Art Guide Australia Podcast

What does it mean to create and innovate over six decades? Art Guide Australia’s newest podcast series The Long Run considers this question with three artists who have had careers spanning sixty years, each reflecting on their art and lives. What can they teach us about the life-stages of an artist?

In the second episode we speak with landscape painter Wendy Stavrianos. Working from regional Victoria, Stavrianos is known for her densely layered landscape paintings and use of line in painting, creating works that evoke different environments in ways that are beautiful, psychological and mysterious. From her early work in the 1960s, to her well-known Rape of a Northern Land series painted in Darwin in the 1970s, and her recent large-scale paintings, Stavrianos is integral to understanding landscape painting in Australia. 

In this episode Stavrianos talks about her childhood and youth, and how this set the scene for her to become an artist. She also discusses the gender barriers she encountered as a female painter, how she came to landscape painting, her incredible empathy with the environment and nature, and how mortality and mystery infiltrate her work.

The conversation is an interesting accompaniment to our first episode of The Long Run, where avant-garde painter Gareth Sansom talks about the mechanics and chance of making art, and his feelings on mortality and time. 

This series is kindly sponsored by Leonard Joel Auctioneers and Valuers, based in Melbourne and Sydney.

Produced and presented by Tiarney Miekus, music and engineering by Mino Peric.

Wendy Stavrianos is represented by Nicholas Thompson Gallery, Melbourne

Creating, evolving and innovating over decades takes great stamina. Art Guide Australia’s latest podcast series features conversations with three established Australian artists who each reflect on their art and lives. What can they teach us about the life-stages of an artist?

Our first episode in The Long Run features a lively conversation with Gareth Sansom. Based in Melbourne, Sansom is regarded as one of Australia’s most well-known and esteemed avant-garde painters. He had his first exhibition in 1959, and since then has gone on to create admired and debated works that look into pop culture, sexual transgression, the unconscious, and the history of painting itself. In works that are simultaneously chaotic and balanced, Sansom layers and blends everything from abstraction to collage to T.S. Eliot to Swedish film.

Sansom talks about his talent in drawing, his great sense of ambition, the importance of chance in painting, his thoughts on death, and what changes he’s noticed over a 60-year practice and what remains the same. 

Sansom’s latest exhibition A Case of the Old and the New is currently showing online with STATION gallery.

This series is kindly sponsored by Leonard Joel Auctioneers and Valuers, based in Melbourne and Sydney. 

Produced and presented by Tiarney Miekus, music and engineering by Mino Peric. 

I would ask you the question, does it help to feel scared?” wonders Lucy McRae.  

How do you think about the future at a time when the future feels so uncertain? In this third edition of Faraway, so close—a podcast dedicated to considering the anxieties and opportunities emerging in the arts in our new COVID-19 world—artists Cyrus Tang and Lucy McRae give their thoughts and feelings on where we are now, and where we’re headed next.

While Cyrus talks about loss and transformation, sitting with anxiety, and her experience of migrating from Hong Kong over 15 years ago, Lucy discusses what it’s like in Los Angeles, the importance of resilience and optimism, the fallibility of human bodies, and the future of art, biology and technology in our ‘new normal’.  

As Lucy sums up, “There’s a potential revolution rendering in the background, and the opportunity that comes out of hitting rock bottom, despite the discomfort and the suffering, is a really great to create change and transformation.”

You can subscribe to the Art Guide podcast on iTunes or Spotify, and listen back to the first episode of Faraway, so close with artist Yvette Coppersmith and curator/director Alexie Glass-Kantor on solitude, and episode two with artists Tai Snaith and Ross Coulter on creating and parenting.

“In some ways I don’t think of my life and art as separate things, I think it’s one in the same thing,” says artist Louise Weaver when speaking of her creative pursuits. “I don’t see it as a career as much as something that is an extension of my life and would go on regardless of whether I had opportunities to exhibit or not.”

With a practice spanning three decades and multiple mediums, Weaver has continuously worked both within and beyond a variety of juxtapositions: nature and culture, metamorphosis and concealment, reality and unreality, and the beautiful and the uncanny. Becoming well-known in the 90s for her crotchet animal forms, over time Weaver has created a vast array of painting, installation and sculptural works, threading interests in mythology, shamanism, the fantastic, the domestic, high fashion, art history and ecological awareness.

