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.

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.

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 largest ever assembled of the artist's works. Gregor Weber is a curator and Vermeer biographer and tells producer Rosa Ellen about where Vermeer might have got hold of a camera obscura to achieve his brilliant illusion of perspective. First aired May 2023.

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 is a red-dirt, mango-growing, beer-swilling town on the border of greater Darwin and the bush. Photographer Liss Fenwick grew up there and has captured its unique character in a powerful photo series called Humpty Doom, photographed over 10 years. First aired May 2023.

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.

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. Her book is Art is a Tyrant.

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, to Modernist artists Suzanne Duchamp and Agnes Pelton. First broadcast February 2023.

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.

In the middle of a rarefied gallery or in a busy city square, a bronze statue of a woman looms in front of you. But this figure isn’t on a plinth or striking a heroic pose: she’s an ordinary modern woman, looking at her phone with a calm detachment.It’s said the monument Reaching Out is only the third public statue in Britain of a Black woman. The artist behind it is Thomas J Price - one of the country’s leading contemporary artists, who takes on the problem of colonial monuments and representation in British museums and art galleries by creating contemporary icons of modern Britain. Two of his statues are at the National Gallery of Victoria's Triennial.My Thing is... art as activism. It's looking to be the hottest year in human history. As world leaders negotiate a way forward at COP28, 18-year-old climate activist and artist Niranjana Ghosh has been thinking about the gendered impacts of the climate crisis. And how it's often girls in disaster-prone regions who miss out on school and opportunities, in order to help their families survive.Daniel wanders through a dark and tangled wood at the Queensland Art Gallery (QAGOMA), to find out why Fairy Tales have been such an enduring theme for artists across the centuries. Curator Amanda Slack-Smith introduces him to some surprising artworks and theories. US artist and Wiccan, Trulee Hall, takes him into her Witch House installation, which is not for the faint hearted.

Lee Miller cut a glamorous figure among the Bohemian art circles of Paris. As a fashion model she captured the eye and heart of Man Ray; as a gifted photographer she rivalled his artistic vision, photographing their world with Surrealist wit and a feminist conviction. Lee's career lasted 16 years up until her time as a photojournalist in Nazi occupied Europe, when the horrors of the Holocaust led her to quit photography. Antony Penrose is Lee Miller’s only child and in charge of her archive which, incredibly, he only discovered after her death. Surrealist Lee Miller is on at the Heide Museum of Modern Art in Victoria.Daniel takes a tour of an exhibition designed to evoke the sounds and feel of a Fijian family home -- only fragmented, the same way that memory works. Artist Salote Tawale has partially recreated a real-life fishing raft and house in an installation that mixes paintings, sculpture, and video karaoke at Carriageworks in Sydney.

Great conversations with visual artists, gallery and museum directors and curators.

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 joy. 

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 Nakashima-Edwards, who want to address the social, aesthetic and environmental dilemmas of fashion and textiles.

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.  

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 Referendum for Indigenous recognition an Indigenous voice to Parliament, where the Parkes electorate recorded the highest 'No' vote in NSW.

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.

Great conversations with visual artists, gallery and museum directors and curators.

US artist Lonnie Holley is a prolific maker of things - whether it’s his assemblages of found objects or the fluid, jazz-style improvisations of his music. He’s one of those polymath creative spirits who don’t separate one artform from the other. But his life of improvisational creativity wasn’t a certainty for Lonnie, who was born 73 years ago in the Jim Crow era in a hotbed of racial politics in America’s Deep South.  Classicist Mary Beard examines art inspired by the lives and excesses of the Caesars, who wielded power in cruel and immoral ways. They established a visual propaganda machine - minting themselves in coins, sculpture, paintings, mosaics, and even baked goods! Their art historical legacy is however contemporary and omnipresent. First broadcast November 2022.

We start this week's episode on a lapping city harbour where Quandamooka artist Megan Cope has prepared 85,000 oyster shells for her monumental artwork Whispers for the 50th anniversary of the Sydney Opera House —  before that, it's where Gadigal people gathered for thousands of years. Tarek Atoui is attuned to the sounds of harbours -- from Sydney to Beirut, Porto to Singapore, the Lebanese sound artist records the many frequencies and sounds that make up the bodies of water around which cities thrive. My Thing is... The Master's Pupil.  What would it be like to see the world through the eyes of the Impressionist master Claude Monet? The story of Monet’s failing eyesight is a slice of art history that inspired indie game developer Pat Naoum to create his hand-painted video game. Daniel meets up with Nicole Barakat, an Australian artist on residence in Paris, who found inspiration in the stories of the Lebanese diaspora, connected to an old cedar tree growing in the city.

How important is the 'social license' provided by arts events to fossil fuel companies? How significant is the money provided to art festivals by those companies? A recent study examines the current involvement of coal, gas, and oil corporations in arts sponsorship in Australia. Daniel speaks with the report's co-author Dr Adam Karg, Anna Weekes from a group that spearheaded a campaign to end fossil fuel funding of the Darwin Festival, and filmmaker Alex Kelly. My Thing is... nuclear test sites. Before the film Oppenheimer drew attention to Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico, photographer Brett Leigh Dicks was there. The Australian-born artist has spent a lifetime photographing the deserted towns and landscapes of former nuclear testing grounds, including in Australia. Spencer Tunick has been asking people to take their kit off for his mass nude photographs for decades, and Australians are among his most enthusiastic volunteers. But is it Art? Daniel chats to Spencer about the 'people power' behind his ambitious projects.

How do the much-talked about principles of care ethics apply to visual arts? Whether it be the treatment of others in the commercial art world, the trope of the lone male genius, or the practices of contemporary artists navigating political and environmental crisis. Jacqueline Millner has co-edited the book Care Ethics and Art and joins Daniel in convo with artist Jesse Boylan. Social societies make the happiest, so why don’t more artists join artist collectives? Even better, a festival of artists’ collectives? Producer Rosa Ellen speaks with some involved in the Collective Polyphony Festival: the environmentally concerned Seaweed Appreciation Society International and the exciting Filipinx/o  Saluhan Collective.

Newell Harry is one of those people who's able to see how chance encounters and invisible threads link us all. In his exhibition Esperanto, Newell uses found objects alongside his own original artworks to weave a story full of cross-cultural connections: from South Africa, where his family fled Apartheid, to Oceania. In life, he's also guided by moments of serendipity and linguistic twists and turns. My Thing is... the colour wheel. Jim Moginie is best known for being the guitarist and songwriter of Midnight Oil, but his electric guitar opus The Colour Wheel is an epic composition inspired by colour itself, and is experienced alongside immersive, colourful lighting.   The new ABC iview doco The Whiteley Art Scandal tells the riveting story of one of the biggest art fraud cases in Australian history.  In 2009, car salesman turned art dealer, Steve Nasteski, buys what he believes to be a genuine painting by Australian artist Brett Whiteley. But when suspicions are raised about its authenticity, a chain of events leads to a sensational trial. Producer Ivan O'Mahoney speaks with Daniel.

Hoda Afshar is a photo media artist known for examining people denied a voice, or those risking everything for freedom, or truth. At the same time, Hoda is  is also concerned with the politics of traditional documentary photography, and centres the humanity of her subjects. From her portraits of refugees detained on Manus Island, to immortalising whistleblowers as classical Greek statues and a series inspired by Iran's feminist uprising. Hoda's  first major solo exhibition at an Australian institution A Curve is a Broken Line features her photography and film from the past decade. She speaks to Daniel at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. My Thing is … my mother. Kate Dorrough is a Sydney-based artist who moves between painting on canvas and hand-built ceramic forms. Her latest exhibition is a conversation across time with her mother, artist Heather Dorrough, who died in 2018 Sancintya Mohini Simpson and Shivanjani Lal are two artists whose great-grandparents were taken from India by the British as indentured labourers - Sancintya’s to South Africa, and Shivanjani’s to Fiji. Each investigates this legacy through different art practices but both are dealing with histories that have been erased from the colonial-era archives. Sancintya's exhibition ām / ammā / mā maram  is on at Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA).

Kara Walker is one of America’s most significant living artists, known for cut-paper silhouettes and gigantic public sculptures, using the visual artefacts of slavery in nightmarish black and white scenes. At the heart is an exploration of race, sexuality and gender, and a critique of white supremacy. Could the black-humoured delivery of the message get lost on Australian audiences? Hopefully not – two of her works, Your World is About to Change and a film, Testimony: Narrative of a Negress Burdened by Good Intentions – have been acquired by the National Gallery of Australia. Daniel was in conversation with Kara Walker for the NGA’s Annual Lecture in 2022. First broadcast September 2022. My Thing is… anti-fashion. Kiel Rogers fell into haute couture after doing TAFE work experience at the WA Ballet. He's since travelled the world and worked with some of the best, dressing Billie Eilish and Lady Gaga along way. Now back on home soil, Rogers returned to his punk roots with his streetwear label Garbage TV. First broadcast April 2023. Rosa visits the studio of Filipino Australian artist Mark Valenzuela. Raised in army camps across Mindanao, Valenzuela found his way to art and used it to challenge authority and state violence. His sculptural installations are a surreal and poetic take on the military, animist beliefs and living in two worlds. A monograph is published by Wakefield Press. First broadcast May 2023.

