tiarney miekus

“Then we’ll get real systemic change,” says Eugenia Lim when talking about making structural changes in the art world that reflect genuine diversity, “but I think we’re still just the tip of the iceberg. It’s still quite surface, but it’s good to be even pushing and talking about these things I think.” 

At a moment where politics and individuals feel increasingly divided, Lim creates videos, film and installations that look beyond divisiveness, capitalism and exploitation, to forefront the power of collectivity—something she speaks to in our latest podcast series Conflated.

This series centres on the ideas of inflation and conflation, linking with a touring exhibition also titled, Conflated. In ways both metaphorical and material, the show looks at ideas of inflation and deflation through creative, environmental, and political ways. And one of the artists in the show is Lim. 

Lim is an Australian artist of Chinese-Singaporean descent and her work partly explores this by subverting cultural stereotypes in ways both intelligent and very witty. In past works she’s taken on invented personas, inhabiting them across multiple videos, performances and sites. 

Lim is also one of the previous co-directors of the experimental art organisation Aphids, and we talk about one of Aphids’s latest performance works EASY RIDERS, which looks at the gig economy and capitalism—and we discuss how worker exploitation is an ongoing concern in Eugenia’s work. In addition to her thought-provoking practice, Lim also has co-directed the inaugural Channels Festival, and she was founding editor of the journal Assemble Papers. 

In our conversation she talks through her latest work with Kyneton locals, an area in regional Victoria, and how her work speaks to collective acts and what this means in a divisive political time like the one we’re living. 

You can also listen back to the first episode of this series with artist Zoë Bastin on conflation, bodies and transformative politics, and the second episode with David Cross on inflatables, experimentation and precarity.

With a current showing at ANU School of Art and Design Gallery, NETS Victoria are touring Conflated nationally throughout 2022 and 2023:

ANU School of Art and Design Gallery
(Canberra ACT)
29 September—4 November

Logan Art Gallery
(Logan QLD)
29 July 2023—3 September 2023

Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery
(Swan Hill VIC)
1 October 2023—3 December 2023

This series is kindly sponsored by NETS Victoria who are nationally touring Conflated, assisted by the Australian Government’s Visions of Australia program and the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.

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

“The art world is becoming arguably much more interesting now as a result of these kinds of developments,” says curator and director Jonathan Watkins in the third episode of Art Abroad. “I’m certainly not a lone voice, there are a lot of people challenging these fundamental assumptions about what we’re dealing with and why we’re dealing with it.”

While Art Abroad focusses on those involved in art who moved from Australia and ended up in London, Watkins is the director of the renowned Ikon gallery in Birmingham, two hours outside of London. 

Born in the UK, at age 12 Watkins came to Australia with his parents. He studied art history in Sydney, and eventually moved back to London in the 1980s, holding curatorial roles at Chisenhale and Serpentine galleries. 

In 1999 he became director of Ikon, a role he’s held for 23 years. Started in the 1960s, Ikon is a gallery that at once gives accessible and challenging notions of contemporary art. In an interesting link to Australia, Jonathan’s predecessor in the role was none other than Elizabeth Ann MacGregor. However after two decades at the gallery, Jonathan will be stepping down next month. We talk about this, as well as his moves to and from the UK, and the international outlook of his practice. He was the artistic director of the Biennale of Sydney in 1998, then headed the Tate Triennial in 2003, and the Shanghai Biennale in 2006—and that’s just to name a few.

Finally Watkins talks about making contemporary art accessible while not reducing its potency, and what will define this current period of art. 

This series is kindly sponsored by Leonard Joel Auctioneers and Valuers, based in Melbourne and Sydney. Produced and presented by Tiarney Miekus, engineering by Patrick Telfer, and music by Mino Peric.

For over 60 years John Wolseley has been visiting, capturing and sharing his experience of landscapes. But what does it mean to create and innovate over six decades? And what can Wolseley teach us about the life-stages of an artist? 

Art Guide Australia’s newest podcast series The Long Run considers this question with artists who have had careers spanning 60 years, each reflecting on their art and lives. 

In this third episode Wolseley, one of Australia’s most well-known landscape painters and printmakers, speaks to us from his home in regional Victoria. Moving to Australia from England in 1976, he’s known for immersing himself in an environment before painting it, capturing landscapes ranging from the mountains in Tasmania, to wetlands and rivers, to the floodplains of Arnhem land. Known as a great storyteller, Wolseley captures worlds that invite engagement with nature and the environment. 

In this episode Wolseley talks about how he came of age when England was coming out of World War II, and his experience of growing up on a farm and later attending boarding school. The artist also talks about studying under prestigious artists, what it takes for a landscape to capture his attention, and how he balances an environmental awareness in his work without being didactic. And finally, Wolseley tells us what having a 60-year practice feels like, and whether he’s optimistic about the future.

If you like this conversation, you can listen to the first episode where avant-garde painter Gareth Sansom talks about chance in making art, and his feelings on mortality and time; and in episode two hear Wendy Stavrianos discuss her experience of being a female landscape painter. 

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.

John Wolseley is represented Roslyn Oxley9, Sydney and Australian Galleries, Melbourne.