What is Art For? Ben Luke (A Brush With podcast) and his new book: ART INSIDER

Guest: Ben Luke (Host of A Brush With)

Ben Luke is an art journalist whose voice reaches a wider audience through his successful podcast A Brush With, where each episode is dedicated to an artist interview led by him. His new book, What is art for? Contemporary artists on their inspirations, influences and disciplines (2025, Heni), stems from it.

Art Insider is an interview segment with fascinating figures of the art field who lift the veil on their corner of contemporary art. 

The scope of Luke’s questions is aimed toward building a good perspective on what artists look at, listen to, and where they draw their energy, inspiration and creative flow from.  This spirited worldview applies also, in this episode, to pop music and visual art crossovers in the 80s and the boisterous 90s whose suppressed history Luke knows and shares brilliantly.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hi there and welcome to our bi-weekly digital meeting place. We're about to let someone else in for our first art insider episode of the season, none other than Ben Luke. Widely known for his podcasts, A Brush With, but also for his writing in the art newspaper, where he is a contributing editor. Ben Luke turned out to be a real art nerd, which made for the most enjoyable conversation. As ever, finding out about each person's unique journey into art is fascinating, not only for us in the art bubble, but also for you out there in your own meanderings in contemporary art. So we talk about his new book, What is Artful: Contemporary Artists on Their Inspirations, Influences and Disciplines, published by Henny, which revisits the A Brushwit podcast and presents the interviews with a completely new framing. You'll find out all about them in the episode. But mostly, what I find really, really fascinating is that this book shows that digital formats respond to different needs than a printed book, that they are complementary. In fact, it is quite interesting as an exercise to move from one to the other. And even if you are on a brush with a fictionado or a ficcionada, you can even try to figure out what interviews you would have taken as opposed to the ones that were chosen, and also compare and enjoy the imagery that or the illustrations that accompany each interview. We also talk about audiences, so talking about formats, obviously they would not exist without you out there listening to podcasts and reading and enjoying books. So we talk about audiences more from the perspective of museum visitors and museum management. And we exchanged about this nagging feeling that I have that audiences are considered by most art spaces as a sort of shapeless blob, a sort of average of all the averages of all possible behaviors. And this word also carries a lot of biases. An attendance of a museum diminishing is interpreted in many, many ways and can be seen in many, many aspects. So it is really interesting to talk about these things and also to try and contribute. If museums, museum directors, museum teams are listening to this episode. I think it's really great to open the conversation, but also for you out there who go to exhibitions to reflect upon what you choose to go to, how you visit museums, but also how the information about the exhibitions is delivered to you. And that's a lot of what we focus on in this conversation. So, yes, here we are again, existing and spending time together virtually to go back to real life nourished. Because don't forget, we visit exhibitions so that you have to, or so that you experience them vicariously through us. And also so you can read books. You can find Ben Luke's What is Artful, published by Henny, through a link in the description notes if you want to purchase it or have a look at what it's about. This is not an affiliated link, by the way, I don't gain anything from that. And while you're at it, do sign up to the newsletter. As you know, I'm a writer, and by signing up, you will also have access to all my archive of texts on Substack, as well as the exhibitionist's files. Because each newsletter is in fact a little bouquet of useful links, post episode reflections, and also an easy way for you to support us through the Substack platform for less than what a beer costs these days. If you don't know Substack, it is also a place where you can find other writers, other creatives, you can wander about, and I usually post some links as well to other writers out there or other creatives who are doing interesting stuff. So I embarrassed myself trying to introduce Ben Luke the way he introduces his artists. I don't think I've ever been more self-conscious in this podcast in my life, but it was thrilling to do it, and it was even more thrilling to inquire about so many things in relation to museums, exhibitions, books, and artists and the 90s in the UK. So stick around. Here comes the episode. Enjoy. Hello, this is Exhibitionistas, the podcast where we explore art in all its iridescent nuance and diversity from all angles with different types of episodes, providing a variety of pathways into contemporary art. I'm your host, Joanna Pierre Nevis, contemporary art writer and curator. So, welcome to the first Arts Insider episode of the season, where I interview fascinating figures of visual arts to talk about their passions and their suggestions also for you to navigate your own experiences with more depth and pleasure. It is my immense honor to welcome to the podcast writer, editor, and broadcaster Ben Luke. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

So Ben Luke studied fine art and history at Middlesex University, where his conversations with fellow students and invited artists progressively led him to swap the paintbrush with a pen. So after graduating, he worked for the press office at Tate Gallery, as it was named then, for eight years, going from press assistant to senior press officer. In 2005, he had acquired such experience with art and artists, and such a talent for finding unsuspected entry points into a subject or a body of work that he started writing for several magazines and newspapers, including the Art Newspaper, which he works for as contributing editor and podcast host. He also writes for artist monographic publications and is regularly invited to host artist talks in several art spaces and galleries. In 2017, the Art Newspaper launched the podcast The Week in Art. And it is in this first episode that we hear Ben Luke's voice for the first time, a voice that could very well win the trophy of the gentlest voice in the podcasting industry. In addition to this, as a host and a writer, Ben Luke has the ability to be precise, verbally playful, and incredibly comforting. The first episode of The Week in Art covers a conference at the National Gallery around Nazi looted pieces and Rachel Whitereed's solo exhibition at Tate Modern then. It was also the first time that we got to listen to Ben Luke's trademark in art podcasting, carefully worded introductions read with what I would characterize as a sort of syncopated composure. Ben Luke has another podcast with, I presume, a wider range of listeners, focusing solely on artist interviews. It's called A Brush With. It is quite established now, and was inspired initially by a QA interview published in the art newspaper since 2019, where a number of set questions were asked to different figures of the industry. Ben Luke pitched it as a podcast at the start of the pandemic on the 22nd of May of 2020, an effective pitch for an available audience then. The podcast was officially launched in August 2020 with Michael Armitage and counts prestigious artists across 120 episodes, such as Ronnie Horn, I Weiwei, William Kendridge, Joan Jonas, Kapuani Kiwanga, Jeff Wool, Marlene Dumas, Lebaina Hemid, amongst many others. But what brings him here is precisely the book stemming from the podcast, A Brushwit, titled What is Art Full? Out now, so you can purchase it after listening to this episode. And it contains a selection of 25 interviews from the podcast, but much more as well. So, Ben, do you want to present the book in your own words?