There's an enduring appetite for novels about artists and their muses. Australian writers Kylie Needham (Girl in a Pink Dress) and Edwina Preston (Bad Art Mother) have written books centred on women artists who are navigating ambition, doubt, and freedom in art scenes where men wield the power and where women are routinely cast as muses rather than as creators. Recorded for RN's Big Weekend of Books 2023. 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 covers five decades of his photography, illustration, anthropology and curating. It's accompanied by the show Midling that is as much a visual memoir as gallery exhibition. My Thing is…book covers. W.H. Chong is known in the publishing trade for his innovative and artistic fiction covers. He is design director at Text Publishing and a founding member of the Australian Book Designers Association. First broadcast August 2021.

A life-size sculpted tree complete with parrots and a wandering dog won the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Art Awards (NATSIAA). Every element has ceremonial significance, says Thu' and Apalech artist Keith Wikmunea, from Western Cape York.  Brenda L Croft's 19th Century-style photograph tells a multi-layered story of family bonds and forced child removal. While Anne Nginyangka Thompson's ceramics contain a message about Anangu self determination and the everyday consequences  of colonisation.  Mexican-Canadian media artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is inspired by the  19th century computer pioneer Charles Babbage, who believed the air surrounding us to be a ‘vast library’ containing every sound and word spoken. His artwork Atmospheric Memory uses technology to turn vibrations in the atmosphere into something viewers can see, hear and even touch.

Finnish artist Tove Jansson lived a richly unconventional life as a visual artist and writer and is best known as the creator of the troll characters, The Moomins. The Moomins were a hit children's book, cartoon strip, tv show and eventually theme park. The biggest exhibition of Jansson work will show in Paris in September 2023. Her biographer Prof Boel Westin talks about her bohemian life and enduring legacy. Filmmaker Adéla Komrzý spent a week filming the gruelling entrance exams for Czechia's most prestigious art school in her doco Art Talent Show. With wry humour, the film shows the efforts of prospective students and teachers and asks -- how do you judge talent? What goes into framing an artwork? Mark Chapman, founder of Chapman & Bailey, walks producer Lisa Divissi through the art of the picture frame. From ornate gilded frames of the 19th C. whose prototypes the company keeps under wraps, to the challenge of creating frames that are both invisible and enhancing. 

Since 2008 CoUNTess has been commenting and reporting on art institutions, prizes and journalism, exposing the unequal gender representation in the Australian visual arts sector. A new book about the pioneering blog and later, data project Countess Report, started by Elvis Richardson has been co-written by Melinda Rackham. Using the current of water as a metaphor for family memories, history and existential threats such as climate change, Gail Mabo along with Dominic White and Lisa Waup, are installing works for Current, at the McClelland sculpture park south-east of Melbourne. Mayco Naing was born in Myanmar in 1984, and grew up in an atmosphere of political repression and fear. Her path to becoming a professional photographer was more practical than many: she worked in a Yangon photo studio for ten years. Now she is an artist in exile, fleeing after the 2021 military coup, where she documented months of barricades in Yangon's neighbourhoods.  

In 1989 photographer Anne Zahalka recreated a well-known painting of stylised, muscular white Australians frolicking on the beach, into a multi-ethnic tableau of an Australia that was more recognisable to her. Deconstructing the identity of the characters in famous Australian artworks is just one strand of her four-decade career. Anne talks to Rosa about using old-school museum dioramas to imagine climate crisis scenarios, and her immigrant Jewish mother’s story of survival. My Thing is…the community reading room. Fijian-Australian artist Torika Bolatagici started her own reading room, an archive of books and ephemera about the creative practices of First Nations, Black and global Indigenous artists of colour, which people can use for free. Needlepoint artist Jessie Deane stitches intricate scenes of Melbourne’s western suburbs. She’s loving the Big Build, an infrastructure project which is causing a headache for train commuters, but is a thrill for an artist who specialises in industrial landscapes. Jessie shares an artistic bond with her great aunt, the British textile artist Evelyn Wyld.

Badiucao is a Chinese-Australian political cartoonist and artist who makes work primarily about China's human rights record and role in international politics. But with a rising profile has come a loss of anonymity, reported intimidation and attempts to have international exhibitions of his work closed. He talks to Rosa about Chinese government censorship, cartooning, his art heroes and his filmmaking lineage. My Thing is… the Sydney Harbour cocktail cabinet. Woodworker Michael Gill has been making his magnum opus, a huge Art Deco-inspired cocktail cabinet capturing the many details of Sydney Harbour in native timbers, for 30 years. Now it’s complete and looking for a home. Anna Emina El Samad  is a curator, writer and educator whose frustration with cultural gatekeeping and the barriers faced by artists of colour, led her to start Art Club, a regular gathering of artists to discuss their work and form connections. The community is focused on experimentation and dismantling traditional notions of art. Rosa meets Emina at her studio at a former supermarket in inner Melbourne. Her new podcast Art Club with Anna Emina is out soon.

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 interesting psychological space. 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. Enter the studio of... Ema Shin. A printmaker who turned to tapestry and embroidery when motherhood and the pandemic required her to work from home, Japanese artist Ema Shin's red embroidered organs and 3D human hearts are beautiful to look at, and deeply personal-political in meaning. Her exhibition is currently showing at Ararat Gallery TAMA. First broadcast May 2022. 

Maree Clarke is a key figure in the reclamation and revival of South East Australian Indigenous art, over a three-decade career. For Between Waves at the Australian Centre of Contemporary Art (ACCA), she’s created a wall of multicolour microscopic images of river reeds, that once grew on the wetlands where ACCA now stands, on Wuruendjeri Woi Wurrung land. She's one of ten artists from South East nations that curator Jessica Clark has commissioned to explore the "shapeshifting ecologies within, beyond, and between what can be seen". Rosa visits the home studio of performance artist Ida Sophia. Ida's film recording of Witness, her emotionally intense durational performance of a staged water baptism, won one of Australia’s richest art prizes, the Ramsay Art Prize. Ida trained with the Marina Abramovic Institute and explains the background work that goes into her performances. Frida Kahlo is one of the most recognised artists in history, but it’s easy to forget that in her own lifetime, Frida wasn’t well known for her painting. The exhibition Frida & Diego: Love and Revolution frames iconic Kahlo self-portraits alongside lesser-known works from key Mexican modernists, including her husband, muralist Diego Rivera. Magda Carranza is a curator of the Gelman Collection, where some of Kahlo’s most famous works reside.

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. Artist Johnathon World Peace Bush paints global figureheads and Catholic icons (and occasionally British royalty) with Tiwi body art designs, in huge, vivid portraits in ochre. Reflecting on his own family history, the impact of colonial crime, and a complex relationship to Catholicism. Fellow Tiwi artist Walter Brooks talks Rosa through the four ancestral beings that are key to the Tiwi creation story and to culture: Japarra, Wai-ai, Purukupali and Jinani. All feature heavily in the figurative wood-carving tradition he works in.

Gunditjmara artist Hayley Millar Baker sets her latest film work at the witching hour, when the spirit world and physical overlap. Hayley previously worked in black and white photography, exploring the psychic scars of frontier violence and dispossession. Ghosts have always been present in Hayley’s work – and in her life. She’s part of the acclaimed new exhibition Shadow Spirit, on at at Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station. Marc Chagall is the quintessential 20th Century European artist. Born into an orthodox Russian Jewish Family, Chagall found his way to Paris and became an Avant Garde artist with a romantic, humanist and deeply spiritual style all his own. Unusually, he ended up designing works for Christian churches. Chagall at the Jewish Museum of Australia looks at Chagall’s printmaking, poetry and public art commissions through a Jewish lens. Rosa speaks with curator Jade Niklai. Enter the studio of nipaluna/Hobart-based artist Catherine Woo, whose textural landscape paintings using natural minerals and elemental forces, show nature from a completely different perspective. First broadcast August 2022.

Pierre Bonnard was a key artist in a movement that came after Impressionism: Les Nabis. Influenced by the flat colour and decorative elements of Japanese wood prints and Gauguin’s pure colours, Bonnard forged a style that was both radical and beautiful. Curator of the NGV’s winter blockbuster, Ted Gott and Musee d’Orsay’s Isabelle Cahn, discuss Bonnard’s life and long relationship with his wife and muse Marthe de Meligny. Enter the studio of Michaye Boulter, a nipaluna/Hobart-based painter whose seascapes are unmistakably of southern Tasmania… but painted from her imagination, not from life.  When art student Marikit Santiago saw a self-portrait in the Archibald prize of a white Australian man surrounded by Filipino iconography, she felt a pang of guilt. In her own paintings, she’d never explored her own culture. Marikit is now a prized painter whose work has won the Sulman Prize and been shortlisted for the Archibald. Her rich figurative paintings delve into dual identities, migration, motherhood, and religion. 

