Episodes

  • Talk Art live at the Venice Biennale, presented by Burberry. Recorded at the St Regis Library, we meet leading artist Sir John Akomfrah CBE RA and Tarini Malik, the curator of the British pavilion 2024.


    The British Council is delighted to present Listening All Night To The Rain by John Akomfrah at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia 2024.


    The exhibition runs from 20 April to 24 November 2024.


    Exploring post-colonialism, environmental devastation and the politics of aesthetics, Listening All Night To The Rain is Akomfrah’s boldest and most ambitious commission to date.


    The exhibition draws its title from 11th century Chinese writer and artist Su Dongpo’s poetry, which explores the transitory nature of life during a period of political exile. Organised in a series of song-like movements, or ‘cantos’, the exhibition brings together eight interlocking and overlapping multimedia and sound installations into a single and immersive environment that tells stories of migrant diasporas in Britain. It is the result of decades of extensive research by the artist and his team, using historical records to contextualise our experience of the present day.


    Listening All Night To The Rain weaves together newly filmed material, archive video footage and still images, with audio and text from international archives and libraries. The exhibition tells global stories through the ‘memories’ of people who represent migrant communities in Britain and examines how multiple geopolitical narratives are reflected in the experiences of diasporic people more broadly.


    Each gallery space layers together a specific colour field, influenced by the paintings of American artist Mark Rothko, in order to highlight the ways in which abstraction can represent the fundamental nature of human drama.


    Listening All Night To The Rain positions various theories of acoustemology: the study of how the sonic experience mirrors and shapes our cultural realities. Akomfrah draws on an acute acoustic sensitivity influenced by a variety of formative experiences, from protests to club culture in 1970s-80s London. Each of Akomfrah’s ‘cantos’ is accompanied by a specific soundtrack, which layers archival material with field recordings, speeches and popular and devotional music. Extending the sense of hybridity in the filmic collages, Akomfrah’s use of sound encourages us to consider the breadth of cultural identity in Britain more broadly.


    Follow @Smoking_Dog_Films, @AkomfrahJohn @TariniMalik, @BritishArts Presented by @Burberry


    Thanks @Lisson_Gallery and @LaBiennale


    Learn more at Lisson: https://www.lissongallery.com/artists/john-akomfrah




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  • TALK ART EXCLUSIVE! We meet Sir Antony Gormley OBE RA to discuss his forthcoming solo show 'Aerial' at White Cube New York, USA and his epic new 'Time Horizon' public installation of 100 sculptures which is about to open at Houghton Hall, Norfolk, UK. We explore his entire career across this intimate, highly detailed, feature-length special episode recorded in person at his London studio.


    Antony Gormley is widely acclaimed for his sculptures, installations and public artworks that investigate the relationship of the human body to space. Gormley’s work is concerned with the experience of being in the world and an expression of how it feels to be alive. Through a critical engagement with his own physical existence, Gormley identifies art as a place where new behaviours, thoughts and feelings can arise. For him, art can be a place of becoming where, collectively, we can think about our role as creators of the future: ‘I want it to be about life. I want it to be about potential.’


    We explore his new works made for ‘Aerial’, an exhibition by Antony Gormley in New York, in which the artist considers sculpture as an instrument for proprioception – the body’s innate capacity to sense and perceive its position, movements and orientation in relation to itself and the environment. The exhibition features two recent developments in Gormley’s practice: one explores physical proximity in mass and scale, where two over-life-size bodies merge as one, while the other endeavours to catalyse space almost without mass.


    Whilst 'Time Horizon', one of Antony Gormley’s most spectacular large-scale installations, is currently being shown across the grounds and through the house at Houghton Hall in Norfolk. Featuring 100 life-size sculptures, the works are distributed across 300 acres of the park, the furthest away being approximately 1.5 miles on the West Avenue. The cast-iron sculptures, each weighing 620kg and standing at an average of 191cm, are installed at the same datum level to create a single horizontal plane across the landscape. Some works are buried, allowing only a part of the head to be visible, while others are buried to the chest or knees according to the topography. Only occasionally do they stand on the existing surface. Around a quarter of the works are placed on concrete columns that vary from a few centimetres high to rising four meters off the ground.


    Gormley was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994, the South Bank Prize for Visual Art in 1999, the Bernhard Heiliger Award for Sculpture in 2007, the Obayashi Prize in 2012 and the Praemium Imperiale in 2013. In 1997 he was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) and was made a knight in the New Year’s Honours list in 2014. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, an Honorary Doctor of the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity and Jesus Colleges, Cambridge. Gormley has been a Royal Academician since 2003.


    Antony Gormley's 'Aerial' runs from 30 April – 15 June 2024 at White Cube New York.

    ‘Time Horizon’ runs concurrently at Houghton Hall, Norfolk from 21 April – 31 October 2024, the first time the work has been staged in the UK.


    Follow @WhiteCube and @HoughtonHall


    Visit: https://www.whitecube.com/gallery-exhibitions/antony-gormley-new-york-2024

    and

    https://www.houghtonhall.com/antony-gormleys-time-horizon-2/


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  • We meet artist Brook Hsu. We discuss other worlds, the power of storytelling, the colour green, the drive to make paintings and making art at your own pace.


    BROOK HSU (b. 1987 Pullman, Washington) deploys and weaves the autobiographical and the mythopoetic into paintings using an array of materials, including ink, oil paint, industrial carpets, and off-cuts of ready-made lumber. The sources for Hsu’s imagery come from her own observations, sometimes arising from art history, film and literature.


    Working across painting, drawing, sculpture and writing, her works aim to question how we define representation today, producing abstract and figurative works that employ a host of signs and motifs, recounting stories of love, pain and humor. Hsu says of her practice, 'I seek to understand what we value in life by asking how we value the world.'

     

    Taiwanese-American artist Brook Hsu grew up in Oklahoma, received her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2010 and her MFA from Yale University in 2016. Hsu currently lives and works in New York and Wyoming. 