SPEAKER_00 9:17

Thank you very much. I just have to say that is an extraordinarily generous and kind introduction. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Um so yes, the the book is called What is Art For? You can see I'm holding it up so that Joanna can see it.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

For those who are watching.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Yeah, for those of you that are watching, it's it's uh it's a weighty tome, actually, 400 pages. Um and as you say, 25 artist interviews from the series, uh brushwith. Um and one of the things, of course, about podcasts, and especially the abrash with podcasts for which we don't record video, um, is that of course you can listen to these artists talking about their influences and cultural experiences, which is the kind of key factor of the Abrushwith podcast. You know, it's it's it's me talking to artists, yes, about their work, but also about their work through the prism of their experiences with culture. And I mean culture in its broadest sense, you know, it's it's visiting cities as much as as much as it is experiencing particular artworks and so on. And what we do in this book, and it's published with by Henny, and it and it's been a fascinating and an extraordinary process working with them on this, is really try to illustrate those interviews in a way that you of course you cannot with a podcast. And so I'm very pleased to say there is a very generous amount of imagery in this book. It's wonderful to for even for me who who conducted these interviews to read these interviews alongside pictures, and there are these fantastic um correspondences between the words and the images you're seeing of artworks, past, present, deep past, absolutely contemporary. You know, it's a it's a fascinating study, I think, in what artists are thinking now. And to see that on the page as as visual information as well as reading the artist's words, I think really justifies where we've done this book. And um alongside that I've written in the introduction, which I note that you uh you read very carefully and drew some some information from, um uh which explains this my background, but also why I'm interested in talking to artists and what what my fundamental motivation I guess is in wanting to have these long-form conversations. And then also, importantly, five short texts on artists that I've called anchors, and that's actually a term which I borrowed from the Tate. Actually, the ta um my years at the Tate, even before I left the Tate, they were they were beginning to talk about certain anchors around which the collection was formed.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

Oh, I see. I wondered where they came from. Yeah. And as I don't know if you explained that in the text, do you? No, no, I mean no, no, I didn't.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

I don't think I did, but but I think it's a c it's a crucial word, this this idea that there are sort of um influential anchors around whom from whom spring or from uh or who wait down to continue the the image, um a kind of a kind of discourse around which other artists can participate. And I think that that those that you know in this book there could have been many more, but the five that we chose go from Velazquez through Goya to Manet to Duchamp and to Louise Bourgeois, and and those are short texts which draw the kind of connections between the different artists' responses to them, but also try and explain their significance through time as well. So, for instance, that of course somebody like Velazquez, you know, we now think of one of the greatest of all time, but there was a kind of period between the his death in 1660 and and the 19th century where where, unless you were in the royal family in Spain or happened to be visiting a kind of noble's palace, you wouldn't have seen his work, you know.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Which happens a lot, of course, to all of us. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Yeah, of course, very much so. So it's it's just an extraordinary um thing to chart influence and to and to look at influence and how it manifests over time, uh, and how certain figures just reappear and reappear, and these anchor texts are very much about that.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

I had some trepidation going through the names because I started going down the list and thought, are there not going to be any women in this list? Because very often when I listen to the interviews, it is true that the famous artists of the past and the all these artists, most of the artists you're interviewing, are in their late 30s, 40s onward. And of course, the artists that were taught at university and that you encounter most often are men. So I'm curious to see. So it to ask about Louise Bourgeois particularly, was it a name that in terms of the women? Because I I presume you had that worry as well. Um, so how did Louise Bourgeois come about? Is it frequence in terms of referencing? Yes. And and how is she referred to?

SPEAKER_00 14:21

I think in the texts that I write about her, I write about that extraordinary span of time that she connects to. So on the one hand, Louise Bourgeois, I think to most people who do know her, might be uh kind might still be seen as a contemporary artist. She died in 2011, I think. Um but she her her artistic life spans way back in negotiation with an enormously important moments at different points. She so she married the art historian Robert Goldwater and they they relocated to the States from Paris. She her background, by the way, in Paris is extraordinary in this textile, you know, you know, antique dealing, textile manufacturing, extraordinary rich background which informs so much of her later development. She's she she moves with Robert Goldwater to the States, um and you know, and then has this extraordinary life in which, yes, as I say, she connects to surrealism, but then through the 60s she's um when she actually has a period where she she focuses entirely on psychoanalysis, where she's she has she has mental illness and she she deals with her mental illness through a very, very exacting process of psychoanalysis, which deeply informs her work on the one hand, but also means that she doesn't make art for quite a long time. And then she begins making art again in the 60s and produces I guess the kind of iconic, and I hate yet hate that word, but I genuinely think these are iconic, these works, you know, the iconic sculptural works, deeply sexual, deeply informed by the psychoanalysis, deeply probing her family relationships. Her drawings, by the way, as well as her sculptures, are the most extraordinary things. There is in at the Courtold Gallery in London, as we speak, there is a room of drawings by Louise Bourgeois, which are just astonishing. Absolutely breathtaking. She's an extraordinary figure from the point of view that she she spans decades and you know grew into that moment where installation art exploded and was a pioneer of different forms of uh installations with her cell works, which are you know sculptural installations which involve different forms of yeah, multiple different forms of materiality and contain these incredibly psychoanalytically informed but but also sort of psychically active spaces involving sculptural materials, textiles, you know, um architectural elements and so on. I think you know she does come up through the series A Brush with and in the book. And the reason I think she does is because she there's there is a kind of moral guidance that she has for artists. She has that's so interesting. Well what do you mean by that? I think I think she is an exemplar of a kind of tenacity that artists respond to. She, you know, um there are many ways in which she informs artists from a f on a formal level, um, but also it's her journey. And I think I think very often one of the most interesting things about artists and influence is the fact that they are interested in other artists as a formal example, as a way of learning about materials and and imagery and so on, but also because of the way they behave through their life and the way that they made their work.

SPEAKER_01 17:53

And what do you think is the most inspiring in her tenacity for artists?