Daniel Browning travels to London's Tate Modern, to speak with artist Richard Bell about his ongoing installation Embassy, inspired by the original Aboriginal Tent Embassy pitched in 1972. Embassy offers a space for dialogue about the continuing struggle for Aboriginal land rights. Rosa visits the studio of designer and experimental woodturner Makiko Ryujin, who torches her creations until they're charred and transformed into new forms. When great artists pass, how do you ensure their legacy and work are protected and remembered? When artist and gay activist David McDiarmid died in 1995 he left his friend Sally Gray in charge of his creative legacy. She chats with Rosa about David's art, her guardianship of it, and what it was like to make art during the height of the AIDS crisis.

Artist Louise Zhang uses a multi-hued palette and traditional Chinese symbols to explore  the horror genre, spiritual beliefs and her own cultural history, on her own terms. Louise's latest exhibition is No dust left in the lilies.  My Thing is… Frying Pan. The frying pan is a new recording studio built around an iconic mixing desk that once lived at Abbey Road Studios, London from 1958 to 1980. Now it has a permanent home at MONA in lutruwita/Tasmania.  Chris Townend is the sound engineer behind it. Sundanese artist Zico Albaiquni paints in bright technicolour that speaks to both the politics of colour in Indonesia, and the Mooi Indie genre, where idealised landscapes were used by Dutch colonialists to ‘sell’ a version of Indonesia , minus its inhabitants.

Indian conceptual artist Mithu Sen talks about the idea of 'radical hospitality' and how she pokes fun at the art world's hierarchies. Plus,  science reporter Belinda Smith explains why she creates GPS art on the run. And painter Danelle Bergstrom on a journey to Sweden that altered the course of her life and art.

Mark Valenzuela makes magical sculptural installations based on a military upbringing and living in two worlds - Australia and the Philippines. Plus, we hear from the curator of the Rijksmuseum's blockbuster Vermeer show. And Liss Fenwick photographs her Top End hometown, Humpty Doo.

Julia Gutman won Australia's most prestigious painting prize for a portrait sewn with fabric. She chats to guest host Rosa Ellen about her winning work and the gendered view of textiles and craft. Plus, meet sculptor Renee So and delve into the secret life of Clarice Beckett, the modernist master almost lost to history.

The Portrait of Mai (Omai) by Sir Joshua Reynolds depicts a youthful Polynesian man who visited England in the 1770s and spent time on James Cook’s third voyage. The work has been the subject of UK government export bans, a feverish fundraising campaign, millions in donations and some panhandling by Britain’s elites, in a desperate bid to keep it on British soil. Daniel speaks with Professor Kate Fullagar, who’s written a book about the Raiatean subject of the painting Mai, and artist Reynolds, as well as Associate Professor Peter Brunt, about what Mai represents and how the historical context of the painting has been denied or ignored in the discussion. Rosa tours the vast Western Treatment Plant, where sewage and Art collide. The plant holds vital infrastructure that made the colonial city of Melbourne sanitary and liveable, and continues to do so. The plant’s history and critical purpose is up for exploration in a public art exhibition called Treatment III. Artists interviewed: Fiona Hillary and Edwina Stevens.

Charmaine Papertalk Green writes poetry inspired by individual paintings of the late Nyoongar artist Shane Pickett. The ancient Greeks called this genre 'ekphrasis'. Plus, sculptor Heather B. Swann takes a different perspective on the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan, putting the female Leda at the psychological centre of the story.

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. Plus, meet a musician who improvises music to artworks she encounters at galleries and artists' studios.

Environmental artist Janet Laurence tells us the story behind her latest exhibition, based on life-changing trips to Antarctica and Iceland. Plus, fashion designer Kiel Rogers on why a sense of being 'anti-fashion' drives him. And what's happening with Melbourne's Nicholas Building? A plan to buy back the iconic artists' hub is now on hold, while the last remaining artist-run gallery in the building says it can't afford the rent. 

It’s  a bit like the art world State of Origin: two rival cities go head to head with big exhibitions showcasing the best of Australian contemporary art and design. The prize? Your attention, column inches, buzz and kudos. Daniel takes a tour of Melbourne Now and The National, held across Sydney's major galleries..

On this highlights episode of the show, Daniel speaks to guests Sally Scales and Nici Cumpston about the meteoric rise of the Pitjantjatjara artist Betty Muffler. Betty is a ngangkari (a traditional doctor) — a fact intrinsic to her work. Plus, we visit the studio of miniaturist Natasha Bieniek and speak to author Claire Roberts about the influence of China on the painter Ian Fairweather.

2023 is going to be the year of AI art. If you’ve been playing around with text-to-image apps like DALL-E 2 or Stable Diffusion, you know how remarkable the technology is and how fast it’s moving. UNSW AI Institute's Prof Toby Walsh talks about the history of artificial intelligence and art, artist Kim Leutwyler on the experience of having your artwork used to ‘train’ AI (without consent) and Rodolfo Ocampo sees a new type of hybrid artist emerging, as well as certain artforms completely transformed by AI. Plus, how does a 3D animator and digital native feel about the direction AI is set to play in the creative industries? 

What can a new Andy Warhol exhibition teach us about social media and the cult of celebrity? Plus, an artist spends a year working at a 1930s Georgian mansion in Adelaide, making artwork about its ecological footprint and storied art collection.

Hoda Afshar on the impact of protest art and photography in the Women, Life, Freedom uprising in Iran. Plus, the unconventional life of 19th Century painter Rosa Bonheur, and painter Marikit Santiago on ambition, conflicting identities and banana leaves.

On this episode, two artists and two very different takes on place and belonging. Callum Morton focuses on the built environment and Naomi Hobson is deeply embedded in the natural landscape.

Dylan Mooney's work celebrates young Black characters embodying queer love. And he does it in a bold, heartfelt graphic style that is proving irresistibly popular with audiences. Plus, Ali Tahayori on the poet Hafez, and creating art about queerness and otherness, through kaleidoscopic mirrors.

Jennifer Higgie talks about her new book on women artists and the spirit world. Plus, Daniel visits the largest collection of artworks by the Victorian medium Georgiana Houghton, held at a spiritualist church.

2023 is going to be the year of AI art. If you’ve been playing around with text-to-image apps like DALL-E 2 or Stable Diffusion, you know how remarkable the technology is and how fast it’s moving. UNSW AI Institute's Prof Toby Walsh talks about the history of artificial intelligence and art, artist Kim Leutwyler on the experience of having your artwork used to ‘train’ AI (without consent) and Rodolfo Ocampo sees a new type of hybrid artist emerging, as well as certain artforms completely transformed by AI. Plus, how does a 3D animator and digital native feel about the direction AI is set to play in the creative industries? 

Five years ago, Texta Queen was riding high with a mid-career survey show, that should have marked a significant  achievement for the artist. Instead, it resulted in a kind of burnout with the whole system. It led the artist to find new ways to have a career independent of the gallery system and build towards a residency project for other queer, disabled and BIPOC artists, called They Swarm. 

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.

Great conversations with visual artists, gallery and museum directors and curators.

Great conversations with visual artists, gallery and museum directors and curators.

Enter the eclectic studio and thought-provoking work of the Wiradjuri installation artist Karla Dickens. Plus, we look at ‘wild clay', the DIY-trend for gathering your own. But before you pull on gumboots and pick up a shovel – what are the ethics of digging up your own clay? 

Edward Burtynsky is a Canadian-Ukrainian photographer who captures human activity on Earth that's normally too big to perceive, except through aerial photography.

Cressida Campbell is best known for beautiful scenes of domestic interiors and still life arrangements, achieved through an intriguing technique. Kind of a cross between painting and printmaking. She is now the subject of a big solo show. Plus we visit the big new Sydney Modern Project.

Classicist Mary Beard examines art inspired by the lives and excesses of the Caesars, who wielded power in cruel and immoral ways.

You know the Japanese superstar artist Yayoi Kusama for her polka dots and infinity mirror rooms, and giant spotted pumpkins.

A trash-talking episode of The Art Show. We live on a planet choking on post-consumer waste and single-use plastics, so is it any wonder that more and more artists are using it as a serious material?