Weaver discusses these elements in the podcast interview, and further builds upon an earlier conversation published in Art Guide’s January/February 2020 issue, which can now be found online.

In particular Weaver talks through her major survey exhibition 'Between appearances: the Art of Louise Weaver', showing at Buxton Contemporary, and filters through the ideas and associations that inform her tactile works. She also discusses the dream-like qualities found in her work, her studio process, how she gets beyond self-doubt, questions of gender and creativity, and what she means when she says creating art is how she relates to the world.

See more at Art Guide online: www.artguide.com.au/podcast

Podcast produced by Tiarney Miekus. Engineered by Mino Peric. Music by Jesse L. Warren.

Even Agatha Gothe-Snape struggles to define her art. While performancemay be the easiest description, there are many avenues winding through her practice including dance, collaboration, text, public works, PowerPoint slide presentations, augmented reality and documentary. If the form of Snape’s work can be slippery, so too can the content. Broadly speaking, much of her work looks at artistic processes, the canon of art history, and the social and aesthetic contexts that artworks sit within. 

In a career barely brushing one decade, Gothe-Snape has exhibited widely. She’s the only artist to have shown in all iterations of the Sydney exhibition series The National, and was also included in the 20th Biennale of Sydney — not to mention she’s also the subject of an Archibald-winning painting, created by her partner Mitch Cairns. 

Most recently, Gothe-Snape was commissioned by Kaldor Public Art Projects for the exhibition Making art public: 50 Years of Kaldor Public Art Projects. For the show, Agatha created Lion’s honey, an ongoing performance in which a single person reads to themselves each day in the gallery. It’s this work that becomes the focus of the podcast, with Gothe-Snape recounting how the performances came to fruition — just when she was at the edge of refusing a commission — it was hearing a fable that brought her back into creating. It’s Gothe-Snape’s telling of the story that gives such an insight into her practice, and how she thinks about art. 

Gothe-Snape also talks about the experience of being part of an artistic family, why she eventually went to art school, the role of language in her work, her thoughts on John Hughes and the art canon, and her struggles with the label of “art”. 

See more at Art Guide online: www.artguide.com.au/podcast

For David Hurlston curating is both a conceptual and physical process: he’s concerned with how viewers move through gallery spaces and how they read artworks. “It’s just about making a really tangible and interesting and educative experience, and I think that happens in the real world, in the real space,” he says.

Having been a curator at the National Gallery of Victoria for over 25 years, David Hurlston’s name is synonymous with the curatorial field of Australian art. While his current role is Senior Curator, Australian Painting, Sculpture and Decorative Arts to 1980, David has worked in a number of curatorial roles at the National Gallery of Victoria including Curator, Australian art exhibitions (2002-2007), Program Coordinator (1999-2002) and Access Gallery Curator (1993-1999).

As Hurlston explains in the podcast, curating is centred on collaboration, listening and negotiation: elements which have come into play when curating survey shows on well-known artists including Ron Mueck, David Hockney, Deborah Halpern, Ian Strange and more.

Hurlston also discusses the push and pull between entertaining and informing gallery visitors, his childhood experience of regularly visiting NGV, his background as an artist, what curating has meant to him over the years, and what the label of ‘curator of Australian art’ signifies today.

See more at Art Guide Australia online: www.artguide.com.au

Podcast produced by Tiarney Miekus. Engineered by Mino Peric. Music by Jesse Warren.

“Not only is it exhibition making,” says independent curator Andy Butler when talking of his curatorial practice, “I think it’s advocacy in a lot of ways for particular artists’ practices, for the arts more broadly, for particular ideas that you want to see circulate within the contemporary art world and contemporary art discourse.”

Along with being an independent curator, Butler is a Filipino-Australian writer and artist who continuously looks at the dynamics of power, systemic racism and racial hierarchies within a contemporary art context. As Butler explains in the third episode of our Conversations with Curators series, independent curating provides a malleable space for exploring power and racism, allowing him to work closely with artists and to take greater curatorial risks.