    Recent solo exhibitions include: Kiang Malingue, Hong Kong (2022); Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin (2021); Manual Arts, Los Angeles, USA (2021); Bortolami Gallery, New York (2019). Group exhibitions include: Reference Material, Adler Beatty, New York (2022), The Practice of Everyday Life, Derosia Gallery, New York (2022), Sweet Days of Discipline, Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles (2022); kaufmann repetto, New York and Milan (2021), More, More, More (curated by Passing Fancy), TANK, Shanghai (2020); LIFE STILL, CLEARING, New York (2020); The End of Expressionism, Jan Kaps, Cologne (2020); Polly, Insect Gallery, Los Angeles (2019-2020); A Cloth Over a Birdcage, Château Shatto, Los Angeles (2019); Finders’ Lodge, in lieu, Los Angeles (2019); and Let Me Consider It from Here, The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2018-2019).


    Her work is part of the collections of X Museum, Beijing; Long Museum, Shanghai.


    Follow @Broooooooooooooook on Instagram. Thanks to Brook's galleries @KraupaTuskanyZeidler

    and @KiangMalingue


    Visit KT-Z: https://www.k-t-z.com/artists/94-brook-hsu/


    Visit Kiang Malingue: https://kiangmalingue.com/artists/brook-hsu/


    See also Gladstone Gallery: https://www.gladstonegallery.com/exhibition/10551/brook-hsu/info

    and this article from Various Artists: https://various-artists.com/brook-hsu/


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  • Season 21!!! We are back with an icon of art, the one and only Judith Bernstein (b. 1942, Newark, New Jersey) to discuss almost 60 years of art making.


    Since graduating from Yale in 1967, Bernstein has developed a reputation as one of the most unwaveringly provocative artists of her generation. Steadfast in her cultural, political and social critique for over 50 years, she surged into art world prominence in the early 1970’s with her monumental charcoal drawings of penis-screw hybrids; early incarnations of which were exhibited at A.I.R. Gallery, Brooks Jackson Iolas Gallery, Brooklyn Museum, and MoMA P.S.1, among other institutions. In reviewing Bernstein’s 2012-13 solo exhibition at the New Museum in NY, Ken Johnson, critic at the New York Times, referred to these words as “bravura performances of draftsmanship” and “masterpieces of feminine protest”. Bernstein was a founding member of A.I.R. Gallery – the first all-female artists gallery in the United States – as well as an early member of many art and activist organizations including Guerrilla Girls, Art Workers’ Coalition and Fight Censorship.


    We explore Bernstein’s first exhibition in London in over a decade at Emalin gallery. TRUTH AND CHAOS comprises works spanning thirty years of her practice. Direct and confrontational, they are inspired by outrage and violence, the American military industrial complex and the private scribbles of the Yale University men’s bathroom stalls. The exhibition presents historical works from her 1990s ‘word drawings’ series alongside the maximalist phallic screw drawings that Bernstein has been making since 1969 and that initiated her complicated relationship with censorship and popular recognition amidst 1970s second-wave feminism.


    Judith Bernstein is concerned with the psyche of men and whatever men may stand for. She observes the scribbles and cartoons they leave behind in bathroom stalls, their furious impotence and possessiveness, the overpowering penetration of their violence and its statistics in war. Most of all, she watches their self-involvement: there is nothing beyond the raging ego, no depth to their own picture-plane. Detaching the symbol of an erect penis from any personhood and mounting it as a standalone totem of military violence and industrial extraction, she hacks with charcoal and oil paint at the abuse of power she witnesses. Symbols of American capitalism scratch their way into the work: guns are dicks, dicks are screws, screws are missiles, missiles are Mickey Mouse and the artist’s signature is an ejaculation. Words and forms are disgorged onto paper – Bernstein’s own subjectivity ejects mark-making.


    Follow @Judith_Bernstein and visit @EmalinOfficial


    Judith's solo exhibition Truth and Chaos is now open and runs until 15 June 2024. Free entry:

    https://emalin.co.uk/exhibitions/truth-and-chaos


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  • Talk Art Live! We meet Otamere Guobadia, a multidisciplinary writer, poet, and columnist whose work focuses on desire, art, adornment, queerness, and agency, within culture high, low, and popular.


    Recorded live in Margate @FortRoadHotel. Thanks to @TheMargateBookshop & @QuenchGallery. 💕🎙️ We discuss lyricism, queerness, love for the Women in our families and friendships, Yves Klein blue and how art and poetry are interconnected!


    Otamere’s work has appeared in British Vogue, i-D, Dazed, GQ, The Guardian, Vogue Italia, Wonderland, The BBC, The Independent, and AnOther Magazine, among other publications. His first book, Unutterable Visions, Perishable Breath is available now from all good bookstores.


    Otamere Guobadia’s debut, UNUTTERABLE VISIONS, PERISHABLE BREATH, published by Broken Sleep Books, is a gorgeous collection of writings which embody poetic sequences and fragmented poetry as queer forms, a coruscating interplay between language and desire.


    A look at how love, lovelessness, agency, and destiny constellate and complicate each other while refracting these notions, and Guobadia’s own personal histories, through a distinct and unabashedly sentimental lens. This is Otamere Guobadia’s Lusk letter, a record of ‘love in bones and air and stars.’


    🔗 Follow @Otamere


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  • We meet artist Li Hei Di on the eve of their debut UK solo exhibition 700 Nights of Winter at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London.


    In new paintings, Li explores primal, sexual urges with their signature fluid application of paint. Balanced on a knife edge between abstraction and representation, paintings feature figures that swim in and out of view beneath diaphanous veils of paint; each layer offers a different world, or a portal to an altered oneiric space, guided by desire and emotion. Multiple perspectives collide and overlap, creating dynamic compositions that offer manifold realities within a single work. Luminescent orbs appear as though submerged in deep water, giving the compositions a nebulous quality.