Dame Barbara Hepworth is a revered figure in British art, who has never had a dedicated solo show in Australia. Her abstract sculptures echo the coastal landscape where she lived, and the human body. She wanted viewers to touch her artwork and move around it, and she rejected the pristine art gallery. For Barbara Hepworth: In Equilibrium, Lesley Harding and Kendrah Morgan chat to Daniel about curating 40 of Hepworth’s works for the Heide Museum of Modern Art. My Thing is... auto fiction. In her latest work, filmmaker and visual artist Pilar Mata Dupont attempts to distil and reconcile personal accounts of her family’s  memories of 20th-century Argentina and its painful political divisions. Las Hormigas is on at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA). Kieren Karritpul creates larger-than-life paintings, drawings and textiles that explore the cultural and spiritual dimensions of the handmade fish traps and nets made by women in his family. Based at Nauiyu in the Daly River region of the Top End, Kieren speaks to producer Rosa Ellen from his exhibition at Tolarno Galleries in Melbourne.

We meet a member of Taring Padi, the Indonesian artists' collective at the centre of an art controversy at Documenta 15, the prestigious art show held every five years in Germany. In 2022 the show was plagued by accusations of antisemitism, but the Indonesian artists say the ensuing maelstrom prevented meaningful dialogue. Featuring Alex Supertono from Taring Padi, art historian Terry Smith and academic Wulan Dirgantoro. Bertie Blackman had a free-range childhood growing up in a famous Australian art family. But there were dark points, as the title of her memoir Bohemian Negligence suggests. She talks to Daniel about her father Charles Blackman's alcoholism, and writing about the sexual abuse she suffered, committed by a family friend.

British filmmaker Phil Grabsky is responsible for a prolific number of documentaries about famous artists, often in collaboration with large museums. Plus, Julia Gutman on 'painting with fabric' and finding a relatable muse. And Leila Jeffreys' inimitable bird portraits seem to reach into the avian soul. 

We look at the love story between two of modern art's greats: Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns... but is it visible in their work? Plus, meet Patrick Pound: the artist who's lovingly collected 60-thousand photographs for his fascinating photographic arrangements. And for My Art Crush, curator Prof Natalie King on why seeing Botticelli's the Birth of Venus led her to switch a law degree for art.

Australian-born Polly Borland is best known for photographing kink sub cultures, Nick Cave and the late Queen, but she has also long been experimenting with the surreal. She tells Daniel about her shift to sculpture and her true feelings about photographing the late monarch. Plus, who was Janet Sobel? The unlikely abstract artist who used paint drips and splatters before Jackson Pollack 'furtively admired' her work.

In the 1960s Vivienne Binns scandalised critics with her joyfully sexual paintings of giant genitalia and Dada-inspired pop art. But instead of following her expected path, Binns abandoned painting and devoted herself to community art projects and the Feminist art movement. Plus, a spotlight on pioneering ceramic artist Thanakupi, from Napranum (Weipa). And a short history of the smile in western Art.

Paul Yore's colourful artworks riff off pop culture, queer identity, religion and politics. In 2014, he was embroiled in a censorship scandal that saw him charged with child pornography (later dropped) over images he used in a collage, part of an exhibition in honour of the Australian avant-garde artist Mike Brown. Paul talks to Daniel about the impact of the case and his new survey show, full of his trademark trash, sparkle, found objects -- and ‘obscenities’. Plus, the 'shark bra' that bit back and became an iconic piece of Australian feminist art. And a video artwork project split between art museums in Sydney and Birmingham, UK.

Kara Walker is one of America’s most significant living artists, known for cut-paper silhouettes and gigantic public sculptures, using the visual artefacts of slavery in nightmarish black and white scenes. Daniel speaks with Kara from her Brooklyn studio, for the National Gallery f Australia's Annual Lecture. Plus, pick up a pen and draw your plants! Our resident drawing instructor Lily Mae Martin says it's good for the soul. And Daniel visits the studio of Archibald Prize-winning painter Yvette Coppersmith.

Edward Burtynsky is a Canadian-Ukrainian photographer who hangs out of helicopters to capture aerial scenes of rapid industrialisation and destruction, on Earth. So how does he pick his monumental subjects? And what has he witnessed over his 40-year career? Plus, this week on The Drawing Board, Daniel and Lily Mae Martin talk about how to draw hands. Why can they be so hard to get right?! And Australian sculptor Clayton Blake on making art for Burning Man in the Nevada desert -- just don't call it a festival!

Drew Berry is a biomedical animator, who brings to life microscopic molecular processes in vivid colour. He’s won an Emmy for his visualisation of DNA and been described as the ‘Steven Spielberg of molecular animation’. Plus, on The Drawing Board learn how to approach drawing perspective with instructor Lily Mae Martin.  And Natalya Hughes shows Daniel around her exhibition The Interior, where the potent imagery of Sigmund Freud's famous case studies meet the furnishings of his consultation room.

One year on since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, we speak to Adelaide-based Hazara artist and poet Elyas Alavi and photographer and conceptual artist Rada Akbar, now living in France.  Plus, do you want to start drawing (again)? Lily Mae Martin takes Daniel back to The Drawing Board, our new drawing segment. And enter the marine world of textile artist and weaver Aly de Groot.

Fifty years ago, a stunning glacial outwash lake in southwest lutruwita/Tasmania disappeared under an inundation of river water for a hydro-electric dam. A new exhibition looks at the profound loss felt for nature and what artists do with it. Plus, Rachel Griffiths on her first art love. And step inside the studio of Catherine Woo, who uses minerals and the elements to depict nature from an entirely different perspective.

Tennant Creek Brio is a collective of artists who met in a men’s art therapy group. Their latest show Shock and Ore is generating serious buzz. Plus, hear from the winners of this year's vibrant National Aboriginal and Islander Art Awards. And get a taste of the art marketplace where remote art centres rub shoulders with art lovers.

Singing stars, anti-apartheid activists, writers and mavericks are among the Southern African women honoured by visual artists in a new exhibition, And she was wearing trousers: a call to our heroines curated by Roberta Joy Rich and Naomi Velaphi. Enter the studio of Michaye Boulter, a nipaluna/Hobart-based painter whose seascapes are unmistakably of southern Tasmania… but painted from her imagination, not from life. Plus, Tom O’Hern on why it's ok to draw badly. And Wiradjuri architect-slash-multidisciplinary artist Joel Sherwood Spring speaks to Daniel from Kassel in Germany, about his powerful architectural interventions and his practice.

Curator Petrit Abazi fled Kosovo as a child with his parents and now heads a contemporary art centre in Darwin. This month he’s returned to the city of his birth, Mitrovica, where Albanians and Serbs still live divided, to curate two artworks for the European art festival Manifesta 14. With Ukrainian-Australian artist Stanislava Pinchuk and endurance-swimmer and artist Piers Greville Plus, we speak to the winner and judges of the Hadley's Art Prize, and ask: is landscape as a genre still fit for purpose? And Isa Segalovich takes Daniel on a short, fascinating history of eyebrows in art.

Bruce Munro is the hugely popular light installation artist who filled the foreground of Uluru with a Field of Light. He talks to Daniel about his career, new show and early encouragement from Kevin McCloud. Plus, how does a string of amethyst beads tell the story of an astonishing ancient maritime trade? And hear the story behind The King of Kowloon, Louis Lim's rollicking new podcast about an enigmatic Hong Kong street artist.

Can you separate the misogynist from the art? If you walk around the winter blockbuster The Picasso Century at the National Gallery of Victoria, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this wasn’t a live debate. Daniel speaks with Didier Ottinger from the Centre Pompidou, who hopes the exhibition he’s curated presents the 20th Century's most famous artist as a sensitive man defined by his friendships and rivalries and shaped by his extraordinary times. Art historian Ksenia Soboleva and writer Shannon Lee beg to differ. Plus, Snuff Puppets are renowned for their punk aesthetic and mission is to make art for everybody. Founder Andy Freer speaks to Daniel from the Polish city of Krakow, where the troupe is working with Ukrainian refugees and their rich folklore. And we meet Penelope Cain, whose work fuses art and science.

Richard Bell is one of the few individual artists curated into Documenta 15, the highly-anticipated global survey of contemporary art. This year, for the first time, it’s been dominated by artists and collectives from the Global South. But the historic takeover has been eclipsed by a media storm ignited by what appears to be a Jewish caricature in a mural painted by Indonesian artist group Taring Padi, since taken down.  Queensland-born sculptor Sebastian di Mauro who now calls Delaware home, discusses his obsession with materiality and his new exhibition featuring appliquéd army blankets based on the arcane imagery on American dollar notes.  And we discover the little-known painter Edward Brezinski who lived on the fringes of the hyperactive 1980s New York art scene that produced Jean Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. His desperate bid for fame is charted in the new documentary Make Me Famous which also offers a fascinating insight into the ecosystem of the art business.

A conversation with artist Daniel Boyd whose work has focussed on reframing Eurocentric images from Australia's past. Plus, Sally Ryan discusses her latest commission, a giant oil painting of Jesus, Mary and Joseph for St Mary’s cathedral in Sydney. She says it's her hardest painting yet. And, returning artefacts taken from Kunwinjku and Gagadju artists in Arnhem Land in the early 1900s.