SPEAKER_00 17:58

Well, I think it's that thing of you know, if you think about you you mention about male artists versus female artists, you imagine the environment in which she is making work right from the start. She it's a male-dominated world, and she is making an entirely individual practice surrounded by an entirely patriarchal system. And so if you are Louise Bourgeois, to have that tenacity to keep making work and make work with the individuality that you make it, and and just keep probing yourself through all of this, even when it was deeply unfashionable, when subject matter was anathema in the 60s in New York, you know, minimalism, come on, you know. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

And so you know she's like, And so feminine and so visceral and sexual. I mean, it was absolutely frowned upon. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

So to make that kind of work, I think is an exemplar for artists that you know you can you might be able to see a trend there happening in the corner of your eye, but don't be distracted by it. Do your thing, you know. Don't don't succumb to what happens to be the modish way of making work. Do what you need to do, not what you think people think you should do, you know.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Um on that note, that leads me to my first question to you. Um, because when I'm invited to you know do lectures or for um create to create workshops in fine arts universities, I often tell the students that being an artist is not the only possible outcome when you're studying fine arts. And that you are the the perfect example of that. So I was I'm really curious to in to know if you're switching from a creative process, like a more an artistic process, you were painting, to writing and to working in the institutional context. Um, if it was progressive, it was a if it was a sudden epiphany, how did that happen and how did you feel?

SPEAKER_00 20:06

It's it's a really interesting question because I think by the time I had come to the end of my degree, I realised I wasn't going to be a painter, apart from anything else. I was a bit disillusioned with the actual process. There were it's really interesting. In my first and second year, I had very stimulating conversations with particular tutors and so on. In my third year, I think my my universe of art expanded to a certain degree, but my it it made me feel that my work was inadequate. And so, therefore, I think I think by the time I'd come to the end of my degree, I very much thought that art history was the way forward. Um and so therefore, from there it was just a question of, you know, how do I manifest this interest in in art and and artists uh without being a painter? So it wasn't an obvious thing. I didn't sort of step outside of my degree and go, okay, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna go and work in a press office or anything like that. But it was I was clear that I wasn't gonna be a practicing artist. But I would say that having been in a studio and having to go into a studio and make up make art every day or four days a week or whatever it was when I was in my on my degree course, really stood me in good stead in trying to understand artists and trying to understand the way that they work and feel when they're in that studio because it is kind of terrifying, you know, going into a studio it can be really inspiring, but also it can be absolutely terrifying.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

There are moments, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

And I think I think that you know um one of the interesting things I ask about artist rituals, and you know, the the the subtitle of the book is Contemporary Artists on Their Influences, Inspirations and Disciplines. And one of the key things I think about the conversations I have on the podcast and in the book is that I'm interested in what it's like being an artist, you know, it's what why they do what they do. It's a kind of curious life. And and I think to have a bit of access to that during most. Student days, or be it with the entirely cosseted world that is, you know, studying a degree rather than just being an a free person with no job, you know, or whatever, you know, just going into the studio every day. Yeah, okay. So it was slightly softened by the fact that it was done within the context of a degree course, but still the idea of going into the studio and trying to make work, having that in my past, albeit briefly, I think has helped in terms of understanding artists.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

And since this is exhibitionists, of course, I must ask you about, you know, a foundational experience with art in general and how that came about. And I remember that in the Jenny Savile episode, you mentioned going to Paris with your school and how that expanded your your horizons about the vastness of other people creating something else elsewhere. Um, how did you how were you first touched by art? Do you remember? Was it an exhibition? Was it an artwork? Was it early? Was it later? Um, I mean, it must have been profound enough for you to decide to go into fine arts university.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Um it was really curious actually. I think that what got me into art was music. And when I was young, I was I loved pop music and I was reading popular music magazines in the 1980s when loads of musicians, pop musicians, people in the charts, were from an art background. From they've been to art school, you know.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

Absolutely. But you know, that's a very United Kingdom. I'm so sorry to interrupt you, but I'm so glad because I've spoken about this with many British uh people who are you know into art, artists, uh people who go to exhibitions with me, and I keep telling them, as someone who's not English and who didn't grow up grow up here, it is such a British thing to have Brian Ferry, um uh what's the what's the name of the pulp singer um he said?

SPEAKER_00 24:07

Jarvis Cocker.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Jarvis Cocker. So many artists or singers, and really important pop figure. I think even Damon Alban went to art school.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

Right, yeah. So it's sorry, but please do go on. Don't lose your absolutely right. I think this is really key that that you cannot underestimate the the influence of art schools on British music and why it's so fantastic. Yes, I agree. You know, because the ideas are coming from left field and some of those are being propelled into people's imaginations through popular music, and that to me is that that is what I mean about my liberation, if you like, into art. It came through music. So and it's not even the kind of trendy names, it's actually from that sort of generation after Brian Ferry. So Brian Ferry was archly artistic in the sense that he was taught by Richard Hamilton, yes, you know, in Newcastle, you know, so you couldn't get a better tutelage, and in fact, wonderfully, he I think he collects pop art, you know. Um but anyway, yes, so so the generation after Ferry, the people that were influenced by Brian Ferry are people like Duran Duran and people like that. So I was I was looking at these early 80s pop stars, I was like nine, ten years old at this stage, you know.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

Yeah, we were very young.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

Yeah, so reading Smash Hits magazine and Nick Rhodes from Durand Duran is banging on about Andy Warhol and Jean Cocteau, and you know, these sort of deeply mysterious figures were people there. I then was sent on a journey to look at, and it took me a little while, but I think by the age of 13 I had asked my mum to go to the Tate. And and so, age 13 or thereabouts, I'm pretty sure it was 1986, I went to the Tate with my mum, and I can remember very, very clearly being deeply inspired and being completely dazzled in a way by two artworks. And one was Autumnal Cannibalism, which is by Salvador Dali, which is one of those Spanish Civil War paintings, and I remember being particularly dazzled by the painting of a knife, the metal on a knife, the sort of kaleidoscopic paint that describes the sheen of the knife. So that was one thing, and then by Andy Warhol's Marilyn Diptych. And those kind of two artists kind of formed for me a kind of uh route through which to kind of a window, if you like, into the art world, and and from there I expanded out in different directions from so you know if you've got surrealism and pop and those two figures in particular as a kind of grounding, you can imagine how broad you can then, you know, broadly you can expand your horizons. And you're right, and and you know, not not long after that, um, there was a trip to Paris, I think, yeah, so I think when I was 16 I went to Paris. And by that stage, I'd you know, if you imagine I've got three years of being becoming very passionate about art by that stage, and I'd seen Andy Warhol's retrospective at the Haywood Gallery, and by this stage that was in 1989, it was the great um uh it was the most amazing retrospective, which was at MoMA in 1989. So you imagine two years after Warhol's death, and it's Kiniston McShine, the absolutely legendary MoMA curator, Kiniston McShine, the curator of primary structures that information.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

