki Lam and Gegee Ayurzana share messages from their studios-away-from-home. In the 19th Century Rosa Bonheur was one of the most popular artists in Europe, inspiring public statues, royal visits and even dolls sold in her likeness. Rosa painted animal portraits, but was equally known for her unconventional life, from wearing pants and keeping a lion, to living with her female companion. Author Catherine Hewitt explains why she was so celebrated, and how she slid from view. He by The Art Show

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Jerry Saltz says 'show up' (you big scaredy cats) + the women artists who spoke to spirits: Jerry Saltz is the Pulitzer prize-winning art critic for New York Magazine. Before he turned his hand to writing at the age of 40, he drove long-haul trucks and was a failed visual artist. Jerry reckons the gatekeepers of the art world have effectively 'effed off' and now anyone can —and must— take part. Jerry Saltz's latest book of essays is Art is Life. First broadcast January 2023. Many great artists have claimed to communicate with the spirit world, especially in the heyday of Theosophy and Spiritualism — so why is it shied away from in art history? And why did it attract so many women, like the early Abstract artist Hilma Af Klint and the Victorian medium Georgiana Houghton? Now Jennifer Higgie has written The Other Side: A journey into women, art and the spirit world. Featuring the art practices and radical lives of artists like Pamela Colman Smith, who illustrated the tarot deck, t by The Art Show

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Emily Kam Kngwarray took the art world by storm — but did it understand her?: On our final show of the year, we look at the work and career of the great Emily Kam Kngwarray. A senior Anmatyerr woman from Utopia who took up painting in her 70s, Kngwarray is arguably the most significant contemporary artist from Australia to emerge in the twentieth century. Daniel speaks with Hetti Perkins, the co-curator of a summer blockbuster showcasing Kngwarray's work on at the National Gallery of Australia, as well as art historian Stephen Gilchrist. That's a wrap, 2023! Daniel is joined by guests Sasha Grishin, Gabriella Coslovich and Anna Emina El Samad to discuss favourite art exhibitions of 2023, the recent performance that led artist Mike Parr to be dropped by his gallerist Anna Schwartz, and the rise of AI in art. by The Art Show

54 min listen

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'It was like I'd been plugged into the mains': Bruce Munro's lights + the search for a Hong Kong street artist

'It was like I'd been plugged into the mains': Bruce Munro's lights + the search for a Hong Kong street artist

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