Have you ever walked through an epic entanglement of red cotton thread, by the artist Chiharu Shiota? The Japanese installation and performance artist takes Daniel through The Soul Trembles, an exhibition highlighting 25 years of her practice. Including the time she undertook a nude workshop with Marina Abramovic, mistaking her for the textile sculptor Magdalena Abakanowitcz. Plus, Daniel speaks with performance artist Wura-Natasha Ogunji, who came to Sydney to lead a public endurance performance in which a group of women haul water kegs through the streets. It was first performed in Lagos, Nigeria in 2011. From the sky, to the moon and the neon of electric globes, light is art’s most essential element. Tate UK has a huge collection of works that speak to the evolution of light, from natural source to fluorescent tubes. More than 70 of them are on show at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI).

Why artist and curator David Sequeira doesn't believe in just a 'pop of colour'. How a colour-blind artist adapted to colours he couldn't perceive. And how glasses that allow colour-deficient people to see the full spectrum of colours, work. Plus, Daniel chats to V&A curator Catlin Langford about her book on the mania for Autochrome, an early colour photography process invented by the Lumière brothers.

We start the show at the Parade for the Moon in Melbourne's Chinatown, part of the city's RISING festival. Then Daniel speaks with tattoo and visual artist eX-de-Medici about her intense and detailed watercolours that interrogate violent power structures. And step inside the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where Daniel catches up with Australian artist Angelica Mesiti, who teaches there.

Daniel chats with artist brothers Abdul-Rahman and Abdul Abdullah, who are close in life but not so much in their art. However, thorny issues unite them in Land Abounds, their new joint exhibition. Hear how Filipino sculptor Leeroy New builds his large-scale sci-fi installations made from 100% recycled materials. He's in Australia for Melbourne's RISING festival. And how did an 1897 painting by the Wurundjeri clan leader William Barak, end up at a Sotheby's auction house in New York? Last week Wurundjeri people successfully bid for the works.

The American artist Kiki Smith talks about tapestry and her long career. My Art Crush: painter and printmaker Kirtika Kain makes tactile work about the oppression  and unrecorded history of Dalit people. Step inside the Palais de Tokyo (in Paris), Europe's largest centre for contemporary art, for a tour of the exhibition Reclaim The Earth.

How often does a political artwork fall into the national spotlight during a federal election? Hear from Archibald portrait prize winner Blak Douglas. Plus, an Italian art exhibition that puts NFT juggernaut Beeple alongside European masters and Australia's Richard Bell. And enter the studio of weaver, printmaker and textile artist Ema Shin.

Greetings from the 22nd La Biennale di Venezia, in Italy! The Venice Biennale is known as the Olympics of the art world, complete with golden awards, stunning achievement and sometimes, disappointment. This year has seen more female artists, Black artists and minority cultures representing national pavilions than even before. Take a tour with Daniel around the storied pavilions and canals of the world’s most prestigious art event, speaking with participants, former Australian representatives and punters.

What do artists think about when making huge public art? Lindy Lee is making the most expensive work commissioned by the NGA, and Judy Watson's bara will grace Sydney's harbour with a giant Gadigal fish hook. Then, the US art lab addressing the problem of confederate monuments to racist causes... and Indigenous artists Julie Gough, Nicholas Galanin and Yhonnie Scarce on Australia's own colonial memorialising.

Rebecca Belmore is one of Canada's most important artists and is now having her first Australian solo show. Plus, visit Sally Smart's studio, inspired by one of the most influential dance companies of the twentieth century. And Yuki Kihara's Venice Biennale entry Paradise Camp, where the artist reimagines tropes used by Paul Gauguin and Samoan tourism brochures, with a Fa’afafine cast.

Marco Fusinato is representing Australia at the 2022 Venice Biennale with work for 'monstrous times'. Plus, artworks that tell queer stories selected from the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, for NGV Queer. And who was Lala Deen Dayal? The pioneering Indian photographer who documented a vast nation.

Victor Ehikhamenor is one of Nigeria’s most prominent artists and calls for the Benin bronzes, the looted cultural treasures of Edo State, to be repatriated. So what did he do when he was asked to make an artwork in response to the memorial to the 19th C. British leader of the looting? Plus, South Australian artist Helen Fuller turns her hand to unconventional ceramic pots -- and an original way to exhibit them. And why tropical fruit, low-cost bejewelling and a Thai auteur inspire artist Nathan Beard.

David Noonan makes intriguing black-and-white collage of people in often liminal states. But despite their evocative drama, his pictures don't tell a story. Plus, Hoda Afshar's photographic project Speak the Wind, about people in the Persian Gulf who believe that humans can be possessed by the wind. And spotlight on the Australian artist and feminist Erica McGilchrist, whose painting series in the 1950s was based on her experiences teaching art at a mental hospital.

Ian Strange uses entire houses -slated for demolition- as his canvas, exploring the symbolism of 'home' through eras of unaffordability and urban development. Plus, meet Irish artist Sean Lynch onsite at his new public artwork in inner-city Melbourne. Sera Waters uses old English needlework techniques and crafts to examine the legacy of her settler forbears. And celebrating the work of feminist artist Frances Phoenix, whose doilies and embroidery packed a punch to the patriarchy.

Colombian artist Carolina Caycedo gives voice to rivers dammed for huge hydroelectric projects. What happens when the art world turns its back on Russia's major contemporary art museum? And Dennis Golding shares memories of 'the Block', using treasured iron lace from Redfern's terrace houses.

Aunty Elaine Russell has legendary status in her home town of Sydney. She was an artist and storyteller who inspired many, and whose work has been acquired by a number of Australia's major galleries and museums.

British filmmaker and installation artist Isaac Julien on his latest works: a spellbinding interpretation of Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi and a portrait of 19th C. abolitionist Fredrick Douglass. Plus, Heather B. Swann's potent retelling of the Greek myth 'Leda and the swan', where Leda is at the centre of the story. And why you should know the name Thanakupi -- the pioneering ceramic artist from the Thaynakwith language group in western Cape York, whose legacy looms large.

Jennifer Herd is a Mbarbarrum artist and founding member of Brisbane's proppaNOW art collective.

Floods have ravaged art galleries and studios in northern New South Wales. We hear from a gallery director and artist Megan Cope. Plus Ukrainian-Australian artist Stanislava Pinchuk. And a spotlight on the bold modernist printmaker Ethel Spowers.

Dianne Jones is a provocative photo-media artist who manipulates images from colonial art to give prominence to Indigenous people.

The goddess of love has reigned supreme through Western art, but her roots are darker, more ancient and shape-shifting than you'd expect. Historian and TV presenter Prof Bettany Hughes joins Daniel to tell the surprising history of Venus/Aphrodite. Plus, a seascape painter who lives on a yacht, and step into the studio of Yul Scarf, who uses ceramics, old bricks and the revived tech of QR codes, to explore questions of colonialism.

Laurel Nannup is a Noongar artist and elder who grew up near Pinjara in Western Australia. As part of the Stolen Generation she was taken from her mother at the age of 8 and sent to the Wanderling Mission.

Who makes up “the canon” in Art today? A new book picks 50 artists from around the world, and across centuries, to take a meaningful snapshot of art masters. Plus, a curator on 16th C. artist Lavinia Fontana, Europe's first female professional painter. And Atong Atem's panoramic collage that charts 10 years of life, family and art.

Julie Gough is a Trawlwoolway artist whose practice often refers to her family's experiences as Tasmanian Aboriginal people and is held in many private collections and major galleries in Australia.

Patricia Piccinini is Australia’s foremost artist exploring the relationship between humanity and technology, and the ethical tensions it inspires in the viewer. Plus, introducing our new segment My Art Crush. Jess Cochrane on the impact of Édouard Manet's Olympia on her work. And Thea Anamara Perkins on family legacy and NFTs.

Julie Dowling is considered one of Australia's greatest exponents of the family portrait, but always with an Indigenous focus.

Vivienne Binns shocked critics in the 1960s with her joyful paintings of giant genitalia and Dada-inspired assemblages. Now aged 81, she looks back at a vast arts practice that has never stopped questioning: what is art, and what do we want to say with it? Plus, Jazmina Cininas' magical take on a DIY folk instrument that conjures Pagan myths and Lithuanian folk lore.

Know My Name Series Two: interviews with Indigenous women artists from the ABC archives. In this episode meet Fiona Foley, a Badtjala artist from K'gari in Queensland

How does mindfulness stimulate artists? Meet the artists and curators of a new exhibition exploring mindfulness and meditation, called Presence of Mind. Plus, meet Gulnara Samoilova, founder of the global project Women Street Photographers.

Enter the eclectic studio and thought-provoking work of the Wiradjuri installation artist Karla Dickens. Plus, is the Aboriginal flag, now freed from copyright restrictions, a work of art? And the 'wild clay' movement, where potters dig their own.

