New @TalkArt podcast episode! Season 27 finale!

Robert meets Matthew Slotover OBE, legendary publisher and entrepreneur. This episode was recorded live from Maison Estelle in London.

Matthew Slotover co-founded the art magazine Frieze in 1991 and grew into a major media and events company that has a focus on the art scene and since 2003 produces the annual Frieze Art Fair in London, later joined by fairs in New York, Los Angeles and Seoul.

In 2021 he opened Toklas, a Mediterranean restaurant in London, and in 2022, he launched Fort Road Hotel in Margate.

Matthew is currently chair of Turner Contemporary, Margate, and a board member of Sadlers Wells and the Walpole Group.

He is a founding member of the Gallery Climate Coalition, and a founding board member of Murmur, an environmental charity dedicated to using the Arts to combat climate change. Matthew served as a trustee of the Arts Foundation until 2024.

Follow @MSlotover

Thanks for listening to Season 27. I will return soon for a whole new series!!!!

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Robert meets Luis Felber, a London based South-American multi-instrumentalist best known as Attawalpa. His meticulous production, melodies and honest lyrics evoke the future as much as the past.

We explore his love of art and growing up with an artist mother Alma Laura de Felber, a prominent Peruvian painter and artist. The Lima-born painter makes colorful, emotionally resonant oil paintings often explore themes of identity, the feminine, and human connection.

Born in Winchester, England, Felber spent his earliest years in Peru and Chile before moving back to Britain at age 7. At 17, he skipped university and began pursuing a career in music, playing guitar with several different bands and co-founding influential club night and record label Young Turks.

Felber actively incorporates his creative roots into his projects. His mother's art has been featured in his work, and he frequently collaborates with his wife, Lena Dunham including on the soundtrack for her film Catherine Called Birdy and by co-creating and scoring the Netflix comedy series Too Much.

Recording and performing under the name Attawalpa (his middle name, after the 16th-century Incan ruler Atahualpa), his albums Experience and Presence are both available now on vinyl and at all streaming platforms.

Follow: @Attawalpa

Visit: https://attawalpa.com/

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Robert meets Belfast-born Kathryn Ferguson, an Emmy and BAFTA nominated, BIFA and IFTA winning director whose innovative and boundary-pushing documentary work has screened globally. We explore art as activism and how film has the power to reveal, and amplify, untold stories. Kathryn studied at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art, and in 2022 was awarded the inaugural BFI & Chanel Award for Creative Audacity. 

In 2018, Kathryn's short documentary Taking the Waters about Margate’s open water swimming premiered at Sheffield Doc Fest, and was long-listed for a BAFTA. Then, in 2021, Kathryn worked with Passion Pictures on the short Space to Be for The Guardian's acclaimed documentary series. 

After a decade of short-form work centred on identity, gender politics, and community, Kathryn recently completed her debut feature documentary Nothing Compares - which takes as its subject Sinéad O'Connor's artistry and activism. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2022 then toured the international festival circuit, where it picked up multiple awards, before hitting cinemas in October 2022. It has received over thirty award nominations internationally, including Emmy, Critics Choice, IDA, and PGA Awards, and was awarded winner of Best Feature Documentary at BIFA 2022 and IFTA 2023. Nothing Compares is now available to watch on Showtime and Sky. 

Her second feature, Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes (Universal), was released in US cinemas in 2024. 

In 2024 she also co-founded Tara Films with producer Eleanor Emptage; their latest, Blue Road - The Edna O'Brien Story, premiered at TIFF 2024, and the company is currently developing a slate of non-fiction and drama projects. Alongside her film work, Ferguson has directed campaigns for Nike, Selfridges, Amnesty International, and Air France, and collaborated with artists such as Lady Gaga and Neneh Cherry. 

Nostalgie, Kathryn's first drama short starring Aiden Gillen, about a faded 80's pop star, has recently been nominated for a BAFTA and won Best Short Film at the IFTAs 2026. The film is available to watch on Channel 4. 

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Robert meets Mariane Ibrahim, leading gallerist and curator, whose mission is dedicated to the elevation and advocacy of diverse global artistic practices, with a particular spotlight on Africa and the diaspora. We explore her galleries in three cities: Mexico City, Paris and Chicago, and the artists she has championed over the past 15 years.

Currently representing artists from across the world, Ibrrahim is driven towards expanding the confines of the creative landscape. Ibrahim’s program compels her to act as something of an ambassador for nuance and complexity in an art world still prone to generalisation. While several of the emerging artists she represents hail from African countries or are members of the African diaspora, Ibrahim emphasises that they – and by extension, her gallery – have much more to offer than simplistic regional or heritage based labels could ever contain.