I'm fascinated with the exhibition information about technology and conceptual art. It's incre he is an incredible curator, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

Yeah, he is an amazing curator, and it was his Warhol show which toured from MoMA to the Haywood. I think it also went to the Centre Pompidou and elsewhere. Um so I saw that exhibition at the Haywood in 1989, and I think I saw it twice, and I and by that stage Warhol had become my pop star, if you know what I mean. I I had a portrait of a Fright Wick self-portrait poster from that exhibition and a Marilyn poster from that exhibition on my wall as if they were kind of icons of my you know teenage years. So they were.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

I mean, I remember in our childhoods she was still a an incredibly glowing presence in in the pop world, um, in popular culture. So was it her? What what because I'm always interested in the parts of life that connects you to art that then brings you back to life, you know?

SPEAKER_00 28:36

Yeah, absolutely. I think I think it was it was um it was everything that you just said, a more in the sense that yes, I can remember, for instance, we were reading biographies of Marilyn, and you know, her death was so fascinating. Of course, that's what Warhol picks up on. That's why he uses, you know, what that's why he uses that portrait of her, you know, that very straightforward glamour shot of her sorry, that's the wrong term, that very straightforward portrait of her, you know, that was a kind of casting image, effectively. Um and it was it was the glamour of Marilyn, the glamour of her death, frankly, the fact that there she was this intriguing tragic figure, I think was absolutely central, and Warhol picked up on that and knew by making these images that he was propelling that that tragedy into our lives. Um it was it was the kind of celebrity the the kind of allure of something completely opposite to the life of a suburban kid in Kent, you know, in you know, south of London. Yeah. It was something to do with that too, I'm sure. So, yes, it was it was all of those things, but it's important to say also that you know I did have Warhol as a poster on my wall as well, him one of the self-portraits, the Frightwood self-portraits.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

So Warhol was as part of that of the image was completely in there, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

And I remember also like reading um a serialization of the diaries of Warhol, which came out around the same time in the Sunday Times at that point. And you have to remember that this is during the AIDS crisis. So I can remember reading about Warhol and and the glamour of New York in the context of this terrible, terrible uh situation relating to AIDS, and you know, so many of the people he knew were dying just before he died. There was this sense in which this most glorious of scenes, that New York scene of the late 70s and early eighties, was somehow being destroyed, and it was, you know, that again the tragedy of that was somehow weirdly compelling to me. And so I, you know, it it represented something so other in terms of uh intellectual life, in terms of in terms of um the idea of this impossibly glamorous city, these terrible events that were happening in it, that was magnetically attracted to it, you know.

SPEAKER_01 31:05

Time for a short break to let you into the exhibitionista studio. Look around you. There is a computer, a good mic, but the software in the computer, which is a sort of virtual space through which you and I meet with a time and space delay. Then there are my books, and two perfectly round flintstones. All the magic happens here. I've been talking to a university whose students need placements, and I could use some assistance with production and research while also mentoring the future professionals of the field. But for that, I have to pay them, and that's where you come in. Do you know how much a membership costs? A mere £25 a year, which means that you pay two pounds a month. £25 for a whole year. When you buy a catalogue, that's the average price for one single book with two texts. If you become a member of Exhibitionists through a platform called Substack, you not only get to support Exhibitionistus, but you also receive on average about 18 more texts minimum that I will have written about many, many, many fascinating topics of contemporary arts, philosophy of arts, and many other subjects. There's a little bonus that I added, which is getting to ask me questions. If you have a question about contemporary arts, about the field, about the market, about studies in contemporary art, I'm very, very happy to do the research for you or to dig into my little well of knowledge and put the information out there for you. I can name you or you can be anonymous. So you get to put me to work as long as the questions and the prompts you give me are within my abilities and the research material available to me. Otherwise, you can go to DonorBox in the description notes. If you have one pound to spare, you can just donate one time, very, very small amounts. That's what I do with Wikipedia. Once in a while, I put some money in there because I use it almost daily, and I want to reward people who nourish me. Thank you for spending some time with me here in my studio. Thank you for considering this decent proposal. On with the episode. This would be a very long answer, I suppose, to this question, but if you could briefly auscultate the relationship between popular culture and contemporary art now, which is so different from what you're describing? Do you have a sort of a diagnosis of the reason why? And I think we'll talk about that later because you wrote really interestingly about the politics in museums. Um, but do you think that there's a disconnect between art and audiences, perhaps in certain ways, or this fear that people have a contemporary art because of this lack of um overlap between popular culture and contemporary art? Or maybe you don't agree with what I'm saying, perhaps.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

I think I think I agree with it and don't agree with it at the same time, if you know what I mean, in the sense that I think there is still a very pronounced engagement between contemporary art and popular culture, in the sense that there are very many artists who are accessing very popular images and making them dynamic in a new way within the field of contemporary art. I'm thinking about like Arthur Jayfer.

SPEAKER_01 35:09

Arthur Jaffer, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

He's the last artist in the book. He's the most recent interview in the book.

SPEAKER_01 35:15

And it's funny because he's one of the artists recently about whom I've had conversations around the shocking aspect of the work. Because it's so hard to shock us, right? It's so hard to provoke a sort of reaction, and he certainly does.