How has social media giant Instagram changed how we experience art? Experts, artists and critics weigh in on the photo sharing platform, an evolution that's allowed artists to build careers outside of the gallery system, while drastically changing our consumption of art.

Anne Wallace paints film-like scenes of intimacy and psychological tension that speak to iso life and the female gaze. Plus, the found photo archive that documents China's embrace of capitalism.

The rediscovery of Hilma af Klint's abstract paintings has taken the art world by storm, but what meaning can we find in her powerful, mysterious work?  Plus, artist and designer W.H. Chong on the secret behind the perfect book cover. And head into the bush with immersive landscape painter Mary Tonkin.

Performance art tests the limits of the body and the gallery space. Fiona Kelly McGregor's latest book relives its bracing ascendancy in Sydney's queer and underground scene, and the well-known and lesser-known artists who lived and breathed it. Plus, performance artists Justin Shoulder and Stelarc. And, how do art galleries preserve performance art?

What if the use of white in classical sculpture was just a construct? For the ancient Greeks and Romans, sculptures were brightly-coloured affairs, clad in vivid red gowns with red lips, and pink or olive skin. Now scholars and artists want us to see that, too.

Franklin Sirmans is the curator of Family: Visions of a Shared Humanity, an exhibition of video works by renowned Black American, British and Canadian artists, including Arthur Jafa and Garrett Bradley. Plus, 'hyper-surreal' sculpture made with fake food. And enter the studio of Darwin plein air painter Max Bowden  as she works through the Top End’s Build Up season.  

The enduring power of Jeffrey Smart's urban wastelands, and his comparatively beautiful life in Tuscany, as told by the late artist's partner Ermes De Zan. Plus, visit the studio of Natalya Hughes as she works on an installation of mid-century aesthetics and Freud's psychoanalytic theory.

US artist Doug Aitken looks to the future through the hyperconnected present, in New Era.| Plus, enter the studio of Robert Andrew, whose programmable machines imprint ochre residue and missing histories. And a real-life art thriller documentary centred around the 'lost Leonardo da Vinci'.

We take stock of NFTs and hear from three people invested in the future of tokens, including Jonathan Zawada, collaborator to musician Flume. Plus, Bruno Booth on being an 'unwilling inspiration'. And Taloi Havini reclaims connections to land, culture and identity of Bougainville, PNG.

Christopher Pease wanted to create his own visual language, one that spoke to European art tradition and the hidden iconography of his Nyoongar ancestors.  Plus, the horses that inspire Michael Zavros. And what happens when a painter loses half her hand? After a bad accident, Kaye Strange adapted.

A history of feminist art in Australia, painting western Tasmania and ice from a warming planet, at COP26.

The goddess of love has reigned supreme through Western art, but her roots are darker, more ancient and shape-shifting than you'd expect. Historian and TV presenter Prof Bettany Hughes joins Daniel to tell the surprising history of the powerful immortal. Plus, a seascape painter who lives on a yacht, and artist Khaled Sabsabi explores the exchange between spiritual belief and our human aspirations.

Meet the man behind the hit YouTube series Cocktails with a Curator, from The Frick in New York. Plus, what if the arts were on the nightly TV news, like sport? And artists respond to Matisse's Tahiti-inspired work in a new exhibition.

With a bower bird's habit of collecting found objects, Rosalie Gascoigne's sculptures were inspired by her surrounding natural environment. The final episode in this series of radio interviews with Australian women artists from the ABC archives.

An interview with sculptor and metal smith Mari Funaki, who was instrumental in getting Australian contemporary jewellery on the global map. The fifth episode in a pod-only series featuring interviews with women artists from the ABC archives.

A 2009 interview with the artist Margaret Olley, two years before her death. Part of our series featuring interviews with women artists from the ABC archives.

Interviews with women artists from the ABC archives. In 1979 Ivy Shore won Australia's richest art competition for women painters, for a portrait of trail blazing trade unionist Della Elliot.

Know My Name: interviews with women artists from the ABC archives. Hear Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, one of Australia's most renowned ceramicists, speaking to the ABC’s Julie Copeland in 1994.

Introducing Know My Name: interviews with women artists from the ABC archives. In this episode, hear from Grace Cossington Smith. A pioneer of modernism in Australia and one of the country’s most influential artists. Here she is interviewed in 1965 by Hazel de Berg for the National Library of Australia’s oral history collection.

What do artists think about when making huge public art? Lindy Lee is making the most expensive work commissioned by the NGA, and Judy Watson's bara will grace Sydney's harbour with a giant Gadigal fish hook. Then, the US art lab addressing the problem of confederate monuments to racist causes... and Indigenous artists Julie Gough, Nicholas Galanin and Yhonnie Scarce on Australia's own colonial memorialising.

Globally and at home, artists are engaging with the reckoning happening around race and colonisation. But where do recent migrants and refugees to Australia fit into the dialogue?

It's 50 years since artists from Papunya began painting on board, heralding the Western Desert art movement, 'the last great art movement of the 20th Century' according to one famous critic. Plus, an artist's tribute to the iconic Leigh Bowery. A Japan-Australia photographic project featuring Mari Katayama. And Darwin's Street Art Festival brings new life to empty walls.

How does Francisco Goya help us make sense of the chaos of our contemporary world, and its depths of suffering? Then, discover art history through TikTok… and a contemporary sculpture powered by wind, water… and wine.

Do we turn a blind eye to the aggression and militarism — and colonialism — that defined the Italian Renaissance? Plus, hear why artist Vernon Ah Kee can't ignore a distinct Australian brand of racism, and whether a work by the Renaissance painter Artemisia Gentileschi found its way to 1970s Sydney.

How has social media giant Instagram changed how we experience art? Experts, artists and critics weigh in on the photo sharing platform, an evolution that's allowed artists to build careers outside of the gallery system, while drastically changing our consumption of art.

Maree Clarke is a key figure in the reclamation of southeast Australian Aboriginal art. Her three-decade career has centred on the revival and sharing of culture. Plus, Jemima Wyman's collages using images from global protests. And visit the studio of acclaimed painter Craig Ruddy.

Artists in Afghanistan are facing a frightening future. Australian Hazara artists Khadim Ali and Elyas Alavi speak to Daniel about what’s happening in their homeland. There’s a lot of buzz about 'Murrnginy', a new exhibition by Yolngu artists from Yirrkala, who have swapped stringybark for scrap metal. The works take a stunning contemporary direction on an ancient practice.

Meet the Turner Prize-nominated UK art collective Cooking Sections, making art about the food we eat, ecology and geopolitics. Plus, how Kathy Temin came to use fake fur for her large-scale monuments to memory. And a new book delves into the elusive Ian Fairweather's love of Chinese art and language.

Anne Wallace paints film-like scenes of intimacy and psychological tension that speak to iso life and the female gaze. Plus, the ancient tomb art in Southern Italy that told an unexpected story of burial in the Classical world. And a new generation of artists from Western Arnhem Land in a new exhibition of exquisite art created on stone country.

A new biography of the post-Impressionist artist Hilda Rix Nicholas looks at the unusual life and sometimes overlooked career of a great Australian painter. Artist and designer W.H. Chong on the secret behind the perfect book cover. And this year’s National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Awards (NATSIAAs).

Two artists reflect on what has happened to Beirut since the devastating port explosion one year ago. And an antiquities sleuth and an art academic on the National Gallery of Australia's decision to return looted artworks to India.

Performance art tests the limits of the body and the gallery space. Fiona Kelly McGregor's latest book relives its bracing ascendancy in Sydney's queer and underground scene, and the well-known and lesser-known artists who lived and breathed it. Plus, performance artists Justin Shoulder and Stelarc. And, how do art galleries preserve performance art?

What if the use of white in classical sculpture was just a construct? For the ancient Greeks and Romans, sculptures were brightly-coloured affairs, clad in vivid red gowns with red lips, and pink or olive skin. Now scholars and artists want us to see that, too.

The mother-and-son collaboration of artists Dale and Kate Harding works across generations, artforms —and worlds. Textile artist Kate makes quilts, while Dale’s work is most commonly seen in the rarefied world of contemporary art. So why did they join forces for an exhibition? Plus, the photojournalist who turned his lens from the war in Afghanistan to the climate crisis at home. And a bespoke shoemaker mixing art and fashion.

The Art Show’s new presenter Daniel Browning finds Indigenous artists who enact healing and cultural rejuvenation through their artwork – from senior Pitjantjatjara elder and Betty Muffler, whose practice as a traditional healer – or ngangkari – extends to her monochromatic canvases mapping the topography and spiritual odysseys of her ancestor to the work of mainland Torres Strait Islander artists working in still lives and comic superheroes.

Czech brothers Dušan and Voitre Marek escaped communist political repression for Australia, but their Surrealist art was met with incomprehension in 1950s Australia. Now decades of their vibrant artistic output is on show, raising the question -- why aren't they better known? Plus, sculpture meets imitation food and the found photos that document China's embrace of capitalism.