    Li’s multidisciplinary practice is concerned with repressed desire, rooted in personal experiences of navigating hetero-normative environments that obstruct open expressions of queerness. Their work eschews rigid sexual codes and gender categories in favour of a liberated approach to fantasy and beauty, which exists apart from hierarchical and dominant social structures. For Li, the dichotomous relationship between sexual arousal and repression finds a parallel in the covert ways in which erotic love flourishes on cold winter nights, as bodies become entangled in pursuit of warmth, lost but for the other. The existential threat posed to romantic love by the culture of narcissism engendered under globalised capitalism sets the stage in Li’s work for the negation of the self, in the radical recognition of another, as espoused in the writings of cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han.


    This commingling of two entities is found not only in humankind but in the natural world too, and Li’s work explores the role animal pollinators play in the reproductive lives of plants. Such co-evolved relationships encapsulate the exuberance of life in connection with erotic activity and, therefore, death.


    In this new body of work Li also investigates the ways in which desire manifests and, notably, declines under the ‘pharmacopornographic regime’, a term coined by philosopher Paul B. Preciado to describe the intersection of the pharmaceutical and pornographic industries.

     

    Li Hei Di (b. 1997, Shenyang, China) lives and works in London and received her MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art and a BA (Hons) from Chelsea College of Arts and the Maryland Institute College of Art. In 2024, Li will have a solo exhibition at Pond Society, Shanghai and will be part of a group exhibition at Le Consortium, Dijon. Recent exhibitions include Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2023); X Museum Triennial, Beijing (2023); Marguo, Paris (2023); Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas (2023), TX; CICA Vancouver (2023); Gagosian, Hong Kong (2023), and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London (2023), amongst others.


    Li Hei Di’s new solo exhibition runs from 15th March - until 20th April 2024. Free entry.


    Follow @Plum_Black_Field and @PippyHouldsworthGallery

    Visit: https://www.houldsworth.co.uk/exhibitions/146-li-hei-di-700-nights-of-winter/press_release_text/


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  • We meet living LEGEND, the English sculptor, performance artist, jewellery-maker, portraitist and all-round cultural ICON... Andrew Logan!!!!! We learn about his friendships with Zandra Rhodes, Vivienne Westwood, Derek Jarman, Angela Flowers, Brian Eno and his recent collaboration with Stella McCartney for her Paris catwalk show.


    Logan (b. 1945) belongs to a unique school of English eccentrics. One of Britain’s principal sculptural artists, he challenges convention, mixes media and plays with our artistic values. Since its beginnings, Logan’s work has depended on the inventive use of whatever was to hand. With flair and fantasy he transformed real objects into their new and different versions. His artistic world includes fauna, flora, planets and gods. His love of travel provides the bases for several series of work.

    Born in Oxford in 1945, he qualified in architecture in the late 1960s and has worked across the fields of sculpture, stage design, drama, opera, parades, festivals and interior design. To him, “Art can be discovered anywhere.”


    Logan crosses cultures and embodies artistic fantasy in a unique and unprecedented way. His work is the art of popular poetry and metropolitan glamour. From his early fame amongst London’s fashionable crowd, he has become an influential artist of international stature, with exhibitions as far afield as Los Angeles (USA), Monterrey (Mexico) and St Petersburg (Russia).


    Versatile and enterprising designer and sculptor, born in Witney, Oxfordshire, who graduated with a diploma in architecture from Oxford School of Architecture, 1964–70. He “experienced Flower Power” in America in 1967. Did a hologram course at Goldsmiths’ College, 1982. Logan was noted for projects carried out with a showbiz flair, who to some dressed weirdly, producing camp sculptures, costumes and jewellery out of mirror and lurid plastic, but who was undeniably dedicated and persistent. He said that his aim was “to bring joy and happiness to the world”.


    Logan was most famous as the inventor and impresario of The Alternative Miss World, which began in 1972, the series continuing periodically at various venues. The first showing of the film The Alternative Miss World was held at the Odeon, Leicester Square, 1979, followed by the Cannes Film Festival, 1980.


    Follow @AndrewLoganSculptor and his official website: https://www.andrewlogan.com/ Visit the @AndrewLoganMuseum in Wales.


    Logan had his first solo show at New Art Centre, 1973. Other events in his multi-faceted career included Egypt Revisited, sound and light spectacular in a tent on Clapham Common, 1978; decorations for Zandra Rhodes’ fashion show, 1980; Snow Sculpture World Championships, Finland, 1982; piece in Holographic Show, York Arts Festival, 1984; debut as a theatre designer, Wolfy, Ballet Rambert, Big Top, Battersea, 1987; retrospective, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1991, with tour; Jewels Fantasy Exhibition, Victoria & Albert Exhibition, 1992; a show at Cheltenham Art Gallery, 2000–1, and watercolours at A&D Gallery, 2002, in the same year there sharing an exhibition with Duggie Fields. In addition, Norwich Gallery held Logan’s Alternative Miss World Filmshow 1972 to 2002. In 1991 the Andrew Logan Museum of Sculpture opened at Berriew, Powys. In 1993 the National Portrait Gallery bought two portraits. Was based at The Glasshouse, Melier Place, where he also held exhibitions.


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  • We meet stand up comedian, actress and author Grace Campbell to discuss her experiences with art! We discover that in spite of growing up with artist friends, she had a childhood fear of galleries, her admiration for artists Tracey Emin, Judy Chicago, Marilyn Minter, Elmgreen & Dragset and living with artworks by Marcelina Amelia, Mr Brainwash, and more. Plus we learn about her close friendship with art historian Katy Hessel, her collaborations with illustrator Alice Skinner, and we discuss a new documentary about sex educator and feminist Shere Hite.


    Grace Campbell is a riotous force of nature. The stand up comedian, author, and actor, is on a constant, rebellious mission to undermine most of the bullshit we are taught by society. An acclaimed stand-up, and host of the popular comedy night the Disgraceful Club, currently holding a residency at Bush Hall, Grace’s comedy is wild, glamorous, fiery, and provocative.


    Grace has just announced a UK tour Grace Campbell Is On Heat

    from October to December 2024. Buy tickets now via TicketMaster: https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/grace-campbell-tickets/artist/1832543 or visit Grace’s website.