SPEAKER_00 35:31

Yeah. And I think like so, for instance, last year AJ produced this work, which I think is called it's its title keeps changing. So before I talked to him, it was called Redacted, and it was just that it was written like five star symbols. During the interview, he corrects me and says, No, it's called BG. No, sorry, no, it's called Ben Gazara, who is an actor from 1970. Then he said I later learned that he's changed the title to BG, and I think it may be Ben Gazara again now, but I don't know. Anyway, there is this. It will change probably again after the episode's. But he has made this extraordinary work, which I really hope will be shown in the UK at some point soon, but it's been shown in New York and LA, which is and I've seen it as a stream, um, but so I haven't seen it in a gallery context. But it is one of the genuinely most shocking artworks I've seen in my life, and uh I mean that in a good way, um, because what he does is he takes a popular form of popular culture, albeit at that stage a kind a kind of experimental form of popular culture, which is Martin Scorsese's film Taxi Driver, and he takes the final scene from Taxi Driver, final scenes from Taxi Driver, in which a figure, Travis Bickle, this this white supremacist taxi driver in New York, goes in and shoots a pimp and men visiting sex workers. But he recasts it based on information he had learned that originally the pimp character was was due to was supposed to be black, but that he was ri the the black character was written out and Harvey Kaitel plays him instead. So what amazingly AJ does is he recasts it, reshoots it effectively with with a black pimp and black people visiting the sex workers and casts it as a white supremacist repeatedly murdering black people. And it is one of the most genuinely like you you you use that term visceral, and I think that's a term which is is it's it's one of the best ways to describe what art does when it really hits you, you know. It does, it's like a I always say it's like a punch to the solar plexus, it takes the breath out of you, you know, and this does that, that this film by Arthur Jaffer, and it it it's just astonishing, and it it it's repeated 13 times with slightly different iterations each time. And then in the middle of it, there's this gorgeous moment where the pimp starts singing along with Stevie Wonder's wonderful song As, one of the greatest songs. Yes, one of my favourite songs, and and this sort of delicacy of this man who's but who's about to meet a very brutal death smoking on a on the on a porch, singing along with As is kind of like you know, again, just somehow weirdly shocking and and yeah, yeah. So that so there you go. There's art connecting to popular culture in in a way which I think is deep and profound, and which I think I would urge anybody to connect with, and AJ's work more generally also does that, you know. Um, but also I think yes, so there is also a disconnect between contemporary art and popular culture in in the in the sense that there I think you were sort of suggesting that there was a kind of suspicion around it that you know within popular circles to a degree. And I think that is a real problem because I think with contemporary art more than almost any other art form, there's this idea among certain people that they feel like they're being hoodwinked, that they're not in on the game, that somehow the rules haven't been explained to them and therefore they're the butt of a joke. Exactly. And there's actually a really good line about this from Alan Bennett, the playwright writer. He said that they should have a sign above the National Gallery which says you don't have to like everything.

SPEAKER_01 39:25

You know, absolutely. Yes. There is this sense of obligation of enjoying everything, because my theory is that it's presented as a masterpiece, so you feel stupid if you don't get it. And I think it's also the presentation of the artists, the genius, the masterpiece, the muse, you know, all of that patriarchal lingo I find, but you may have a different view, obviously.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

Yeah, that there there's there there are forms of construction around works of art, whether they be historic works of art or contemporary works of art, which are to which can act as a barrier to audiences. There's no doubt about that. But also I feel very passionately, and these conversations in this book and on the podcast absolutely attest to that. That artists are generous, you know, they want to connect to people. It's very rare that you meet an artist who says, No, I just want to make work for my peers. I'm not interested in connecting to a broader public. I don't care what people think of my work, you know. I you know, I can count on the fingers of one finger the number of artists who I think that applies to names, names. Yeah, but I know I don't I I I can't remember for certain whether it is the person I'm thinking of. But anyway, I know that basically, you know, there are some there and certainly have been in the past, people who just want to make work for their peers and they don't really care about having a broader connection. But certainly now, in my experience, artists want to connect. They're doing this. If you look at the answers to the question, what is art for, that's the title of the book. So many of the answers so many of these answers are about a kind of human connection.

SPEAKER_01 41:01

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

You know, and I think I think yes, there are all sorts of reasons why people feel that that contemporary art or art more generally is not for them. And some of that is in the language which can which is constructed around it and in the the kind of environmental and architectural structures that are that are around it too, of course. But I do feel profoundly that in the right circumstances, all forms of art, historic contemporary everything can connect very deeply to all of us, you know. So yeah, that's why we're doing it, right?

SPEAKER_01 41:35

Absolutely, yeah. And we dedicate our lives to it, not only the artists, but all of us, right? So, um question related to exhibition going. You were talking about um the 89 exhibition of Andy Warhol. So I'm presuming you're not going to answer this one, but I'm really curious to know if there's any exhibition that you feel that very deeply that you should have seen, you know, from the turn of the century to the 20th century to now. Is there any exhibition that you really deeply feel that you should have been to?

SPEAKER_00 42:09

Um there are so many. Um and uh yeah, I so I'm I think I'm sort of I'm not a I'm not a scholar of exhibition history, but I'm unofficially, I guess I'm a scholar of exhibition history. I'm constantly in my research dazzled by looking at installation shots of these extraordinary exhibitions that happened in the past and wishing I'd been there to see it. Like the first papers of Surrealism, which was a 1940s exhibition in New York, in which Marcel Duchamp put what it's it's called a mile of string. The um the amount of string he used is up for debate. But basically, he put string all the way across the exhibition as a kind of massive installation, completely destroying the opportunity for other other artists to work on the street. Enjoy the painting. So there's things like that which, you know, gosh, so many of those surrealist exhibitions actually, you know, surrealist object exhibitions and you know, the great exhibition in London, for the international surrealist exhibition. I think the the show I most if it's if it has to be won, the show I most wish I'd seen is the 1992 retrospective of Henri Matisse's work in New York at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. 400 works, all the Russian paintings alongside the American collections, and you know, all of the amazing European collections also lent for that show. It's like as close as possible as you could have got to a perfect Matisse show. And so I was I was in 1992 I was 19, and I couldn't get to New York. There was a version of it that travelled to Paris, but I didn't even see that. But the New York show was was the absolutely comprehensive one. It's curated by the great John Elderfield, who's one of the great Museum of Modern Art directors, a great historian of modernism, one of the most incredibly intense. researchers and scholars of of modern art and just uh you know you can go on MoMA's website and look at installation shots and you know little tiny image black and white images of show and I'm gasping you know yeah this thing that alongside that you know it's um it's that show seems to me to like that I I don't I would have exploded if I'd seen that show. Matisse's push comes to shove it's it's pretty much is pretty much my favourite artist and and um he he moves me so deeply his achievement is so extraordinary that I just um I think I would yeah that show I would have been I would have been in tears all most of the way through I think so in some ways it's it's good that you have to preserve your syncopated composure.