The rediscovery of Hilma af Klint's abstract paintings has taken the art world by storm, but what meaning can we find in her powerful, mysterious work? The curator of the largest exhibition to reach Australia talks us through her symbols and spiritual quest. Plus, hear from an artist whose feminist-inspired underwear became a hit with the likes of Madonna. Then it's time to ponder… what do artists actually want to portray in a portrait?

How does Francisco Goya help us make sense of the chaos of our contemporary world, and its depths of suffering? Then, discover art history through TikTok… and a contemporary sculpture powered by wind, water… and wine.

Australia's Archibald portrait prize has been running for 100 years and remains wildly popular with punters, with its spats and controversies often more memorable than its artworks. What lies behind its appeal, and with a history of portraying and awarding a narrow range of distinguished Australians — what does it really say about us? Plus, meet the contemporary jeweller whose necklaces and rings tell stories of industry, social history and even architecture.

Patricia Piccinini returns to press our ethical buttons with new hyper-real silicon sculptures, staged in a hidden ballroom above Melbourne's busiest train station. Pus, what's the state of drawing in Australia? The simple act of putting pencil to paper used to be central to almost all art practices and art schools, but is it still? Two leading drawing artists make the case.

For years now, Peter Drew's been challenging notions of Australian identity in his 'Aussie' poster series — join him as he pastes up his next series around Melbourne's laneways. Then hear about how Walt Disney Studios preserves its vast film stills archive, which holds the earliest sketches of beloved characters including Bambi, Dumbo and Pinocchio. Afterward, introduce yourself to Yul Scarf, a multi-disciplinary artist and recent art school graduate who's been 'hatched' by the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art.

Who exactly was Iso Rae, the Melbourne-born impressionist painter who honed her craft in northern France? Plus, a different take on a distinctly Australian 'ready-made' — the gumnut — with Colombian-Australian artist Maria Fernanda Cardoso.

Australian-South Sudanese artist Atong Atem brilliantly flips the Ethnographic gaze to create gorgeous studio portraits with a powerful statement. Plus, how does the medium of video art exist in the era of binge watching? And Namila chats to incoming guest host Daniel Browning, a familiar voice to RN listeners — but did you know he trained as an artist?

How do you turn the stark geographical facts of war and conflict into art? And how do you do it authentically and sensitively, from the far-off shores of Australia? Stanislava Pinchuk started making street art in Melbourne, then moved into tattooing before the Russo-Ukrainian conflict pushed her art in a very different direction. At 32, she has a survey exhibition called Terra Data — mapping the borders and human movement of war and displacement.

The partial destruction of the 1,500-year-old stone sculptural arrangement in Victoria’s western district added to the devastating tally of damaged First Nations art and cultural sites. Museums Victoria curator Kimberley Moulton joins Dark Emu author Bruce Pascoe. Plus, take a tour of FLOAT, an innovative community artists' studio floating on Lake Tyers. And we talk to an artist and a curator about two new exhibitions that look at food and eating through Art.

Yuki Kihara's reaction to being chosen to represent Aotearoa/New Zealand in the 2021 Venice Biennale was to scream at the top of her lungs. But with it came a huge sense of responsibility: "If I f**k this up, then people like me won't get a chance anymore." An interdiscplinary artist of Japanese and Sāmoan descent, Kihara has hit a lot of firsts in her international career — a show at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the first Pacifika and Asian artist to represent Aotearoa at the Biennale. Always, her cinematic photography, dance, installation and curatorship seeks to challenge the dominant historical narratives and explore intersecting identities and experiences. Plus, step inside the world of Terminus, a series of virtual reality installations inspired by sci fi and fantasy comics and movies. And the 'deceptively simple' art of Miffy, the bunny grounded in ideas of 20th century avant-garde design.

Khadim Ali began his art career painting propaganda murals in Iran before training in Persian miniatures and eventually finding his way to Australia. Now the acclaimed Hazara artist is launching his largest solo show at the Institute of Modern Art. Using apparently innocent phrases and bright enamel paint, Jon Campbell’s joyful paintings unpack the pathos and humour of Australian vernacular and suburban life. Plus, why did the Australia Council commission a report on Graphic storytelling? Co-author Pat Grant joins acclaimed Montreal-based cartoonist Lee Lei.

Photographer William Yang has been turning the camera on himself and his community with equal candour for four decades. Now he dusts off the film for the largest survey of his work yet. Plus, when you think of Australia’s best art and culture destinations, do you think ‘go bush’? With many of Australia’s most sought-after artists living remote, it might be time to re-think where our cultural capitals lie. Parrtjima Festival director Rhoda Roberts joins author Monica Tan (Stranger Country).

Brisbane-based artist Vernon Ah Kee has been making art that asks hard questions for nearly two decades, critiquing systems and racial inequality in contemporary Australia. Plus an interview with Liz Ann Macgregor, director of Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art. The director has since announced she will be leaving the job after 22 years.

Yhonnie Scarce creates hand-blown glass installations that express the trauma of atomic testing at Maralinga in the 1950s and 60s, and the impact of colonisation. Enter the studio of painter and musician Mick Turner, one third of the band Dirty Three. Plus, what about zines? Two zinesters make the case for the longevity of the DIY art mag.

Namila meets the abstract artist Robert Owen at a new retrospective. Plus, enter the studio of a bespoke shoemaker mixing art and high fashion. And an artist and journalist explain the phenomenon of NFTs.

Is there a fear of the older female nude? Flesh After Fifty is an exhibition about women’s bodies over the age of 50. Plus, Gabby O’Connor is tackling how to communicate the risk of climate change through public art, with the help of scientists. And enter the studio of sculptor Isadora Vaughan and the fantastical Plastic Bag Store of puppeteer Robin Frohardt.

Kay Rufai's Smile-ing Boys Project flips negative stereotypes and perceptions associated with young black boys to create healing and social change. Plus, head into the bush with immersive landscape painter Mary Tonkin. And what’s in a tattoo? An art exhibition about Ink in LGBTI history and culture.

Photographer Hoda Afshar turns 110 camera lenses on well-known Australian whistle-blowers for her work 'Agonistes'. And walk in the footsteps of modernist Clarice Beckett, the subject of a new retrospective.

Artist Lucy Culliton paints almost exclusively her own homelife on the farm. She takes us through her inspiration and philosophy, including the importance of rescue animals in her life – all eight dogs, four horses, parrots, goats and 47 sheep. Plus, meet the sculptor using discarded plastic lids to create large-scale 'constellations'. And what makes for 'disobedience' in Art, and how does gender matter?

Art historian Kate Bryan on her favourite Art love stories of the 20th Century. Filmmaker-turned-photographer Amos Gebhardt guides us through ‘Small acts of resistance’, a glittering triptych of queer love. And the spirit and life lessons of the iconic Melbourne artist Mirka Mora, the subject of a big new exhibition.

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.

The visionary Turkish artist and his studio collaborate with computers to make hallucinatory public art. We go into the studio of Kate Just, who's knitting a feminist project bound for the Museum of Contemporary Art. And Tony Albert and Brook Andrew discuss the legacy of significant Australian artist Gordon Bennett.

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.

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.

Last year marked 45 years of Independence for Papua New Guinea. For this RN Summer edition of the Art Show, we explore the role that art has played in the country's development and engagement with Australia since 1975.

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.

Influential artist Lindy Lee reflects on her long career; plus the art collective Still Nomads claiming new space for young African Australian artists.

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.

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.

Carly Findlay OAM joins The Art Show to celebrate International Day of People with Disability. Carly and Namila discuss access and creativity with installation artist Eugenie Lee, painter Digby Webster and blacksmith Ceilidh Dalton.

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.

In her latest work, artist Judy Watson investigates our relationship to ancient sites, drawing viewers in with beguiling works of art that ask us to confront Australia's brutal colonial history

Australian artist Polly Borland reflects on politics, grown up men dressing as babies and why her art sometimes makes people feel uncomfortable.  

Griselda Pollock, Holberg Prize winner and professor of art history at the University of Leeds, discusses the absence of women in Western art history and how she believes it's delusional to think society is making any progress on the issue of women's rights.

Kay Rufai's Smile-ing Boys Project is a visual and audio project that flips negative stereotypes and perceptions associated with young black boys on their head to create healing and social change.

Art and life tend to merge in the work of Australian artist Michael Zavros, but the man at the centre of his new collection of images - the handsome middle-aged guy who looks exactly like Michael! - isn't the artist at all.

Curator Hetti Perkins discusses how artists and activists have always put their lives and livelihoods on the line for their communities.

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.

Lindy Lee reflects on what it means to belong as a Chinese Australian artist living and working in Australia today.

British writer and critic Olivia Laing reflects on loneliness and the ways art can repair broken societies.