    Follow @DisGraceCampbell on Instagram and visit https://www.disgracecampbell.com/ 🎧💘 We also highly recommend ‘28 Dates Later’ Grace’s new podcast, available to download wherever you get your podcasts.


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  • We meet artist Doron Langberg at his new exhibition in London at Victoria Miro Gallery. Night is a hymn to nocturnal worlds both interior and exterior, and the spaces of ambiguity, opportunity and liberation – physical and psychological – that open up after dark. We also meet Doron's gallerists Victoria Miro and Glenn Scott Wright.


    Doron Langberg’s intimate yet expansive take on relationships, sexuality, nature, family and the self proposes how painting can both portray and create queer subjectivity, forging a relationship between interior and exterior realities and the ways in which they shape and are shaped by one another.


    Titled after queer New York parties and club nights such as Merge and Wrecked, the spaces in these new paintings are worlds in themselves, sites of multiple layers and levels of experience and connection. Together, the works create a narrative arc that follows the course of an evening, a night out becoming the morning after as we move from Basement to Sunrise. The exhibition is accompanied by a new essay by New York-based writer and therapist Hannah Baer.

      

    Prominent among a new generation of figurative painters, Doron Langberg creates luminous works that celebrate the physicality of touch – in subject matter and process. Depicting a range of subjects, from queer love to wildflowers and sweeping landscapes, the broad scope of themes and experiences in Langberg’s work are underscored by his deeply felt use of paint. Aspects of nature are an enduring source of inspiration, resonating feelings of connection through flowers depicted in close up or as part of enveloping vistas.


    The works on view in Venice were painted en plein air at different times of the year and include cultivated garden plants as well ostensibly wild or self-seeded varieties – such as ragwort, thistle and dandelion. Langberg paints these fleeting moments spontaneously in one session, alighting on patches of ground and recording them in bursts of activity. Flowers and foliage spring from the whiteness of the canvas in flurries of brushstrokes, preserved by the artist as if moments of revelation.

     

    For the artist, painting nature as an ‘embodied experience’ is key. Capturing both external realities and internal states of mind, he makes a connection with artists across history – for example, the landscapes of Munch or Van Gogh. The work points to the broader significance of landscapes exterior and interior, and how they relate to or signify our own emotional states.


    Doron Langberg: Night, featuring large-scale tableaux of nightclub and nocturnal beach scenes, is on view at Victoria Miro, London, is now open and runs until 28 March 2024. Free entry. Visit: https://online.victoria-miro.com/doron-langberg-london-2024/


    Victoria Miro, Venice is concurrently presents an exhibition of landscapes and flower paintings by Langberg, whilst Part of Your World, the artist’s first solo institutional presentation in Europe, on view at Kunsthal Rotterdam runs until 26th May 2024.


    Follow @DoronLangberg and @VictoriaMiroGallery on Instagram. Thanks for listening! Visit @TalkArt for images and more details.


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  • Talk Art Special Episode! We meet Paul Green, President and Founder of Halcyon Gallery and Kate Brown, Halcyon's Creative Director. #AD


    We explore the epic new Andy Warhol exhibition BEYOND THE BRAND, dedicated to the life and work of Andy Warhol which is now open at Halcyon's galleries until 7th April at 148 & 29 New Bond Street, London. Free to visit!


    ‘The reason I’m painting this way is that I want to be a machine, and I feel that whatever I do and do machine-like is what I want to do.’

    ANDY WARHOL


    Andy Warhol (1928 – 1987) explored the intersection between art and commerce like no other artist in history. Beginning his career as a commercial illustrator, his transition to contemporary artist was marked by the depiction of everyday products such as Campbell’s Soup cans, Brillo boxes and Coca-Cola bottles.

    Born Andrew Warhola, the artist ‘Americanised’ his name and transformed himself into a brand. He contrived a public persona that was apparently naïve to the implications of his work; ever armed with glib remarks to deflect questions from journalists. As he became active in numerous industries, ‘Andy Warhol’ became a record label, a production company and a publisher.


    His commitment to the exploration of commercial themes persisted throughout his career as is best demonstrated by the Ads series, created towards the end of his life. Through these works, Warhol elevated advertisements, transforming them into vibrant, captivating works of art. In doing so, he blurred the line between commercial design and fine art more directly than at any point in his career.


    Warhol’s seismic contribution to art history is that he tied his work to a collective consciousness more closely than any other artist had before. His art is a pure reflection of popular culture in his lifetime and the spirit of western capitalism.


    Andy Warhol, Beyond the Brand will run until 7th April. Visit Halcyon Gallery's two spaces at 148 & 29 New Bond Street, London to see this powerful exhibition!

    Free entry. Show runs until 7th April 2024: https://www.halcyongallery.com/exhibitions/79-andy-warhol-beyond-the-brand/


    Follow @HalcyonGallery on Instagram.


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  • We meet the LEGENDARY, trailblazing artist, author, educator and feminist icon Judy Chicago (b. 1939, Chicago, USA!!! We explore her major retrospective in New York's New Museum. Judy Chicago: Herstory spans her epic sixty-year career to encompass the full breadth of the artist’s contributions across painting, sculpture, installation, drawing, textiles, photography, stained glass, needlework, and printmaking.


    Expanding the boundaries of a traditional museum survey, the exhibition will place six decades of Chicago’s work in dialogue with work by other women across centuries in a unique Fourth Floor installation. Entitled “The City of Ladies,” this exhibition-within-the-exhibition will feature artworks and archival materials from over eighty artists, writers, and thinkers, including Simone de Beauvoir, Hildegard of Bingen, Artemisia Gentileschi, Zora Neale Hurston, Frida Kahlo, Hilma af Klint, and Virginia Woolf, among many others.


    Taking over four floors of the Museum, “Herstory” traces the entirety of Chicago’s practice from her 1960s experiments in Minimalism and her revolutionary feminist art of the 1970s to her narrative series of the 1980s and 1990s in which she expanded her focus to confront environmental disaster, birth and creation, masculinity, and mortality. Contextualizing her feminist methodology within the many art movements in which she has participated—and from whose histories she has frequently been erased—“Herstory” will showcase Chicago’s tremendous impact on American art and highlight her critical role as a cultural historian claiming space for women artists previously omitted from the canon.