SPEAKER_01 44:54

So moving on to politics or maybe political issues reflected in institutions I was so so happy to read a text you wrote for the other newspaper. Speaking of uh podcasts um as opposed to texts and and the the reverberation they might have um of course this was directed perhaps more to professionals but the title is so gripping are museums guilt tripping their visitors question mark no they aren't doing enough and I would love you to explain what you were responding to which is a very specific 2024-2025 situation I think um and also why do you feel that you can't participate in that um complaint?

SPEAKER_00 45:41

So i the context is that there is this growing swell of views which suggests that visitor numbers to museums are slightly lower to certain museums because they are and I'm going to put this quote in the heaviest of quote marks woke there's this anti-progressive politics uh agenda which is appearing sort of subtly in various spaces, you know, various forms of article which is um suggesting that the programming at certain museums and and often it's about tape but it's all about other other places as well white chapels come in to you know people's crossfire um it's it's suggesting that the programming the expanding of canons the language which is used to describe historic works within context of slavery of colonialism and so on is guilt tripping people.

SPEAKER_01 46:46

My view very strongly is that there isn't enough of it you know what was interesting is that you were talking about heritage museums and not contemporary art museums and I thought that your scope was so precise and so fascinating but because we were talking not only about the present but also a history very specifically in what is shown in the museum and I was very happy to see you you know make an argument in such you know clear words that you know I think it's worth picking up again um you know and and repeating.

SPEAKER_00 47:20

Yeah absolutely so so I think in the in that article for instance I talked about that astonishing show of the Mogul period at the Victorian Albert Museum which closed earlier this year and it was one of the most beautiful shows I've ever seen an absolutely stunning show. But it was really notable how little of the politics was there and how little of the sort of geopolitical issues which were central to that period. There was hints of it you know you saw the connection between Europe and and India but and I picked up on something that Shutapa Biswell's the great contemporary British artist who's been the guest on a brush with pointed out which was a a really fascinating article in which you know it's exploring how museums in a way are um disguising to a certain degree by presenting these really opulent and wonderful shows by using opulence as the kind of driving force of a show they're kind of disguising the kind of very real um global situation in that period which is to me endlessly fascinating. Yes and wouldn't at all reduce the impact of those works of art. It's not guilt tripping people to tell them about the situation relating to empires in the 17th century and how they connected to India and the you know East India Company and so on and and how it was how it was active and how and the ways in which uh colonialism was manifesting in that period and and before it and after it, you know so I for me the idea that just by presenting something like that within the context of a political and geopolitical and social situation is somehow going to make to put put visitors off is is strange because it seems to me that it's deepening the context and deepening the understanding and what what are museums for if not for deepening understanding? Yes they are about showing artworks. Of course they are that's their fundamental responsibility and and looking after the artworks but but part of that is the interpretation of what these artworks that are in their possession and that they have on loan and so on. And I feel that they could do more to make it. I'm I'm quite a s you know I'm quite surprised when you see um displays of er paintings by by notable figures from the eighteenth century of aristocrats who clearly benefited from slavery and colonialism in the Imperial project and yet nothing is mentioned about why they can afford to pay Gainsborough the money for this extraordinary portrait. It doesn't make Gainesborough's portrait any less powerful it makes it more powerful in certain ways.

SPEAKER_01 50:12

It shows that art plays a role in these encounters between very different and very um distance cultures and what role it plays of possession, of fascination also of othering weirdly through possession I find it also very very fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 50:32

And but also can I say that one of the things that I think is really really important about this is a lot of the people that are writing these things are white and it's really important that that just because a white commentator doesn't like being told about empire means that a black or brown visitor to that exhibition or to that collection is not going to respond to it in a completely different way.

SPEAKER_01 50:58

And it it makes assumptions about audiences at museums as much as it makes assumptions about about what showing art is about, you know and I think actually it's it's important that we that we talk keep talking about this but also just that we you know we have a perspective on how on the different ways in which we can communicate about about artworks and that all of them are interesting and let's let's let's you know let's make these discussions richer not shut them down you know well fascinating I'd love to talk about this far more but I would love to move on to the book because there's 25 interviews from those 120 that episodes of the podcast which you recorded so sometimes people are not really aware of how podcasts work. So you prepare the interview deeply intensely you do a lot of research then you meet the artists you ask them questions and then you spend a long time editing the episode someone edits it for you but you have to check the editing and you have to um then absorb what that object has become from that conversation and then you have 120 and they're in the past. So I'm really interested in knowing how you revisited these episodes and did you change your perception on them? Did you see something different that you hadn't seen in that you know in the heat of the moment of producing the episode? How did that work?

SPEAKER_00 52:31

It's really fascinating actually so on the one hand there's sort of certain preconceptions you have about which are the best episodes and I'm terrible with this because they're all like my children. Yes so it's it's really hard to say oh that you know and in fact some some of my absolute favourite episodes we aren't representing in the book because you know 25 from as you say over a hundred is it's it's it's um a a sample of and a very in-depth sample of those those episodes but yeah I mean so on the one hand I think it's really important to say that I would say that it's not perfect but there is a a a pleasing diversity in the artists that we talk to in terms of um geographically in terms of their backgrounds in terms of their age for instance the the the nice thing is that there are two Michaels interviewed in the book Michael Armitage and Michael Craig Martin and I think there's five decades between them you know so um so that so there's a sense in which we wanted to get a a quite broad scope um but then revisiting them also has been such a pleasure as we were editing the text. I can you know um Rebecca Morrill who is the commissioning editor and Michaela Parkin who was the copy editor we were working together quite closely in the early stages of uh the book and batting these these interviews back and forth in text form and there was a real delight actually in that process I can remember sending them you know messages where where we'd go oh I love this one that bit where they talk about XYZ you know that there was there were moments where you know moments which I knew were there but somehow seeing them written down as text made me think even more deeply about them and remember the references there's a wonderful bit in the Ragnar Kjörnsen interview Ragnar Kjotsen the great um video artist um and installation artist um from Iceland who it's probably the funniest of all the interviews I'd say it's the one where I laugh the most definitely um but there's a wonderful bit where he talks about Mina the Italian chanteurs um and of the 60s and this amazing song that she sings and and and it instantly prompted both Rebecca Morill and Michaela Parkin to go and listen to Mina and you know and the the the the you know so and I love that actually and I hope that that's what this book and the podcast does is that people will go and look at these references and listen to these references and read these references and so on. It's certainly done that for me you know so many books that I've read have come out of these conversations you know um so yes it the process of choosing 25 was difficult in some ways because there are so many to choose from but I but there are lots of reasons why I think it's a it's a balanced selection. There's painters there's installation artists sculptors you know there's quite a full gamut of of kind of means of making here as well and I think that's important too you know if we're talking about artists and being interested in their studio practices to have a kind of real range of making is really important too there's you know um everybody from Jeremy Deller who kind of doesn't it's not really a studio he works in and he corrals um people to to make work within context and so on and um and then you've got somebody like Charlene von Heil the painter who you know just there she is in her studio her by herself forming this world. She talks about how in the studio she creates these kind of mood boards basically which surround her which prompt new bodies of work and um there's you know the the the difference between the very social practice of somebody like Jeremy Della or Theaster Gates the great American social practice practice artist who's also an amazing ceramicist and sculptor and everything else to have the you know to have them and then somebody like Charlene or Michael Armitage you know people using paint you know is is really thrilling actually and and I think you get that from the imagery in the book and the way that they're thinking as well you know so um very very different ways of being artists but also sort of obviously lovely correspondences between the individual interviews as well.

