ART FICTIONS

Guest artist ANNA PERACH 

joins ELIZABETH FULLERTON to discuss her work via 'The Victorian Chaise Longue' 1953 by Marghanita Laski. The novel describes the experience of a charming yet childish lawyer's wife who wakes up in the body of her alter-ego eighty years previously. It's a chilling tale of entrapment, which closely links to Anna's sculptural work as she reacts to female stereotypes, trapped in their societal roles, trapped in her tufted wool costumes. 

ANNA PERACH

annaperach.com

instagram anna_perach

Guest artist PAOLA BALLA

joins Jillian Knipe for this special edition of ART FICTIONS | Culture Exchange which is part of the UK/Australia Season, a partnership between the British Council and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Paola and I discuss colonisation in a place widely known as Australia, and its corresponding cost to herself, her family and her extensively long ancestral lineage, via poet Ellen van Neerven's 'Comfort Food' published in 2016.

We dive into Ellen's magically rich text as she describes the simplest of dishes alongside racist cruelty. All with the upper hand of calm reflection and a delicious dollop of sensuality.

Paola is extremely generous in sharing her stories of Indigenous hardship which she relays with clarity, humour and warmth . Our conversation expands on Paola's art practice which includes sculptural installation, curation and academia. We hear of the nature of bush dying and the shocking reality of forced encampment of her people, which continued into recent history. Paola shares her take on the mythological Mok Mok with her wild hair and no underwear, as she serves up well meaning treats in track pants and stilettos. 

PAOLA BALLA

paolaballa.art

instagram paola_balla

EXHIBITIONS 

'Treaty' 2021

'Wilam Biik' 2021

WORKS

'Banner Time' 2021

'Murrup (Ghost) Weaving in Rosie Kuka Lar (Grandmother's Camp)' 2021

'Unconditional Love Space' 2020

BOOKS & WRITERS

Ellen van Neerven 'Comfort Food' 

ARTISTS

Vernon Ah Kee

Madeleine Kelly 'Spectra of Birds' 2014-2015

Guest artist INGRID BERTHON-MOINE

joins Elizabeth Fullerton for this special edition of ART FICTIONS | Culture Exchange which is part of the UK/Australia Season, a partnership between the British Council and the Australian Government's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. 

Ingrid and Elizabeth discuss the absurdity of male domination within cultural identity via film maker Virginie Despentes' novel 'Kong Kong Theory' published in French in 2006 and English 2010. A mix of memoir, autobiographical essay and manifesto, Despentes shapes outrage and resilience alike, as she introduces her own experience of being gang raped. The novel pitches capitalist patriarchy as the true villian; exploiting both men and women, forcing us into rigidly codified, disempowering roles and behaviours that serve the unending cycle of global capitalism.

The conversation sharpens with painful, frustrated outrage and bubbles with giggles around the flop, juice, willy and boobies of genitalia. Ingrid describes her strongly feminist art practice that includes men as she probes ideas around masculinity including her 'I Lack it, I Like it' is instagram project in response to the stupidity of Freud's concept of penis envy.

INGRID BERTHON-MOINE

ingridberthonmoine.com

instagram ingridberthonmoine

instragram lackitlikeit

EXHIBITIONS & PROJECTS

'Hand-Held' 2021 co-curated with Holly Stevenson

'Lack It , Like It' ongoing on instagram

'You Tear Us' 2018 solo exhibition at Kelder Projects

'Looking at a Lack of Perspective' 2017

BOOKS, AUTHORS & FURTHER READING

Byung-Chul Han 'The Disappearance of Rituals'

Camille Froidevaux-Metterie

Camille Paglia

Charlotte Perkins Gilman 'Herland'

Grace Jones

Hettie Judah

Eileen Miles

Etel Adnam 

Holly Stevenson

Judy Chicago

Maggie Nelson 'The Argonauts'

Ocean Vuong 'On Earth We are Briefly Gorgeous'

Paul B Preciado 'Testo Junkie'

Sitt Marie Rose

Ursula K Le Guin

Virginie Despentes 'King Kong Theory'

ARTISTS & EXHIBITIONS - mentioned and admired -

Barbara Walker

'Georgia O'Keefe' Centre Pompidou, Paris

'Life Between Islands' Tate Britain

'Magnus Plessen' White Cube

Marcia Michael

'Nicola Tyson' Sadie Coles

'On Hannah Arendt' Richard Saltoun Gallery

Wilma Woolf 'Domestic'

ARTS ORGANISATIONS

Goldsmiths

Mark Tanner Sculpture Award

Guest artist RICHARD AYODEJI IKHIDE

joins Jillian Knipe for this special edition of ART FICTIONS | Culture Exchange which is part of the UK/Australia Season, a partnership between the British Council and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Richard and I discuss his disjointed cultural story, via Amos Tutuola's second novel 'The Bush of Ghosts', published in 1954. We follow a young boy, separated from his mother and brother, into a forbidden place of ghostly slavers, violators, friends and foe, as he navigates his way through a foreign land, coming to understand his sense of rightfulness and identity. 