    Summer 2024, Serpentine gallery in London will present a new exhibition of Judy Chicago. Revelations will be Chicago’s first solo presentation in a major London institution. One of the most provocative and influential artists working today, Chicago came to prominence in the late 1960s when she challenged the male-dominated landscape of the art world by making work that was boldly from a woman’s perspective.

    With a specific focus on drawing – a medium that has occupied Chicago’s artistic practice for over seven-decades – Judy Chicago: Revelations charts the arc of the artist’s career allowing visitors to uncover the breadth of her practice. It brings together archival and never-before-seen artworks, preparatory studies, notebooks and sketchbooks that reveal her working process and rigour in incorporating intensive, often years-long research. The exhibition presents the ways in which drawing functions as a mode to express Chicago’s innermost thoughts, hopes and, at times, most painful memories and experiences.


    Judy Chicago lives and works in New Mexico, USA.


    Follow @Judy.Chicago and @NewMuseum on Instagram

    Visit HERSTORY at the New Museum until 3rd March 2024: https://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/judy-chicago-herstory

    Visit Judy's official website: https://judychicago.com/


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  • We meet mouth artist Henry Fraser from his studio to discuss his art and how his life story led to the award winning theatre play The Little Big Things. Based on the Sunday Times best-selling autobiography by Henry Fraser, The Little Big Things is a new British musical with an explosive theatrical pop soundtrack in a world premiere production. This uplifting and colourful new musical is a life-affirming reminder about the transformative power of family, and how sometimes it really is the little things which matter the most.


    An avid sportsman and academy player with a premiership Rugby club, Henry Fraser’s life changed forever when in 2009 he had a diving accident. From that moment he had a new life to live as a tetraplegic and new circumstances to accept and adapt to. Henry’s defiance and determination to prosper against devastating odds led to him wheeling himself out of hospital a whole year earlier than predicted. Today he is a successful artist, inspirational speaker and best-selling author.


    Follow @HenryFraser0 & the musical @TLBTmusical on Instagram and also @HenryFraser0 on X (Twitter).

    Visit his official website: https://henryfraserart.com/

    Go see Henry's play The Little Big Things in London at Soho Place: https://sohoplace.org/shows/the-little-big-things


    Henry's story


    It was July 18th 2009 when everything in my life changed. It was a glorious day. Blue sky, sunshine, friends all surrounded me on that golden beach. I ran into the sea thinking it was a good depth to dive forward turns out the sea bed kicked up slightly right in front of me. I collided head first and momentarily blacked out. I opened my eyes expecting to stand up, walk out the sea and join my friends. I opened my eyes floating in the sea completely unable to move. It’s amazing to think that one little thing, one brief moment, can change everything.


    From that moment I had a new life to live. New circumstances to accept and adapt.


    Three weeks spent in a Portuguese hospital (they were incredible !) with surgeries to realign my dislocated fourth vertebrae. Two weeks in intensive care in the UK. Five and half more months in hospital before I was back in the real world again.


    In that time I’ve experienced so many things.


    In January of 2015 I taught myself how draw and paint by holding the utensils in my mouth.


    I had a sore on my back that meant I was bed bound for a few weeks.


    I was getting bored sitting in bed for days on end so I found an app on my iPad that I could use for drawing by holding a stylus in my mouth and touching the screen. I loved it.

    When my health had improved I was able to get it of bed and I taught myself how to draw and paint with actual pencils and paint by attaching the utensils to a mouth stick.


    As a young child I loved art. But as I grew up I fell out of love with the subject. I lost all my enthusiasm to create.


    Without my accident I never would have found that love I had as a kid.


    Adversity has given me a gift.


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  • New Talk Art special episode!!!! We meet ICONIC artist Julie Mehretu, presented by BMW. #AD


    What does Julie Mehretu think about when creating BMW Art Car 20? Find out on this week’s @TalkArt episode!


    @RussellTovey and @RobertDiament interview @JulieMehretu during the process for planning and creating #BMWArtCar20. To design #artcar20, Mehretu translates her signature multi-layered motifs onto the contours of the #BMWMHybridV8. Obscured photographs, dotted grids, neon-coloured spray paint and her iconic gestural markings create abstract visual forms across the body of the car.

     

    Mehretu’s collaboration with BMW goes beyond the Art Car. Julie Mehretu and Mehret Mandefro (@drmehret), Emmy-nominated producer, writer and co-founder of the Realness Institute which aims to strengthen the media ecosystem across Africa, will host a series of gatherings across Africa in 2025 to create space for artists to meet, exchange, and collaborate in translocal ways.

     

    Follow @JulieMehretu and @BMWGroupCulture to stay in the loop for more sneak peeks of the next addition to this legendary car collection.


    Ideas of time, space and place are enmeshed in the work of Julie Mehretu. Drawing is fundamental to her practice, whether in works on paper, painting or printmaking. The artist’s dextrous mark-making comes together in a characteristic swirl, an act of assertion in response to social and political change. ‘As I continue drawing,’ she says, ‘I find myself more and more interested in the idea that drawing can be an activist gesture. That drawing – as an informed, intuitive process, a process that is representative of individual agency and culture, a very personal process – offers something radical.’


    The countdown for the unveiling of the 20th BMW Art Car is underway. On 21st May, the BMW M Hybrid V8, designed by artist Julie Mehretu and set to compete at the 24 Hours of Le Mans on 15th/16th June, will be presented at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France. The artist is already providing glimpses into her work. Additionally, it is now confirmed that the Art Car will carry the starting number 20 and will be driven by Sheldon van der Linde (RSA), Robin Frijns (NED), and René Rast (GER).