SPEAKER_01 56:39

I'm also fascinated by the difference of answers to that important question that gives the book its title um what is artful? And I would love to know if that variety and the difference in answers has had a sort of impact on you or how how do you account for the diversity of answers in this question that sometimes when you're talking to someone who doesn't you know and you say that you work in contemporary arts they ask you you know what is it? You know I don't know anything about it. What does it you know what what function does it have? What can it bring me? And you ask the question which I think is really really courageous for a book title because then you have to deliver but the artists do. So you leave it in the artists' hands and the the sort of myriad of answers that you have you know how do you how how do you handle that and what does it tell you?

SPEAKER_00 57:45

It's it's a really good point actually that that it's it's in a way a a tricky question to ask of an artist you know it's because it basically says to them why are you doing what you're doing? But that is a kind of fundamental I did think of that yeah you know but but it is also sort of fundamental to the book and to the whole query of the Abrushwith podcast you know you know because I think it is a curious life to be an artist and I think therefore to ask what what is art for you know what what is this thing that we're all so obsessed with doing in the world you know it it it is a sort of a complex question. The the the range of answers is really pleasing actually there's a there's quite a gamut you get like people that use single words like you know um Sarah Z says it's for sustenance. That's it. You know and and I think she means in in so many multiple ways. A lot of artists feel that art is basically a way of surviving in the world. I think you know Charlene von Heil says we you know and I'm sorry to use a swear word here but she says we'd be totally totally fucked without it. You know she's you know she it it's it's if it wasn't for art how that on earth would we navigate what's going on? Because it's grim you know it frankly is so grim out there and no never more than it feels like than now you know um and and so lots of the responses are are are about finding a way to be human and and trying to articulate what it is to be human. And then for Theaster Gates I think he says it's it's about healing.

SPEAKER_01 59:23

Yes he does. I was going to ask you about that because I feel that there's a um it wouldn't have been something that you would have allowed yourself to say fifty years back or even more. And now it is a recurring word for artists and even for curators this idea of care and healing is quite surprising and frankly comforting you know no I agree with you.

SPEAKER_00 59:47

Yeah and actually one of the one of my favourite interviews in the book they're all my favourites what am I who am I kidding one of my favourite interviews is is with Alberta Whittle the um Scotland based Glasgow based Barbadian British artist um who talks about in the answer to what is art for talks about about art as a manifestation of hope you know but she also talks a lot through the interview because it's crucial to her practice about care you know about collective care and and art being a kind of an agent within that and that's a real I think you're right that that the idea of art connecting to care connecting to healing connecting to ideas of wellbeing and so on to discuss that fifty years ago or whatever would have been anathema. But also even now I think to do it and to understand that that's within a context of criticality of inquiry of interrogation is crucial. It's not airy fairy woo-woo you know it it is absolutely about a critical inquiry into the world and legacies of slavery colonialism etc particularly in the in in the work of Alberta Whittle so it's it's about those legacies and the damage and the trauma and so on and about manifesting hope from now into the future. So the idea that it that that um it was anathema 50 years ago is probably linked to the idea that you had you know the language of art had to be tough in a certain way but you can still be tough and critical and and you know laceratingly focused on dismantling systems of oppression and so on and talk about care and healing and so on. So I think that's really crucial.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:37

Interesting they're not incompatible yeah no absolutely that's um never thought of that but you're so right I have a really really strange question to ask you as someone who hasn't grown up here and who I guess my FOMO would have been um the time where artists were being talked about in the press in the UK in the 90s and that wonderful 80s 90s and that wonderful um interview is painting dead with Tracy Yellman and and Norman Rose and David Sylvester and all of those people. And I was wondering what do you make of that era as someone who's was here who went through it was affected by it who has known and interviewed a lot of those artists directly you know um embodying that uh phenomenon and also um that seems so far away now so distant and yet it wasn't that long ago what do you make of that period?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:40

It's a really crucial period because I was at university in that period. So in 1992 to 1995 I was at university I was an art student and so I saw in a way even though I was remote from it I wasn't in the art world at all in that period you know um I saw in a way that burgeoning scene and I was able to you know I'm lucky in that I saw the very first young British artists show at the Saarchi Gallery the late lamented wonderful Saarchi gallery in Boundary Road that you know anybody who went there you you know you talk to them about that space and they talk about it as the most beautiful art space they've ever seen you know it was just a an utterly stunning art space. It's difficult to express how beautiful it was especially within a context in which you know London didn't have Tate Modern. You know the c the the modern collection of that that Tate had was shown in what is now Tate Britain in one side of it. So so we didn't have Tate Modern but we had this gleaming space up in North London yeah difficult to get to a real schlep but there it was and you know I saw that first young British artist show and it has to be said you know it's really important to say this that there are lots of kind of artists that were featured in these shows that have been forgotten. So everybody thinks it's just about the so-called YBAs now the young British artists now but there were loads of artists peripheral to it that also got shown in these exhibitions that you know we've all forgotten about you know Alex Landrum was in the first young British artist show um for instance um a painter with sort of texts in the middle of the the the canvases and then but but in that show was Rachel Whitereid and Damien Hurst and so Hurst showed his shark he showed A Thousand Years which is the piece with the flies and the fly killer and you know cow's head um and but but Rachel showed Ghost which is which was the work that connected to me on that visceral level that we were talking about earlier on and and also I should also say that for me one of the most profound art experiences of my entire life was seeing Rachel's house Rachel White's house in East London in 1993. Another one of my FOMO's well yeah I mean absolutely and to talk about you know yeah sort of great art experiences few experiences I've ever had with art have been greater than Rachel Watery's house. I was so passionate about it because the debate in public culture in that time to your public space?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:08