We go on to discuss Richard's formative years in Nigeria, a country whose name itself is stained with the nasty history of colonial subjugation. He speaks of his paternal lineage, steeped in story telling, from an area of the world, rich with artisans and stolen artworks. His world suddenly changes in his teens when he and his brother arrive in the UK to live with his mother. At this point, his own negotiation in a new land begins. 

Our conversation expands on Richard studying drawing and textiles, and researching mythologies, semiotics, rituals, archetypes and visual systems. He describes the courses he's developed at The Royal Drawing School which attempt to inform students about the global lineages of and connections between imagery, representations and artistic practices across different cultures. His observations uncover the unexpected around petroglyphs, nazca lines and stone tablets of the ancient past to glass tablet phones and emojis of the high tech present.

RICHARD AYODEJI IKHIDE

instagram pandagwad

EXHIBITIONS

February 2022 - Galerie Bernhard in Zürich 

WORKS

'Awon Osere' 2020 watercolour and ink on paper

'Contemplating with Effigies' 2020 oil on wood

PODCAST

The Compendium Podcast with Dexter Orszagh 

BOOKS & WRITERS & SCREEN

Alejandro Jodorowsky & Juan Giménez 'The Metabarons' or 'The Saga of the Metabarons'

Alex Grey 'The Mission of Art'

Amos Tutuola 'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts' 

Amos Tutuola 'The Palm Wine Drinkard'

Carl Jung 'Man & His Symbols'

Erich Neumann 'The Origins and History of Consciousness'

Joseph Campbell 'Hero with a Thousand Faces'

'Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myths' Netflix

Simon Blackburn, philosopher

'Spirited Away'

'Tales by Moonlight' Nigerian Television Authority

ARTISTS

El Greco

Giacometti

Giotto

Picasso

William Blake

COUNTRIES & CULTURES & HISTORIES

Ancient Greece

Benin Empire 1440 - 1897

Benin Expedition : Or the Benin Punitive Expedition in February 1897. Invasion of the Kingdom of Benin by the British Empire. After which Benin was absorbed into colonial Nigeria. Approx 2,500 religious artefacts, mnemonics and artworks were taken by Britain, including the Benin Bronzes, then around 40% were given to the British Museum.

Benin Bronzes :  A collection of metal plaques and sculptures created by the Edo people from the 13th century onwards, which once decorated the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin. Over 1,000 items were taken by the British as part of the Benin Punitive Expedition. 

Biafra War 1967 - 1970 : Civil war between Nigerian government and the Republic of Biafra.

Brazil

Christianity

Cuba

Egypt

Ghana

Ifá gods

Igbo people

Mesoamerica

Nigeria

Sabongida-Ora, Edo state

Yoruba

ARTS ORGANISATIONS

British Museum

Central Saint Martins

National Gallery

The Royal Drawing School

Zabludowicz Collection

Guest artist NIKA NEELOVA 

joins Jillian Knipe on this special edition of ART FICTIONS | Culture Exchange which is part of the UK/Australia Season, a partnership between the British Council and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Nika and I discuss the flow of her cultural story, via poet Rainer Maria Rilke's only novel 'The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge', first published in 1910. We follow Brigge into the depths of the down and out cityscape as he contemplates his fellow street people, acknowledging his urgency to write while being ill-equipped to do so. 

We go on to discuss the constant country hopping of her childhood. Back then, architectural details became more reliable than the passing parade of friends, schools, neighbourhoods and languages. So she now mines these ideas for her studio practice where architectural details are re-purposed and renewed, creating unexpected sculptural forms, drifting back, forth and around in meaning and time.

Our conversation taps into overlapping past and future, finding modes to retrieve, drifting in and out of focus, slipping through time, panic spasms, hypersensitivity, and reality, experience and stories overlapping to become an indiscriminate montage. 