To mark 45 years of Independence for Papua New Guinea, we explore the role that art has played in the country's development and engagement with Australia since 1975.

Del Kathryn Barton discusses her debut feature film Puff, and the dangers of losing touch with our child selves.

Artist Abdul-Rahman Abdullah discusses family, winning the Australian Muslim Artists Art Prize and why his art features so many animals.

What role does confidence play in becoming a visual artist? We find out with First Nations Aboriginal activist and artist, Aretha Brown.

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?

Jasmine Togo-Brisby is a fourth-generation Australian South Sea Islander whose work examines her family's stories, including those of her great-grandmother who was just eight years old when she was stolen from a beach in Vanuatu in 1899.

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.

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?

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.

In his latest book, 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.

After three decades in the visual arts world, Maree Clarke's practice continues to evolve, inspired by places and objects, and even roadkill!

We meet Liz Ann Macgregor, the museum director who began her career driving a truck around Scotland, and wound up running Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art - the most visited contemporary art museum in the world!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Del Kathryn Barton discusses her debut feature film Puff, and the dangers of losing touch with our child selves.

Has being in isolation changed the way you engage with friends? We speak with artist Helen Grace, whose photography explores ideas of friendship and connection.

What happens when your creative tool - your body - shuts down? Tongan Australian performance artist Latai Taumoepeau discusses reconnecting with her body after illness in order to reconnect with her creativity.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

For a decade, Australian artist Ian Strange has been making art that investigates our complex relationship to the notion of 'home'.

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.

From Kahlo to Klimt, Monet to Matisse... If famous artists from history were alive today, what would they post to their social media?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Come and visit an extraordinary world where world-class medicine intersects with world-class art; you will meet children, emergency doctors, and artists to find out how art is not only on the walls, but literally built into the hospital from the ground up.

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.

Hans and Nora Heysen are renowned for their almost spiritual love of nature, and the way they meticulously observed and painted Australian light, trees, and flowers. Ed speaks to Chris Heysen - grandson of Hans and nephew of Nora - and National Gallery of Victoria curator Angela Hesson about these two important Australian painters.

Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso are thought of separately as two of the 20th Century's greatest artists, but did you know they had an enduring friendship and rivalry?

The irresistible theme of Water is explored in a new exhibition at GOMA in Queensland. And we meet Estonian photographer Sirli Raitma, and reflect on the life of Australian sculptor Robert Klippel.

Author, illustrator and film-maker Shaun Tan explores our beautiful and complex relationship to animals. And we speak to the provocative Darwin-based artist Therese Ritchie, whose work confronts racism in the Top End.

Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat are towering figures in American art. A new exhibition examines the work of the men side by side for the first time.

Atong Atem is a Melbourne-based South Sudanese artist, whose work features young African Australians looking bold, powerful and regal - a welcome change to the tradition of ethnographic photography. We also visit the studio of Darwin artist Franck Gohier, and delve into the world of monsters and demons in Japan Supernatural at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

British artist Cornelia Parker never does things by halves. Over the course of her career she's taken on big themes, big moments in history, and exploded them - sometimes quite literally. We also speak to Taiwanese-American artist Lee Mingwei and Australian photographer Sarah Pannell.

Artist Wendy Sharpe is about to travel to Ethiopia to undertake a residency with a difference and British artist Bruce Monro lights up Darwin.

Plus critic Tai Snaith reviews the Melbourne exhibition Hope Dies Last and we revisit the work of Australian modernist photographer Olive Cotton.

The curator of Brisbane Museum's New Woman exhibition, Miranda Hine, gives Ed Ayres a walk-through of the show covering 100 years of women artists in Brisbane.

Sydney artist Leila Jeffreys specialises in bird portraiture, capturing avian creatures in intimate moments of pride and amusement.

A new book of Ian Fairweather's correspondence shows the man behind the myth.

Plus gallerist Lisa Fihelly opens a new commercial gallery representing women artists only.

Plus photographer Richard Wiesel on the moving images he took at the closed archives of concentration camp memorials and Darwin Street Art Festival curator David Collins and Portuguese graffiti artist Odeith.

Plus artist Leon Pericles speaks about his wife Moira's experience of Alzheimer's in a new documentary film, light and sound installation artist Haroon Mirza on his electric new work at ACCA and weaver Elisa Carmichael is our studio artist.

Plus, the legendary artist Christo reflects on his first Kaldor Public Art Project, data journalist Mona Chalabi translates spreadsheets into powerful artworks, and jeweller Susan Cohn on making jewellery with a political message.

Plus, Hong Kong painter Chow Chun Fai tells Ed about the 'Lennon Walls' popping up around the city, art critic Sebastian Smee explains Renoir-loathing, and Chinese-Australian artist Badiucao is accusing the NGV of self-censoring.

Plus, Tate Modern's Yasufumi Nakamori, Aysha Huq on winning a Young Archie, and ceramicist Vipoo Srivilasa on making playful sculptures on serious themes.

with curator Franchesca Cubillio, ANKAA chair Christina Davidson, artists Candy Nelson-Nakmarra, Colin Puruntatameri, and Lisa Waup, and arts workers Elwin Ward, Dora Griffiths, and Lynley Nargoodah. Plus,producer Rosa Ellen takes a look at the rise of Aboriginal textiles in fashion.

Plus, Danie Mellor is up for another NATSIAA, Justine Bonenfant on embroidering for Beyonce, and Anthony Yung from Asia Art Archive.

Plus, V& A curator Victoria Broackes on pop culture exhibitions, and what is a bookwork?

Plus, Ashley Perry and Samuel Kreusler reimagine Michelangelo's David in First Commissions, and Hannah Reich looks into The Cost of Art.

Plus art meets science for the 150th birthday of the periodic table, Veronica Kent's squid ink on Bruny Island, and Tarn McLean paints the 12 flowers of the zodiac.

In this special highlights episode, Ed visits Queensland Children's Hospital to speak to children, emergency doctors, and artists to find out how art is not only on the walls, but literally built into the hospital from the ground up.

Plus Kenny Pittock makes art in the studio with clay and witty wordplay, Tai Snaith reviews a show on self-doubt at ACCA, and 2019 Dreaming Award winner Jenna Lee's sojourn to the UK.

Plus, Sidney Nolan works about to go under the hammer, Justine Youssef, and FEM-aFFINITY.

with artists Julie Gough, Lonnie Holley, Selena de Carvalho, and Costume, plus creative director Leigh Carmichael and associate creative director Hannah Fox.

Plus, arts patron Judith Neilson on White Rabbit gallery's 10th birthday, the Partnershipping Project, and a visit to painter Robert Malherbe's Darlinghurst studio.

LA-based MacArthur fellowship award-winning artist Wu Tsang on docufantasy, shelling stringing artist Aunty Lola Greeno has won a Red Ochre Award for lifetime achievement, Ed visits Elizabeth Willing's tasty(?) studio to find out how she makes art out of food, Noni Cragg and Warraba Weatherall on While You Were Sleeping.

Gunpowder and firework artist Cai Guo-Qiang and NGV curator Wayne Crothers on the Terracotta Warriors, New York-based fingerpainting artist Iris Scott, and ceramicist Shannon Garson brings her wheel into the studio.

Tony Costa on his Archibald-winning portrait of Lindy Lee, Labor's arts policy, Vincent O'Donnell checks out the Venice Biennale, and ceramicist Nicolette Johnson at BAD.

Sculptor featured at Brisbane Street Art Festival Leonie Rhodes joins Ed as this week's studio artist, piano duo ZOFO on their latest show of pieces inspired by artworks, and AGNSW curator Hannah Hutchison on the constructed worlds of Jeffrey Smart.

Ed sits down with 2019 Sulman Prize finalist and 2015 winner Jason Phu, 2018 Sulman Prize judge Angela Tiatia, and critic Gabriella Coslovich.

Philadelphia Museum of Art curator Matthew Affron on the readymades of Marcel Duchamp at AGNSW, Rosslynd Piggott on her exhibition I sense you but I cannot see you at the NGV, and Asad Raza on his Kaldor Public Art Project at Carriageworks.

Director of the Institut national du patrimoine Charles Personnaz joins Ed from Paris to share the latest on the Notre Dame fire, Anh Do on painting portraits and the fourth series of Anh's Brush with Fame, New Zealand jeweller and artist Lisa Walker on where the two intersect.

Come and visit an extraordinary world where world-class medicine intersects with world-class art; you will meet children, emergency doctors, and artists to find out how art is not only on the walls, but literally built into the hospital from the ground up.

Alexander Calder's grandson Alexander S. C. Rower and curator Elizabeth Hutton Turner on the artist's radical inventions on show at the NGV, Milingimbi art collection on show for first time in decades, NAVA asks what the next ten years of cultural policy could look like, and we say goodbye to APY Lands artist Kunmanara Williams and paint-by-numbers founder Dan Robbins.