Mariane Ibrahim Gallery is a highly influential contemporary art gallery that focuses on supporting and championing artists from the African diaspora and diverse global backgrounds. Founded in 2012 by Somali-French art dealer Mariane Ibrahim, the gallery has experienced a phenomenal international expansion, establishing a presence across three different continents.

Follow @MarianeIbrahimGallery

Visit: https://marianeibrahim.com/

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Robert meets legendary photographer ANTON CORBIJN to discuss his major retrospective opening this weekend in Berlin at Fotografiska museum.

The story of Anton Corbijn begins in the quiet corners of a small Dutch island, where he grew up as the son of a vicar. For a young Corbijn, music was an escape, a passion that consumed him. His camera soon became both a tool and a companion, a way to channel his fascination with music and, perhaps more importantly, a means to navigate his own shyness.

When Corbijn moved to London in 1979, the city was electric with the energy of bands like The Clash, The Jam, and Joy Division. Within ten days of arriving in England, he managed to photograph Joy Division claiming he was on assignment for a major Dutch magazine, even though he hadn’t been officially commissioned.

Now, having celebrated his 70th birthday last year, Corbijn looks back on over five decades of work that spans photography, music videos, and film. Corbijn, Anton celebrates his 50-year career and revisits his extensive body of work. Here, you will encounter nearly 150 pieces: iconic portraits of legends like Depeche Mode, Tom Waits, U2, the Rolling Stones, Martin Scorsese, and Marlene Dumas, as well as German icons Nina Hagen, Herbert Grönemeyer, Einstürzende Neubauten and Wim Wenders. His signature black-and-white grainy aesthetic became a defining visual language in his work.

A polymath in photography, music videos, feature films, graphic design, and commercials, Dutchman Anton Corbijn is perhaps best known for immortalizing some of the greatest artists of our time. His iconic portraits of musicians, directors, and artists, such as Joy Division, Depeche Mode, Tom Waits, U2, the Rolling Stones, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, Gerhard Richter, Ai Weiwei, Marlene Dumas among others, are praised for the way they capture the soul and charisma of his subjects.

Effortlessly moving in the early 80s from photography into music videos, Corbijn has since made over 80 promos for people like U2, Johnny Cash, Arcade Fire, Depeche Mode, Nirvana, Metallica, Nick Cave, Coldplay, and The Killers. He is the Artistic Director behind the visual output of Depeche Mode. For U2 he has done the principal promotion and sleeve photography for four decades.

In 2006 Corbijn started working on his first feature film Control about the life, and death, of Ian Curtis, Joy Division’s lead singer. The film won many awards worldwide, including 5 BIFAs and the Camera d’Or Special Mention at Cannes Film Festival 2007. Corbijn has since made The American starring George Clooney (2010), A Most Wanted Man, based on the novel by John Le Carré and featuring the late Philip Seymour Hoffman (2014), and Life, about James Dean and photographer Dennis Stock, which stars Robert Pattinson and Dane DeHaan (2015).

In 2023, Corbijn released his first feature documentary Squaring The Circle about the iconic album art design studio Hipgnosis. In 2025, he directed his fifth feature film titled Switzerland starring Helen Mirren.

Follow: @AntonCorbijn4Real

Visit the exhibition: @Fotografiska.Berlin

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Robert meets MEEK, an emerging singer-songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist whose new EP Fabulous has become a favourite of the art world, and global queer community, since debuting in February. We discuss how art has inspired her creativity and life, including the work of Magritte, Tracey Emin, Georgia O’Keefe and her passion for the National Portrait Gallery, the V&A and visiting museums in London.

We explore her devotion to artistry within her music, visuals and costumes including recent collaborations with filmmaker Sophie Muller and performance artist Theo Adams on her debut music videos, and sold out live shows at the Garage and SXSW.

MEEK is not a work in progress. She is fully formed, earned her stripes, comes from nothing, nepo-baby baiting execution of timeless pop brilliance. While sounding directly descended from the DNA of famed countercultural misfits and bona fide pop aces, all strewn across the decades, her music is a no messing, straight shoot for the top. Georgia Meek understands that people like her only get one chance to make a first impression.

Frequently, her songs will open out with a stringent big note, a walloping guitar figure, the best hook in her almanac of songwriter-ly resources. Because they have to. “I’ve never had the option to ask,” she says. “I’ve always had to take. I’ve always had to force my way through closed doors. That’s what shapes my sound. Yes, we will start with a huge vocal note to make people turn around and listen. Yes, I will say in the studio, give me some hair-raising guitar windmills. Let’s do that. You waste thirty seconds and you’ve lost it.”

Equally, MEEK’s visual aesthetic is once seen, never forgotten. She wants to reclaim dressing up for everyone, not just those that can afford to indulge in the monied whimsy of high fashion. “I have a clear visual thing for myself, which is basically prom outfits for poor people.” She’s the Cinderella who flipped a finger at the Ugly Sisters, then invited them along to join in the fun, too. “It’s about being absolute glam-trash and owning it. That pink tulle over a stained Adidas jacket? Throw it on. I just want it to feel like something anybody can put together themselves, a sustainable way to look fucking wild. Why not?” 