EXHIBITIONS

2022 '(Everything) is Not What it Seems' NITJA Museum, Oslo

25 Nov 2021 - 7 Jan 2022 'b bl b' Garage off-site project, Moscow

10 Nov 2021 - 30 Jan 2022 'Not Painting' Copperfield, London

22 Oct 2021 - Dec 2022 'Silt' Brighton CCA

11 Sep 2021 - 20 Nov 2021  'One of Many Fragments : Edward Allington and Nika Neelova' New Art Centre, Roche Court, Salisbury

NIKA NEELOVA

nikaneelova.com

instagram nikaneelova

ARTISTS

Ana Mendieta

Andrei Tarkovsky (film director)

Barbara Hepworth

Emma Cousin

Eva Hesse

Eva Rothschild

Fra Angelico 

Holly Hendry

Jane Hayes Greenwood

Louise Bourgeois

Phyllida Barlow

Rachel Whiteread

Piero della Francesco

BOOKS & WRITERS

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing 'The Mushroom at the End of the World'

Annie Ernaux 'The Years'

Donna Haraway 'Staying with the Trouble' 

Edmund de Waal 'The Hare with the Amber Eyes'

Henrik Ibsen (playwright)

Maggie Nelson 'The Argonauts'

Manuel DeLanda 'A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History'

Margaret Atwood 'The Testaments'

Martin Heidegger 'The Basic Problems of Phenomenology'

Max Frisch 'Man in the Holocene'

Jean Paul Sartre 'Nausea'

Ocean Vuong 'On Earth We're Briefly Beautiful'

Rainer Maria Rilke 'The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge' 

Susan Sontag 'The Volcano Lover' 

Tibor Fischer 'The Collector Collector'

Tom McCarthy 'Remainder'

Tom McCarthy 'Satin Island'

Virginia Woolf 'The Waves'

Welcome and Welcome Back to this special edition of ART FICTIONS | Culture Exchange which is part of the UK/Australia Season, a partnership between the British Council and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.  ART FICTIONS | Culture Exchange will run until the end of March 2022. Elizabeth Fullerton and Jillian Knipe will discuss the artistic practices of our guests in the usual way - through the prism of their selected piece of fiction - though, for CULTURE EXCHANGE, there'll be a particular tilt towards cultural identity : the boundaries, hurdles, opportunities and possibilities which both curb and open up the artist's practice, as a result of their sense of culture being upended or especially challenged in a way that is unique to each life story. 

instagram artfictions2020, jillaroo2020, fullerton_eliz

Guest artist HOLLY HENDRY

joins ELIZABETH FULLERTON to chat about her work via Tom McCarthy's 2005 novel 'Remainder' in which the nameless narrator must re-learn body movements after a debilitating accident. He is awarded a ridiculous sum in compensation which he uses to re-enact past happenings in microscopic detail, increasingly absurd and violent in nature.

Holly is a lot more pleasant. However, she is also compelled to open up the surface of objects to discover what's inside. How things work. And when that cannot be done physically, it is explored as an idea. 

Elizabeth and Holly discuss her major recent, current and upcoming exhibitions:

Jan 2022 solo exhibition at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

29 May - 12 Nov 2021 'Invertebrate' De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill

May 2021 - Mar 2023 group exhibition 'Breaking The Mould, Sculpture by Women since 1945 An Arts Council Collection Touring Exhibition, for venues refer to artscouncilcollection.org.uk/exhibition/breaking-mould-sculpture-women-1945

Oct - Mar 2022 group exhibition 'Beano: The Art of Breaking the Rules' Somerset House, London

19 May - 30 Aug 2021 'Indifferent Deep' De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill

Sep 2019 - Apr 2020 'The Dump Is Full of Images' Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield

HOLLY HENDRY

hollyhendry.com

instagram h.ollyh.endry

stephenfriedmangallery.com

ARTISTS & DESIGNERS

Andy Holden

Astrida Neimanis

Helen Turner, E-Werk Luckenwalde, Berlin

Isamu Noguchi

Le Corbusier

Louise Bourgeois 

Rebecca Horn

BOOKS & AUTHORS

Albert Camus 'The Stranger'

Beatriz Colomina 'X Rays in Architecture'

Eric Carle 'The Very Hungry Catepillar'

J G Ballard 'The Drowned World'

Maggie Nelson

Miles Orvell 'The Real Thing'

Rebecca Tamas 'Strangers : Essays on the Human and Nonhuman'

Tom McCarthy 'C'

GALLERIES & ASSOCIATES

De La Warr Pavilion

Liverpool Bienniel

Professor Parick Goswami, University of Huddersfield

Royal College of Art

Selfridges

Somerset House

Stephen Friedman Gallery

The Baltic

The International Necronautical Society

Whitehall Fabrications

Yorkshire Sculpture Park

FILMS & PERFORMERS

Buster Keaton

Pauline Oliveros

Robert De Niro

'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'

Guest artist FIONA GRADY

joins me to chat about her work via Jun'ichirō Tanazaki's 1933 essay 'In Praise of Shadows'. The text describes eastern aesthetics being driven by the west, resulting in the loss of Japanese tradition and the loss of the shadow. 