Although Butler is still in the earlier stages of his curatorial career, he’s recently curated a number of exhibitions that have garnered considerable attention including Those Monuments Don’t Know us at Bundoora Homestead and Always there and all a part at Melbourne artist-run gallery BLINDSIDE.

In the podcast conversation Butler talks about these shows, explaining his impetus to illustrate the complexity of artists and their work, and to focus on having meaningful engagements and discussions on racism and colonialism in both art and life. “At least in the exhibitions I’ve curated, I’ve tried to move away from this sense that exhibitions like this are just celebrating diversity — they’re actually more about whiteness,” explains Butler. “They’re more about structures of power that people from all of these [different] backgrounds are all navigating in these different ways.”

See more at Art Guide Australia online: www.artguide.com.au

Podcast produced by Tiarney Miekus. Engineered by Mino Peric. Music by Jesse Warren.

Colour is simultaneously the most apparent and most complex part of Gemma Smith’s practice. The artist, who has a penchant for abstraction, creates paintings that capture dialogues and interactions between colours. Smith doesn’t paint with colour; she persuades colour.

In this podcast she discusses her explorations into colour and form, her process in the studio, her penchant towards abstraction, and what she has learnt about painting from almost two decades of explorations into colour, space and form.

See more at Art Guide online: https://artguide.com.au/podcast-gemma-smith-on-the-persuasion-of-colour

Podcast produced by Tiarney Miekus. Engineered by Mino Peric. Music by Jesse Warren.

The contexts that Fiona Abicare has worked within are plentiful: the Golden Age of Hollywood, the shabby chic aesthetic and objects of mass culture, just to name a few. Working with locations such as window shop fronts and gallery settings, the Melbourne-based artist’s work explores the cultural and personal associations and histories we have with various sites, objects and historical periods; creating works that blend art, design, architecture, film and fashion.

As Fiona explains in the podcast, she works at the junction between contemporary art and interiors, always creating directly in relation to a certain site or context. “The site dictates the approach, [which] dictates the medium, the subject and the starting point,” she says. “I’m not a studio-based artist that goes to the studio every day and does continuous making. I do projects.”

Fiona discusses how she explore various historical periods and aesthetic styles, the familial and personal resonance in her work, the experience of working as a technician for other well-known artists, and the current cultural climate in the Australian arts.

See more at Art Guide online: https://artguide.com.au/podcast-fiona-abicare-on-the-adventures-of-mediums.

Podcast produced by Tiarney Miekus. Engineered by Mino Peric. Soundtrack by Jesse Warren.

Since embarking on a creative path only a mere 15 years ago, Yolŋu artist Gunybi Ganambarr has been continuously praised for his weaving of Indigenous forms and traditional stories with a contemporary sensibility. He has been called a “revolutionary”, “genius” and “an innovator”, and has accumulated many accolades, including the 2018 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA).

But as Ganambarr explains in the podcast conversation, visual art was not the first form he gravitated towards. His foremost creative experience started as a didgeridoo player, which allowed him to travel nationally and internationally. Prior to becoming an artist, Ganambarr also spent 12 years as a builder, and he credits this experience with familiarising himself with the tools and materials that would later find their way into his creative practice.

Gunybi discusses his 'pre-art' life, the experience of winning the 2018 NATSIAA, and the advice he has for younger artists.

See more at Art Guide online: https://artguide.com.au/podcast-gunybi-ganambarr-on-creating-building-and-etching.

This podcast has been produced in partnership with the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in recognition of the annual Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards.

The Interview with Gunybi Ganambarr was produced and hosted by Tiarney Miekus. Episode mix by Mino Peric and soundtrack by Jessie Warren.

When Luke Scholes talks about being a curator, he turns toward the origins of his role: he discusses how curating means to be ‘a carer of things’. For Scholes, this largely involves caring for art collections, through his role as Curator of Aboriginal Art at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT).

In this podcast Scholes unpacks his curatorial work, revealing how his position falls across three broad areas: facilitating the annual National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Awards, curating exhibitions, and maintaining and developing MAGNT’s Aboriginal art collection. It’s this third responsibility that Scholes particularly delves into. “It’s not just about acquiring more examples, it’s about acquiring the right examples,” he explains. “What a curator should seek to do is develop a really strong and historical record of art movements.”