The best thing about MEEK? There is a point to her. She is as if the comedy queen, Daisy May Cooper stumbled into a charity shop, found a bunch of glittering second hand couture, dolled herself up shamelessly in it, injected the raw spirit of Freddie Mercury and emerged, Mr Ben style, as a fully-fledged MEGASTAR in the making out of the changing rooms, then lead a troubadour of misfits singing down the high street. There is not what you might call a shortage of self-confidence in MEEK. As she sings herself, on a calling card anthem which is sure to become the earworm of the nation once unleashed upon its airwaves: “I’m so f*cking fabulous.”

This week sees MEEK performing live on numerous TV shows including Saturday Night Live UK, with Aimee Lou Wood as well as her USA TV debut with Jimmy Fallon.

Follow @MustBeMeek

Listen to Meek’s new EP Fabulous out now:

https://music.apple.com/gb/artist/meek/1784432868

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Robert meets painter David Dawson to discuss his new large scale landscape paintings, part of an ongoing body of work created en plein air in the artist's county of Montgomeryshire, Mid Wales.

From April 25 – October 11, ‘Land, Sky, Light’ is a solo exhibition at Gainsborough’s House featuring fifteen of David Dawson’s (b. 1960) recent large-scale paintings of his native Welsh countryside. 

Having left Wales for London where he was a student at the Chelsea School of Art and later becoming a model and assistant to Lucian Freud, these paintings represent an artist returning to their childhood home to explore the nature and solitude of its surroundings.

The canvases possess a deeply autobiographical nature, being representative of Dawson's formative childhood years in the country side, and his continued experiences of solitude and connection.

Initially painted outdoors during each season of the year, the artist continues to work on them in his London studio to then complete them back in the countryside. About this creative process, which can take years, the artist states: 

“Painting to me is about the reality of being in the land and making marks that correlate to me reacting to that experience. You paint what you think you know. When I’m in the land, I always get surprised by what I see, even if I thought I knew the landscape in which I grew up so well. That’s why I need to be there, en plein air. Painting to me is very much about being in the presence of the land”.

Forcing the artist to be alone in the fields, exposed to the elements, Dawson’s canvases are deeply autobiographical as they connect him to his formative years growing up in the countryside, when the artist learned about solitude.

Dawson describes his practice in almost meditative terms: painting the Welsh landscape and its waterfalls, “being in the presence of the land”, becomes a way of getting rid of his ego, to reach a feeling of connection and communion with nature. 

Follow @DavidEliDawson and @GainsboroughsHouse

David is represented by @GalleriaLorcanONeill

Visit the exhibition: https://gainsborough.org/event/land-sky-light-new-landscapes-by-david-dawson/

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Robert meets Nick Willing at the studio of his mother Paula Rego (1935–2022) to discuss a major exhibition of drawings and works on paper by Rego, opening this week at Victoria Miro in London. 

The most comprehensive exhibition of Rego’s drawings to date, Story Line features works from the 1950s until the artist’s death, shining new light on Rego’s evolving use of line in media from pen and ink to pastel, conté, charcoal and pencil, and how it was driven by her unique approach to storytelling throughout her life. The exhibition is

accompanied by a new book written by the artist’s son, Nick Willing.

‘When you write your story… invention comes when you do a drawing. As you are drawing something, it very often turns into something else, and you can go with it. It develops in a completely different way, it’s organic and it’s done with the hand. The hand makes it change and so on.’ – Paula Rego, The White Review, 2011

Paula Rego considered herself first and foremost a ‘drawrer’ (her word). From political protest to personal introspection, activism to domestic power games, subversive humour to challenging family relationships, it was through drawing that she understood herself and the world around her, discovering ways of expressing complex

ideas through a single image. As Nick Willing comments, ‘A Rego drawing is never just one thing, but many feelings working together to reveal the truth. They not only helped her understand the world but can also help us understand it too.’Driven by her distinctive approach to storytelling, this exhibition demonstrates how Rego adapted her line to

emphasise the emotional nuance of the stories she told, and how her drawing techniques also reflected her interior emotional narrative. The works reveal the unique development of an artist whose visual storytelling, drawn from a wide variety of sources, spoke directly to us about the essential human traits of desire, loss, violence and power.

The works on show vary from intimate drawings which have never been exhibited before to studies for some of Rego’s most recognisable paintings. These are accompanied by notes, letters, sketchbooks, photographs and other archival material from throughout Rego’s life – among myriad rarities is a drawing Rego made when she was nine years old of her grandmother, while the exhibition concludes with works including a drawing she made of her own granddaughter.