     

    The #20 BMW M Hybrid V8 will be the first Art Car since the 2017 season, where the BMW M6 GTLM designed by John Baldessari raced at the 24 Hours of Daytona (USA), followed by the virtual BMW M6 GT3 Art Car by Cao Fei at the FIA GT World Cup in Macau (CHN). In the past, the most famous BMW Art Cars have participated in Le Mans: in 1975, Alexander Calder’s BMW 3.0 CSL, in 1976, Frank Stella’s BMW 3.0 CSL, in 1977, Roy Lichtenstein’s BMW 320i Turbo, in 1979, Andy Warhol’s BMW M1, in 1999, Jenny Holzer’s BMW V12 LMR, and in 2010, Jeff Koons’ BMW M3 GT2. This illustrious collection is now enriched by Julie Mehretu’s BMW M Hybrid V8.


    For the design of the 20th BMW Art Car, Mehretu uses the colour and form vocabulary of an existing large-format painting from a more recent series of works: obscured photographs, dotted grids, neon-coloured spray paint and Mehretu’s iconic gestural markings give her design an abstract visual form. She transfers the resulting image motif as a high-resolution photograph onto the vehicle’s contours using a 3D mapping technique. This creates the unique artistic foiling with which the BMW M Hybrid V8 will compete in the Le Mans race.


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  • We meet all-round LEGEND, Dan Levy, the Emmy award winning producer, writer, director, actor and art collector!! We discuss his love of art, living with art and collecting, growing up in Canada, The Group of Seven (Canadian landscape painters from 1920s-30s), his collaborations with Jonathan Anderson/Loewe, his love of work #DavidWojnarowicz’s art & @PPOWGallery & @Visual_Aids charity, and his brand new art-inspired movie Good Grief out now on Netflix in which an artist (Dan) grieves the loss of his famous writer husband (Luke Evans) then takes his two best friends on a trip to Paris, where they unpack messy secrets and hard truths.


    We explore what it was like to play the role of a painter but also to collaborate with a real world artist Kris Knight @KrisKnight who was commissioned by Dan to make the paintings within/prominently featured at the end of the film… in MARGATE!!!! Plus the time he bought a Schitt’s Creek related watercolour painting on Instagram made by a super fan, the artist Anna Brindley!!! We discuss the artwork of Patrick Carroll @PatCar, and share the love for our mutual friend @EmmaLouiseCorrin (who portrays a determined performance artist in Good Grief!) 


    Follow @InstaDanJLevy


    Watch Good Grief: https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81462549


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  • We meet artist Alexandria Tarver to discuss her current solo exhibition at Deli Gallery, New York. Tarver recontextualizes the traditional floral motif into a space between memory, idealization, and presence.


    Her process begins on a ritualistic evening walk around New York City. For Tarver, the night is a dynamic time oscillating between rest, dreams, and frenzy, often unleashing subconscious desires restrained during the day. It's a period when trouble happens, stars become visible, and the city, never at rest, mirrors the cycle akin to death. The variability of the city's nighttime sky, influenced by observation points, weather, and proximity to building lights, becomes a rich palette of colors, each night unique.


    On these walks the artist identifies potential subjects, often floral clusters, in an action akin to foraging. Tarver photographs the subject and then creates a preliminary composition in pencil on paper. The subject is finally rendered in oil on panel, employing techniques from various historical movements including post-impressionism, New England mid-century representationalism, and gestural abstraction. The primary layer, accompanied by lapis and cerulean blue ground, captures the electric color of twilight. The timeline varies, with some paintings taking weeks or even months. The vibrant blue of twilight oscillates against the flesh-tones of the central flower form—this blue sometimes deepening, sometimes shifting into an evening haze, sometimes sinking into purple-black depth, a depth halted by the ever-present electric glow of the skyline.


    Tarver finds profound meaning in the repetition and variations on a theme. As she explores the possibilities of painting, she grapples with the act of painting and its evolution over time and practice. The disciplined dedication to a subject or landscape, evident in artists like Maureen Gallace, Vija Celmins, and Jim Dine, is mirrored in Tarver's formal repetition, which becomes a grounding force that reflects the rhythm of day-to-day existence.


    In the paintings, flowers and markings are situated as acting figures within the particular, ever-variable, and intensely observed color field of the night sky as viewed from the concrete grounds of the city. Much like Ellsworth Kelly's plant drawings served as a device for him, the plant in Tarver's works acts as a stand-in, offering a guiding framework for her hand and a pathway to reflect on the long nights she has experienced. During a vulnerable period around 2013 and 2014, marked by the sickness and imminent mortality of Tarver's father, the practice of looking at flowers and creating paintings became a place of solace. This loyalty endures, providing a grounding force and a way to navigate through fear, pain, and sorrow.


    Alexandria Tarver (b. 1989) received a BFA from New York University in 2011. Recently her work has been included in group exhibitions at GRIMM Gallery, London (2023), Marinaro Gallery, NY (2023), Public Gallery, London (2022), UncleBrother, NY (2021), Arsenal Gallery, NY (2019), Et. Al. etc., San Francisco (2017), Danziger Gallery, NY (2016). Tarver also organized group shows Sentimental at Fitness Center for the Arts & Tactics in Brooklyn (2013) and #1 at The Hose in Brooklyn (2013). Tarver had her first solo exhibition with Deli Gallery in 2015. She lives and works in New York City.


    Follow @AlexandriaTarver on Instagram and @DeliGallery.

    Visit: https://deligallery.com/Alexandria-Tarver-New-Paintings-2024


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  • SEASON 20 BEGINS!!! We meet ICON of film and Hollywood costumes SANDY POWELL OBE!!!! We discuss her love of art, collaborating with legendary queer artists/creative minds Derek Jarman and Lindsay Kemp, a 25 year collaboration with choreographer Lea Anderson, and how art informs her costume design. We explore a series of portraits of Sandy painted by Sadie Lee. Sandy is a multi award-winning Costume Designer who has won three Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards for Best Costume Design, plus the recent honour of BAFTA Fellowship 2023, and two Costume Designers Guild Awards.