This podcast has been produced in partnership with the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in recognition of the annual National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards.

See more at Art Guide online: https://artguide.com.au/podcast-luke-scholes-on-curating-caring-and-collaborating

Podcast produced by Tiarney Miekus. Engineered Mino Peric.

Glenn Iseger-Pilkington likes to joke that he’s an “arts handyman”. Yet the phrase does have merit: he’s an artist and writer and has held various curatorial roles at the South Australian Museum, Western Australian Museum and the Art Gallery of Western Australia. Nowadays, he’s the lead consultant at Gee Consultancy, where he works with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and arts workers.

In this podcast Glenn, a Yamatji Nyoongar man from Western Australia with Dutch and Scottish migrant history, talks about his curatorial and consultancy roles, discussing how he sees himself less as a voice of authority and more as a conduit. He also talks about the experience of judging the 2018 National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards and, finally, tells us what changes he’s noticed in the arts in Australia over the last 15 years — both for better and worse.

See more at Art Guide online: https://artguide.com.au/podcast-glenn-iseger-pilkington-on-being-a-conduit.

This podcast has been produced in partnership with the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in recognition of the annual National Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Art Awards.

Produced by Tiarney Miekus. Engineered by Mino Peric.

“I think the challenge with all of the disparate references is not that it’s difficult for all of them to come together. I think that the challenge is not to make the photograph too derivative of one reference, because then I’m just recreating something that already exists."

Georgina Cue’s large-scale, staged photographs bring together many disparate references ranging from film noir, German Expressionism, femme fatales, graffiti, classical Greek aesthetics and contemporary sportswear. In this podcast Cue unpacks the stories, associations and symbolism behind the imagery, as well as her current show 'Scenes' at Neon Parc.

See more at Art Guide online: www.artguide.com.au/podcasts

Podcast produced by Tiarney Miekus and engineered by Mino Peric.

In this first series of Five on Five we're asking five painters to speak about a painting that has influenced, inspired or resonated with them. In this episode Prudence Flint reflects on 'Virgin and Child' (1455-60) by Dieric Bouts, discussing how she’s drawn toward the maternal and erotic nature of the painting, alongside its nostalgic resonance.

To view the painting as you listen along, head to Art Guide online: https://artguide.com.au/five-on-five-prudence-flint-on-dieric-bouts-virgin-and-child.

Prudence Flint is a Melbourne-based painter. She is a finalist in this year's Archibald Portrait Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and will have a solo show at Bett Gallery in Hobart from 16 November - 7 December 2018.

Production credits: Produced by Tiarney Miekus. Music and audio engineering by Mino Peric.

In this first series of Five on Five we're asking five painters to speak about a painting that has influenced, inspired or resonated with them. In this episode Huseyin Sami reflects upon 'Suite Segond' (1980) by French artist Bernard Frize.

In particular, Sami is intrigued by Frize’s lifelong dedication to painting and how the artist has continuously worked through the problems of painting.

To view the painting as you listen along, head to Art Guide online: https://artguide.com.au/five-on-five-huseyin-sami-and-bernard-frizes-suite-segond.

Huseyin Sami is a Sydney-based artist whose multi-disciplinary practice engages with painting, sculpture and installation to explore aspects of time, action and process.

Production credits: Produced by Tiarney Miekus. Music and audio engineering by Mino Peric.

In this first series of Five on Five we're asking five painters to speak about a painting that has influenced, inspired or resonated with them. In this episode Kylie Banyard reflects on Breast-feeding (2015) by American artist Dana Schutz.

In particular, Banyard is captivated by the image's “yuck yum” qualities and its depiction of the maternal experience of breastfeeding.

To view the painting as you listen along, head to Art Guide online: https://artguide.com.au/five-on-five-kylie-banyard-on-dana-schutzs-breastfeeding.

Kylie Banyard is a multidisciplinary artist whose work investigates alternate models for living and learning. Her artistic practice is grounded in painting and intersects with photography, video, sculpture and immersive architectural spaces.

Production credits: Produced by Tiarney Miekus. Music and audio engineering by Mino Peric.