Fiona Grady and I discuss her own praise of shadows, working with semi translucent colours on glass, wall murals and watercolours which celebrate subtlety, reflection and the elusiveness of the object of which, I'm quite certain, Tanazaki would approve. 

FIONA GRADY

fionagrady.co.uk

instagram fiona_grady

'Close to Home: The Everyday Sublime' JGM Gallery til 25 Sep 2021

'Kaleidoscope Prisms' Canary Wharf til end October 2021

'The Factory Project' October 2021

upcoming at The Foundry Gallery 2022

ARTISTS & CURATORS

Alfred Hitchcock

Anna Lytridou

Anne Veronica Janssens

Beatriz Milhazes

Ben McDonnell

Bridget Riley

Charley Peters

Daniel Buren

David Batchelor

Eric Thorpe

Félix González-Torres

Fumio Asakura

Gordon Matta-Clark

Hannah Luxton

James Turrell

Jane Hayes Greenwood

Julie F Hill

Linda Hemmersbach 

Nick Stavri

Poppy Whatmore

Sol leWitt

Tim Ralston

Vivienne Maier

Yukako Shibata

BOOKS

Haruki Murakami 'Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World' 1985

Leonard Koren 'Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers' 1984

Maggie Nelson 'The Argonauts' 2015

GALLERIES & ART ORGANISATIONS

Artist's Support Pledge

Asakura Museum of Sculpture

Bauhaus

Derix Glasstudios, Germany

JGM Gallery, London

Kevin Gauld Architecture

Leeds Arts University

Nightingale Arts

'Passengers' Residency, The Brunswick Centre

Projekt

Recreational Grounds

Sid Motion Gallery

The Art Station, Suffolk

The Foundry Gallery

White Conduit Projects, London

Guest artist HANNAH HUGHES 

joins ELIZABETH FULLERTON to chat about her work via Virginia Woolf's 1931 novel 'The Waves'. Not so much a story as a stream (or perhaps, more accurately, a wave) of consciousness, the book is classified as an experimental fiction. It describes the thoughts of six characters through soliloquies, whose lives all pivot around the muted Percival. 

Hannah and Elizabeth then open up the artist's practice as collages, cuts and slide-throughs of shadowy forms and real edges. They track how shapes are formed from in-between spaces around objects and the body, how multiple processes distance the form from its source, the invention of visual language and the importance of fragmentations which create a sense of the whole.

ARTISTS 

Guest artist LUKE BURTON

joins me to chat about his work via Ben Lerner's 2019 novel 'The Topeka School'. The story revolves around Adam Gordon and his parents, and the ambivalence of language as both a pathway to reparation and a driving force towards violence. 

Luke Burton and I go on to discuss his own ambivalence, working with and against male and masculine archetypes in Western art. We acknowledge the ability of psychotherapy to excavate knowledge you didn't previous have about yourself, the selective access to language, the aggression within public rhetoric and language as spells. 

LUKE BURTON

lukeburton.tumblr.com

bosseandbaum.com/artists/luke-burton

instagram luke_p_burton

'Impossible Weather' solo exhibition 2020 Bosse and Baum

'The Artist Oracle' Sep 2021 White Crypt

ARTISTS & ARTWORK

Coptic Textiles

Donald Judd

Hans Holbein the Younger

Lee Krasner

Neil Cummings

'Rebel Without A Cause' 1955 film

BOOKS & WRITERS

Adam Phillips 'Attention Seeking' 2019

Ben Lerner 'Leaving the Atocha Station' 2011

Ben Lerner '10:04' 2014

Ben Lerner 'Contest of Words' Harper's Magazine 2016

Harriet Lerner, clinical psychologist and author

Isabel Hardman 'Why We Get the Wrong Politicians' 2018

Lidija Haas 'The Guardian' 4 Nov 2019

Owen Jones 'The Grammar of Ornament' 1856

Rachel Kusk 'Outline' 2014 'Transit' 2016 'Kudos' 2018

GALLERIES & ORGANISATIONS

Barbican Gallery, London

Girton College, University of Cambridge 

Victoria and Albert Museum V&A