In the Studio

Tyler Childers was nominated for a Grammy in early 2020. He’s an emerging talent who is true to his Appalachian roots.

He grew up in the foothills of East Kentucky, his father worked in the coal industry, and his songs reflect the tough life in that part of the world - unemployment, broken relationships, drugs, alcohol. He draws on these themes in order to stay faithful to the place: "I hope that people in the area that I grew up in find something they can relate to. I hope that I'm doing my people justice and I hope that maybe someone from somewhere else can get a glimpse of the life of a Kentucky boy."

The lyrics of one of his songs describes the exhilaration of driving recklessly: “A damn good feeling to run these roads". For his most recent Country Squire album, Tyler says much of it was written on the road, including love songs dedicated to his wife. He also drew inspiration from unusual sources, including Allen Touissant's 1970s album Southern Nights.

We take a deep dive into the contemporary life, music and culture of East Kentucky, with help from Brett Ratliff, programme director of community radio station WMMT in Whitesburg, Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia's coal fields, and hear about Kentucky story-telling from author Silas House.

And with his US tour suspended because of the coronavirus lockdown, we hear how Tyler and his wife Senora May - also a singer songwriter - are drawing on their home, and their own relationship, for creative inspiration.

British artist Marc Quinn has been one of the world's leading contemporary artists for over 30 years. A prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists (or YBAs) who dominated the British art scene in the 1990s, his high-profile works have included Alison Lapper Pregnant, for the inaugural fourth plinth sculpture in London’s Trafalgar Square; and Self, a series of self-portraits of his own head - made out of ten pints of his own blood - cast and frozen every five years.

In this episode of In the Studio, Marc Quinn takes Edwina Pitman behind the scenes of an ambitious new work called 100 Heads, in which he documents the stories, and casts in concrete the heads, of 100 refugees. Spurred by the images and news reports of the refugee crisis in 2015, Marc began to make plans for not-for-profit public artworks to both raise awareness and money for refugees around the world. 100 Heads is being created in part therefore to raise funds for another ongoing Marc Quinn public artwork called Our Blood, in which 2,000 litres of frozen human blood - drawn from 10,000 resettled refugees, celebrities and other participants - will be encased in a pavilion on the steps of the New York Public Library in 2021.

From the initial meeting and interviewing refugees, through scanning, moulding and casting the concrete, Marc reveals the many processes as well as the technical and logistical challenges of creating 100 portrait heads of people from all over the world. The eventual creation will, he hopes, be a monument to our common humanity, one that emphasises through the power of art, that more unites than divides us.

Sri Lankan born author Romesh Gunesekera does not transcribe reality, he recreates it from a mixture of memory and imagination. Nominated for one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards, the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, for his debut novel Reef – Romesh has been publishing novels, short stories and poetry for more than 30 years.

Harriett Gilbert meets Romesh at his London home in early 2018, to find out how he is crafting his latest novel, Suncatcher. It tells the story of two boys growing up in 1960s Sri Lanka, examining their friendship and the beginnings of a political awakening. Romesh has been working on his book for several years and is now meticulously revising the text – questioning each word – as he prepares to send his precious manuscript out into the world.

The award-winning Belarus Free Theatre was founded 15 years ago to create drama around issues of human rights and creative freedom in a country which has been called Europe’s last surviving dictatorship. It creates provocative physical shows attended by audiences in secret locations around Minsk and has achieved international recognition and support.

BFT’s founding artistic directors Natalia Kaliada and Nicolai Khalezin cannot rehearse the actors face to face because they are now political refugees living in the United Kingdom. So, for the past nine years they have been using a Skype line to connect with the performers hundreds of miles away.

Natalia and Nicolai have been rehearsing the actors in a new play called Dogs of Europe, based on the novel by the contemporary Belarusian author Alhierd Bacharevic, which depicts life in a dystopian super state where individual freedoms are taken away. As well as performing in Minsk, the actors were also set to come to London and perform at the Barbican Theatre. But Covid-19 has put an end to that plan. So what will the company do instead?

The BBC’s Olga Smirnova follows Natalia and Nikolai during the process of rehearsal and performance and hears from them and the actors about the techniques of directing from a distance. She also talks to the British actor and writer Stephen Fry who is taking part in BFT’s newest venture.