    Londoner, Sandy, studied at St Martins School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design where she specialised in theatre design. She started her professional career in fringe with the National Theatre working on numerous productions including Orders of Obedience and Rococo. She went on to design sets and costumes for productions of Lumiere and Son, Bright Side and Culture Vulture. As a student and one of the leading lights of the international theatre scene she most admired was Lindsay Kemp, the gifted director, designer and performer. On impulse she spoke to him on the phone and said how much she wanted to work with him. After seeing samples of her work he asked her to join him in Milan as costume designer for his theatre company. During her 3 year spell with him she worked on Nijinsky which was a study of the start and madness of the great Russian dancer. She also designed the costumes for The Big Parade, a tragic- comic homage to the silent screen, and the stage and screen versions of A Midsummer Nights Dream. In 1985 she rapidly established herself in the world of video working on many pop promos with director Derek Jarman and with him on his film Caravaggio, and Zenith's For Queen and Country.


    Born in 1960, she was raised in south London, where she was taught to sew by her mother on a Singer sewing machine, and began experimenting with cutting and adapting patterns at a young age. Educated at Sydenham High School, she went on to complete an Art Foundation at Saint Martins in 1978, and in 1979 she began a BA in Theatre Design at Central School of Art and Design (now Central Saint Martins). In 1981 she withdrew from her degree to assist a costume designer who worked for a fringe theatre company called Rational Theatre, and also began a long collaboration with Lindsay Kemp designing for him in Italy and Spain.


    In 1984 when, after a spell as a costume designer on music videos, she moved into the film industry. Her break came when the film director and stage designer Derek Jarman appointed her costume designer on his film, Caravaggio (1986), starring Tilda Swinton and Sean Bean. To date, Powell has worked as Costume Designer on over 50 films, including Orlando (1992);The Crying Game (1992); Interview with the Vampire (1994); Michael Collins (1996); The Wings of The Dove (1997); Hilary and Jackie (1998); The End of the Affair (1999); Gangs of New York (2002); Far From Heaven (2002); Sylvia (2003); The Aviator (2005); The Departed (2006); Shutter Island (2010) Hugo (2011) The Wolf of Wall Street (2013); Cinderella (2015); Carol (2015); Mary Poppins Returns (2018); and Living (2022). She has earned 76 award nominations and won 27 awards in her career, including Academy Awards for Shakespeare in Love (1998) and The Aviator (2004), a BAFTA Award for Velvet Goldmine (1998), and both an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for The Young Victoria (2010).


    Follow @TheSandyPowell on Instagram.


    Thanks for listening!!! This season is shaping up to be one of the most fascinating so far!!! Thanks for listening. Follow us @TalkArt for images of works we discuss.


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  • It's 2024!!!! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! We meet iconic writer, director, and producer RYAN MURPHY, best known for American Horror Story, Dahmer, Pose, The Andy Warhol Diaries, Ratched, The Watcher and Glee. We explore his love of collecting and preserving artworks including Old Masters, his passion for artists Andy Warhol, Patrick Angus, Helen Frankenthaler, restoring and safeguarding Hans Hofmann’s house/studio, how art inspires his own creativity and writing, plus we discuss the forthcoming new TV series Feud: Capote vs The Swans, produced by Ryan and co-starring Talk Art's very own Russell Tovey.


    Born November 9, 1965 in Indianapolis, Indiana, US as Ryan Murphy is responsible for creating such hits as Nip/Tuck (2003), Glee (2009) and American Horror Story (2011). He attended a Catholic school till the eighth grade and graduated from Warren Central High School. He went on to study journalism at the Indiana University Bloomington, where he was also a member of a vocal ensemble, and went on to intern in the style section of The Washington Post in 1986. In 1990 he got into screenwriting, but only in 1999 was his first story produced: it was Popular (1999), a teen comedy show, which he co-created with Gina Matthews and which run for two seasons. In 2003 he created Nip/Tuck (2003), which brought him his first Emmy nomination. He won the award six years later, when in 2009 he directed the pilot of his hit series Glee (2009) which he co-created with Ian Brennan and Brad Falchuk. In 2011 he and Falchuk co-crated another highly popular series, American Horror Story (2011).


    In 2015 he was awarded the Award for Inspiration from amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research. In 2018 Murphy signed a five-year $300 million development deal with Netflix. He is a pan equal opportunities activist, both through his movies and television projects which very often focus on the LGBTQ+ community, and as a creator of the Half Initiative, which aims at making Hollywood more inclusive for women and minorities. In 2023, Murphy received the prestigious ‘Carol Burnett Award’ at the Golden Globes. He has won five Golden Globes and has been nominated 16 times for his work. He's been married to photographer David Miller since 2012. They have three sons, Logan Phineas, Ford, and Griffin Sullivan.


    Follow @RyanMurphyProductions on Instagram. Stream 'Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans', which premieres on January 31, 2024, on FX and will then stream on Hulu. The series will also be available worldwide to stream via Disney+ including the UK and Europe.


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  • It's the Talk Art CHRISTMAS EPISODE!!!


    We meet the incomparable Boy George: Grammy, Brit and Ivor Novello award-winning lead singer of Culture Club, songwriter, music producer, fashion designer, artist/painter and LGBTQ+ vanguard. All in all, he's a pop culture ICON!!! In this generous, candid, TWO HOUR feature-length special, you can immerse yourself in the creative and fascinating mind of BOY GEORGE!!!!


    We explore George's lifetime making art (he has been painting since childhood) in tandem with singing, writing and producing music, collaborating with Sinead O’Connor, his love of Yoko Ono’s art and music, being summoned for lunch with Andy Warhol, his respect & friendships with Duggie Fields, Tracey Emin, John Maybury, Leigh Bowery, Keith Haring, Vivienne Westwood and Derek Jarman plus getting to meet legends Lou Reed, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Frank Sinatra!


    Plus George reads our star signs and reveals that Russ & Rob share both their star sign and moon.. AND he sings for us his part from Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’!!!!! We discover details of his infinite hat collection but also the art he has collected including a number of artworks by David Bowie as well as Grayson Perry and Yoko Ono. 