Because it has all the elements of uh an incredibly intersectional um work because it was in the public space it was in an area that was raised um of a social a social area basically um where the houses just disappeared you know the the the landscape the gentrification was um ongoing of the city and then Rachel Whitewood decides to basically cast one of the houses and expose the the the sort of empty space of the house in in in as a sculpture so the house disappears this the empty space remains in the public space and everyone is an up in an uproar about it and the art critics love it and everyone's talking about it and Rachel White read I have a question for You because I've always wondered, I've read about this quite a lot and I'm fascinated by that, but I never really understood how she feels about it, which probably has changed across the years. But I never quite I I f I always have the sense that she was very hurt by the upheaval and the destruction of the sculpture posteriorly. Oh, and also, and this was commissioned by Art Angel, who was starting to think about public space as a space to show art, which for me, as a young uh philosopher, then curating um student, was such an impressive idea, you know, to just put out there. So there's so many aspects to this story.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:47

That's a really good summary of what happened, and it was even more fraught than even you're suggesting, because I think one of the one of the things that's been forgotten about this now deeply revered sculpture or sculptural project is is that there were questions asked about it in Parliament. It was that much, it had that much of an effect on British culture. It was so basically, yes, the the whole context for Rachel Whitered in that time was impossible, if you like. She was an extraordinarily ambitious, brilliant sculptor. She was absolutely absolutely at the vanguard of that scene in a way that people have slightly forgotten because they think it's Tracy who was at the vanguard of that scene. But at that time, Tracy was not that well known. And and you know, if you like, the the two standard bearers for contemporary art in Britain in that time were Damien Hurst and Rachel Whitereed, you know. They were by far the most sort of talked about, if you like, artists of that time. And, you know, Rachel, in the same year, she was taught shortlisted for the second time for the Turner Prize. She puts this amazing sculpture, the most extraordinary endeavour to create that thing, you know. So take the, if you like, the shell of a Victorian home in East London off and and and preserve mummify the air within it was is her phrase. I love that phrase, it's so perfect. You know, mummify the air in a room was the way she described ghost, which is a single room. She expanded that out into a token into a full house, and this time it's it's concrete. And so, yeah, it's this massive public art project. The local councillor is just doing everything he can to denigrate it and eventually succeeds in having it s it it knocked down. There's debates about what would have happened had it survived because it was I think you know, Artangel themselves admit that by the time it it was knocked down, it already, you know, it was heavily graffited, it was, you know, it was it was already showing signs of where and it was never intended to be a like kind of to last forever. Yes, yes, what for. Yeah, yeah, no, yeah. And wonderfully, there was a the the the the kind of the kind of subject of the debate was summarised on the side of the sculpture because somebody wrote what for and somebody else wrote why not.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:10

Why not?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:10

Exactly, you know. So there you go. I mean it was just you know the debate that was happening in British culture at that moment was summarized on the in graffiti on the on the actual work. But yeah, I mean, and I think you know from Rachel's perspective, in my conversations with her, and I've been I've been lucky enough to have quite a few conversations with her now, and some of them have have have um addressed house. I think from from one from one perspective she is enormously proud that that she made that sculpture sculpture. She knows that it's, if you like, a defining work in her career, and she embraces that. But also I think she feels a very great sadness that she was never really able to enjoy it because of the furraw. And she would she told me she'd go and sit in her car and look at it and see people engaging with it, and but she felt she couldn't actually spend that much time physically with it beyond that because it there was just so much clamour and attention around it, you know. Um but it was if you cared about art, and if you were you like me, you were a young person who was emerging into a passion for for contemporary art and and and seeing this debate happening in public culture, you know, it it's it gave you so much fire in your belly about why you love this stuff, you know. And you know, I remember you know vividly talking to people, arguing with people about why it was so important and so wonderful. Um so for me, that that work and Rachel's work generally, actually, is enormously important, you know, you know, uh almost more important than anything else, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:46

This has been so enjoyable. Thank you so much. Um you I think I feel like we could go on forever uh talking with you and learning. I would just ask you one final question. Um, as an art professional, uh what would you say, or what have you said, to nudge someone you know into going see contemporary art, someone who may be a bit intimidated or a bit discouraged by not knowing. What would be the the thing to say, you think, to kind of convince or excite people about contemporary art?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:25

I think I would say that it will give you a new sense of yourself and your relation to the world because it's worth experimenting with it for that reason. You know, even if it's not the first artwork you see, it might be the second, it might be the tenth, it will hit you. I I challenge anybody not to find the the art that moves them because it is so diverse, it is so broad-ranging, you know. And I think, you know, a lot of the answers to the question what is art for relate to this extraordinary revelatory feeling that art has, and this this the the its extraordinary capacity for changing our perspective on the world or or making us think differently or making us richer somehow as people and and finding a way to process what is around us. And so I would say if you want your senses sharpened, if you want your intellect deepened, if you want your heart fuller, go and see some art.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:39

Ah, amazing. Thank you so much. And you are there, don't forget, go and get this book. It's uh a wealth of information, and you get that variety that um you were talking about, Ben. So it's out there for you. Thank you so much, Ben, for doing this interview. It is, I have to say, quite unsettling to have your voice and to see your face reacting to mine. It's usually just such a soothing experiment to listen to your voice. This was quite fantastic. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:10

Thank you so much for having me, and thanks again for your very kind words. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:16

Exhibition This is an independent podcast created and hosted by me, Joanna Pierre Nevers. We have episodes every two weeks, and this season, season three, is a bit of a turning point. We have five new episode types from more experimental art travelogues or art stories to conversational formats about solo exhibitions with people who are not part of the industry because we're all both actors and spectators of art and life. If you're new here, you have a whole catalogue of episodes to enjoy. Discover them at your own pace.