Mo Abudu has been described as one of the most successful women in Africa. She made her name presenting the chat show Moments with Mo, that earnt her the title of Africa’s ‘first lady of chat.’

She is the CEO of Ebony Life Television, Africa's first global black entertainment and lifestyle network. In 2013 she set up Ebony Life Films and as Executive Producer is behind films such as the comedies The Wedding Party and its sequel, The Wedding Party 2, which became the highest-grossing Nigerian film in the country’s box office history.

In 2018 Anna Cunningham followed Mo onto the set of her film Chief Daddy – which tells the story of what happens when a flamboyant billionaire industrialist suddenly dies and his family and friends uncover hidden secrets and discover who’s getting the money.

With a star studded cast including Funke Akindele, Kate Henshaw, Folarin ‘Falz’ Falana, Mo hoped Chief Daddy would be a Christmas blockbuster in Nigeria. In this updated episode, find out if she got her wish.

The Polish countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński is rapidly becoming one of the most sought-after performers on opera stages and in concert halls around the world. A YouTube video of him singing Vivaldi has had more than 5 million views, his many prizes include a recent Gramophone Classical Music Award and he’s released 2 critically acclaimed albums.

And he’s not just known as a singer - he also has an impressive record as a breakdancer and a fashion model.

Earlier this year, Jakub was preparing to sing the title role in Handel’s opera Tolomeo at the Badisches Staatstheater in the German city of Karlsruhe. Emma Kingsley joined him there to watch him in rehearsal and to hear how he goes about not just perfecting his singing voice, but also writing his own musical ornaments and cadenzas for the solos and duets that he will be performing for these performances and the production’s revival in 2021.

Kari Kola developed his love of working with light in his native Finland, one of the world’s most northern countries, where the winters are long and very dark. Teaching himself to use light in those months - to utilise the darkness – is what inspired Kari to become…a light artist.

For Galway 2020, European Capital of Culture, Kari and his team of Finns are setting their sights on the wild and beautiful Connemara mountain range, as he attempts to create Savage Beauty, the largest lit artwork ever made.

Using the latest technology, and transporting a vast amount of kit to an Irish mountain range in the middle of March, has its own unique set of challenges. It’s a challenge that seems second nature to Kari, who taught himself to play piano without ever learning a note, and has overcome accidents which have left him unable to walk and hear at various times in his life. No wonder, perhaps, that the artist’s motto is “Nothing is impossible; it is just a matter of deciding how much you want to use your energy towards achieving it".

Reporter Orla Higgins pursues the creative process in Galway, and we spend time with Kari in his studio in the easternmost province of Finland, but as the four-day event approaches amid gales and a Coronavirus pandemic, will it all come together?

Michael Rakowitz’s Iraqi heritage is a cultural thread running through much of his art. We follow him at work on a new installment of a long-running project called The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist, which creates what he calls ‘ghosts’ of archaeological objects that have been destroyed or looted from Iraq in the 21st century. Sarah Geis follows him throughout the process of recreating carved reliefs which adorned a room of the Northwest Palace of Nimrud, destroyed in 2015 by the Islamic State group. However, he’s not making them from stone but colourful Arabic food packaging and cardboard – for a fast-approaching exhibition.

We check back in with Michael in March 2020 to see how the project has progressed.

Best known by her alias Filthyratbag, 20 year old artist Celeste Mountjoy’s brightly coloured line-drawn illustrations and phrases are at once confessional and relatable, humorous and heart-breaking. Their appeal, as her 384k Instagram followers testify, extends far beyond Celeste’s native Melbourne.

Growing up in the township of Soweto, Dada Masilo never thought to dream of ballet training or world tours. She liked street dancing to Michael Jackson and was only introduced to ballet two years after the end of Apartheid, at the age of 10. It was a strange world, she says, of pink shoes and tights. But she loved the discipline and went on to train internationally as a classical ballerina. Still only 34, she now tours the world with her very contemporary takes on traditional ballet. Her Swan Lake tackled Africa’s AIDs epidemic with male dancers playing the love triangle. Her Giselle is a feminist revenge story conceived long before #MeToo. She’s celebrated at Arts festivals from Perth to California, but the themes of her work make it less welcome in parts of Africa.