    George’s best selling book KARMA is out now. Told in his inimitable style, this definitive autobiography tells the story of the charismatic frontman - the drama, the music, his journey of addiction and recovery, surviving prison, meeting legends like David Bowie, Madonna, Diana Ross and Prince, and the highs and lows of a life lived in the spotlight and in the headlines.


    In 2024, Boy George will make his return after 20 years to Broadway in the musical Moulin Rouge! The larger-than-life English superstar will take over the role of the boisterous, top-hatted impresario Harold Zidler in the Tony Award-winning musical for a limited run from Tuesday, February 6th to Sunday, May 12th 2024.


    Follow @BoyGeorgeOfficial on Instagram and @BoyGeorge on X (formerly Twitter). Buy his new autobiography KARMA at Waterstones. Book tickets for Moulin Rouge and learn more here: @MoulinRougeBway


    HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!!! Thanks for listening to us for the past 5 years!!! We have loved celebrating our 5th anniversary in 2023.

    We will return on New Year's Day with another ICONIC guest. Until then, have a magical Christmas. Love, Russell & Robert Xx


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  • We meet Berlin-based Swedish artist Anna Uddenberg to explore HOME WRECKERS, her first UK solo exhibition, at The Perimeter. Working primarily in sculpture, installation and performance, Anna Uddenberg’s practice reflects on taste and class, appropriation and sexuality, and explores systemised relations of power and conventions of control in the context of a technology-bound consumer culture.


    At The Perimeter, Anna Uddenberg presents works made over the past seven years, featuring 10 sculptures of hypersexualised and overextended faceless female figures. The sculptures featured in HOME WRECKERS point at the absurdity in the sexualisation of the female form in advertisements for domestic items such as sofas, prams and even for laundry detergent. Uddenberg has created a range of generic interior environments as a setting for these sculptures, transforming The Perimeter with soft furnishings such as sofas and carpets to further emphasise the staged associations of femininity and domesticity. These staged domestic environments which could be found in homes, hotels, on reality TV sets or in furniture showrooms, feel both accessible and familiar. They evoke specific notions of expected behaviours, assigning a performative value to the acts undertaken therein. 


    Alongside these sculptures, Uddenberg presents her first ever film at The Perimeter, co-directed with Thyago Sainte. This film also marks The Perimeter’s first time supporting the production of a new commission, which will go on to be shown internationally. The work has been made possible with the additional support of Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum and Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler. 


    Uddenberg has reached art world, fashion and Internet notoriety with her practice. Three sculptures featured at The Perimeter were originally produced for a Balenciaga advertising campaign for its Balenciaga Crocs collaboration in 2021. Uddenberg most recently received a viral response to a performance piece, ‘Continental Breakfast’ staged at Meredith Rosen Gallery in April 2023. Provoking a strong and ‘real' reaction in the digital space opens up Uddenberg’s practice, as she has long desired for her work to transcend representation, stating, “Instead of representing something, I want to trigger something so that it becomes real in a way.” As the lines between reality and fiction become increasingly blurred, Uddenberg postulates that “Maybe the fake is more authentic than whatever you think of as authentic”. 


    Concurrently with her exhibition at The Perimeter, Anna Uddenberg is staging an exhibition at the Kunsthalle Mannheim in celebration of her being awarded the Hector Art Prize in 2022. In recognition of the conversation between these exhibitions, The Perimeter has co-published a catalogue with the Kunsthalle Mannheim, which documents the breadth of Anna Uddenberg’s practice to date.


    Anna Uddenberg was born in Stockholm in 1982 and today lives and works in Berlin and Stockholm. She studied at Frankfurt Städelschule and Stockholm’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

    Follow @Filet_Minion_Thong on Instagram and visit @ThePerimeterLondon & @KunsthalleMa. Exhibition is free to visit and runs until 22nd December 2023.

    💝 Thanks Alex V. Petalas, @MeredithRosenGallery & @KraupaTuskanyZeidler


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  • We meet painter Andrew Cranston from his studio in Glasgow, Scotland to discuss his major new solo exhibition at Hepworth Wakefield.


    Andrew Cranston was born in Hawick in the Scottish Borders in 1969, and now lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland. Cranston studied at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen and then completed his postgraduate study at the Royal College of Art, where he was taught by Peter Doig and Adrian Berg.


    Andrew Cranston: What made you stop here? features 38 new and recent paintings that range from large-scale canvases to intimate works painted on old linen-bound book covers, comprising subjects that include still life, landscape, seascape, portraits, and interior scenes. This is the first public gallery to present a solo exhibition of his works. 


    Engaging with the layered emotional quality and pathos of everyday life, as well as a strong sense of place, be it real or imagined, Cranston’s evocatively titled paintings contain compelling and intriguing narratives that have the collaged dream-like quality of recollection and what he calls ‘creative misremembering’.


    His formally inventive and highly intimate paintings find new ways to connect the personal and art historical past with the present through a gamut of visual and literary references and shared experiences. The paintings exploit what is perhaps only glanced existing in the periphery of vision and embody a sense of revelation, wonder and oddness in familiar situations. Connections and highly personal associations are deeply entwined in these works creating a rewarding and memorable experience.


    On display at The Hepworth Wakefield for the first time is one of Cranston’s most recent paintings entitled, A snake came to my coffee table on a hot, hot day to drink there (2023), which has been generously acquired for Wakefield’s art collection through the JW Anderson Collections Fund. It features what Cranston says is ‘an intrusion of something alien into the familiar, an unlikely presence and threat into the domestic’. A large number of other works in the exhibition, lent from private collections, have never been shown publicly before.


    Follow @Andrew.Cranston on Instagram and @HepworthWakefield.


    Andrew Cranston: What made you stop here? is now open and runs until 2nd June 2024

    Exhibition entry is £13 / £11 / FREE for Members, Wakefield District residents and under 18s.

    Visit: https://hepworthwakefield.org/whats-on/andrew-cranston/


    Visit Andrew's galleries: Ingleby @InglebyGallery Modern Art @stuartshavemodernart and Karma @KarmaKarma9.


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