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@TalkArt continues with an in-depth interview on the work of GWEN JOHN with curator @Lucy.C.Wood to explore a major exhibition Gwen John: Strange Beauties at the National Museum Cardiff. Hosted by @RobertDiament.

This once-in-a-generation exhibition brings together over 200 oil paintings, drawings and watercolours from public and private collections across the world with rarely seen works on paper from the artist’s studio collection to celebrate her 150th birthday. Born in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, in 1876, Gwen John trained at the Slade School of Art in London and was one of the first British women to receive a formal art education. She later moved to Paris, where she became part of its vibrant artistic community, forging an independent path in a male-dominated art world.

Gwen John is one of Wales' most extraordinary artists. She saw the world differently — quietly, attentively, and with extraordinary depth. That difference shaped everything: her subjects, her method, her colours, her words, her work. 

It is the most comprehensive retrospective of the artist's work in over forty years. It tells Gwen’s story — revealing new ways of seeing her life and art and celebrating an artist whose vision still feels strikingly modern today. This is an invitation — to see the world through Gwen’s eyes — to slow down, look closer and discover the wonder in her work. Unmissable — for both newcomers and devoted admirers alike.

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Lucy Wood is Senior Curator of Art at Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales. She is co-curator of Gwen John: Strange Beauties (2026) and co-editor of the accompanying monograph with Rachel Stratton, Yale Center for British Art.

Follow @MuseumWales

Visit: https://museum.wales/cardiff/whatson/12640/Gwen-John-Strange-Beauties/

#GwenJohn 

Exhibition organised by Amgueddfa Cymru in partnership with National Galleries of Scotland, National Museum of Women in the Arts, and Yale Center for British Art.

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Robert meets Sir Isaac Julien at Victoria Miro gallery in London to explore 4 decades of making art. We also meet Julien’s long term collaborator Mark Nash to explore his major five-screen film installation All That Changes You. Metamorphosis, 2025 and new photographic works. 

All That Changes You. Metamorphosis is a vivid, sweeping, visual poem about change, what it means to transform, to adapt and to survive. Commissioned to celebrate 500 years of Palazzo Te, Mantua, Italy (where it is currently on view) and exhibited here for the first time as a five-screen installation, Julien’s latest work moves between science fiction, philosophy, ecology and art, imagining new forms of life and identity beyond the human.

All That Changes You. Metamorphosis draws inspiration from thinkers who explore how transformation shapes who we are and how we live, including writers Octavia Butler, Naomi Mitchison, Ursula K. Le Guin and philosopher Donna Haraway. Their ideas weave through the film’s layered images and lyrical dialogue. Two protagonists are at the heart of the film, played by internationally acclaimed actors Sheila Atim and Gwendoline Christie.

Isaac Julien is as acclaimed for his fluent, arresting films as for his vibrant and inventive gallery installations. One of the objectives of his work is to break down the barriers that exist between different artistic disciplines, drawing from and commenting on film, dance, photography, music, theatre, painting and sculpture, and uniting them to construct a powerfully visual narrative.

Julien came to prominence in the film world with his 1989 drama-documentary Looking for Langston, gaining a cult following with this poetic exploration of Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance. During the past three decades he has made work largely, though not exclusively, for galleries and museums, using multi-screen installations to express fractured narratives exploring memory and desire.

Julien’s major film installations include Once Again . . . (Statues Never Die), 2022, commissioned by the Barnes Foundation in celebration of its centennial, an immersive five-screen installation exploring the relationship between Dr Albert C. Barnes, who was an early US collector and exhibitor of African material culture, and the famed philosopher and cultural critic Alain Locke, known as the ‘Father of the Harlem Renaissance’; Lessons of the Hour – Frederick Douglass, 2019, a meditation on the life, words, and actions of Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), the visionary African American abolitionist and freed slave, and on the issues of social justice that shaped his life’s work; Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement, 2019, reflecting on the iconic work and on the legacy of the visionary modernist architect and designer (1914–1992); PLAYTIME, 2014, which explores the dramatic and nuanced subject of financial capital; Ten Thousand Waves, 2010, exploring China's ancient past and rapidly transforming present through a series of interlocking narratives. 

Mark Nash is an independent curator, film historian, and filmmaker with a specialisation in contemporary avant-garde and world cinema. He is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), where he founded the Isaac Julien Lab@with his partner and long-time collaborator, artist Sir Isaac Julien. He has a PhD from Middlesex University and an MA from Cambridge University. 

Follow @IsaacJulien

Isaac Julien’s major retrospective opens in Bergamo at gresart671 on 10th April 2026 and he will also showing a single screen version of All That Changes You. Metamorphosis at The Cosmic House in London from 22nd April, learn more here. 

Special thanks to Victoria Miro gallery.

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