See video highlights of this conversation on the Talking with Painters YouTube channel

The impressive survey exhibition ‘Encountered’, curated by Kon Gouriotis and now showing at the S.H.Ervin Gallery in Sydney, brings together 120 of Steve Lopes’ works including over 80 paintings and drawings, sketchbooks, prints and collages.

This is a must-see exhibition especially for those interested in figurative painting.

In my previous interview with Steve, he expressed the view that to be successful, a painting requires a gritty element – a bit of ‘poison’. When I visited the exhibition a couple of weeks ago, though, it wasn’t only that grittiness that struck me but also the humanity evident in the works, not only in the figures but also in the environments they inhabit.

Desolate wartime landscapes hinting at the loss of human life, a dog wandering across a suburban backlot, figures enigmatically positioned on a coastal landscape; these scenes exude an air of melancholy but often also a familiarity.

Steve has exhibited in close to 40 solo shows across Australia and in London and Hong Kong. He has won the Gallipoli Art Prize, the Kings School Art Prize and has been shortlisted in many others. His work is held in the National Gallery of Australia, the Parliament House Collection, the State Library of NSW and many other public and private collections.

We met at the S.H.Ervin gallery as the exhibition was being installed and we talked about a selection of works (pictured below), the story behind them as well as insights into his practice.

The show continues at the S.H.Ervin Gallery until 8 May 2022 and will then travel to Orange Regional Gallery where it will run from 21 May.

To hear the podcast episode click ‘play’ beneath the above feature photo.

Mythology, Disney, her Filipino heritage, religion, guilt, motherhood and family are examples of the subject matter she draws from and her upcoming show, ‘For us sinners’ at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Sydney, is set to contain some of the most impactful work she has produced to date.

What’s equally striking is the contrast between her painting style and the surface on which she often chooses to paint: found cardboard, typically in the form of flattened packing boxes complete with rips, creases and packing tape!

Marikit won the Art Gallery of NSW’s Sulman prize in 2020 with her work ‘The Divine’, a painting of her three children who were also her collaborators. We talk in this episode about how they contribute to her practice and why that collaboration is so important to her work.

Apart from winning the Sulman, Marikit has been a finalist in many other prizes including the Archibald prize twice.  She has exhibited in 6 solo shows and her upcoming exhibition at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art is her first institutional show. It is curated by Micheal Do and opens on 26 March 2022.

We recorded this conversation in Marikit’s garage studio with her stunning recent work, Thy Kingdom Come, leaning precariously against the easel. Rich with cultural and religious symbolism, as well as quite a few cartoon characters, the complex painting had been finished the day before our interview, after nine months’ work.

To hear the podcast episode click ‘play’ beneath the above feature photo.

Scroll down for a short video of Marikit in her studio from the Talking with Painters YouTube channel .

A lot was going on creatively for Tom at the time. It was at about the same time as his book ‘Womerah Lane: Lives and Landscapes’ was released and his solo show at King Street gallery in Sydney was about to open.

As soon as I arrived at his Womerah Lane terrace I saw that it was overtaken by preparations for that show. Once Tom has created his work he then makes their frames from beautiful Tasmanian blackwood and the frames were in various states of completion throughout the dining area and the studio.

By coincidence, I’m publishing this episode as Tom is going through the very same process in the lead up to his next show with King Street Gallery which opens on 22 March 2022. It’s taken over two months to make the frames. They are works of art in themselves with each corner joined with wooden keys and he thinks carefully about which work would best suit the timber of each unique frame.

When I spoke with Tom he had been living in Adelaide where he and his wife Jan had pared back their belongings and rented a one-bedroom worker’s cottage where they had only intended to stay for a year. But since then Covid took hold and his upcoming show is called ‘Two years in South Australia’.

It’s a beautiful body of work and what struck me in particular was a series of exquisite works of the lighthouse on Corny Point, Yorke peninsula, where he camped for several weeks and which he observed and painted at different times of the day.

Tom has won numerous art prizes (including the Gallipoli, Mosman and NSW Parliament Plein Air Painting Prize) and has been shortlisted countless times in others including the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes and the Salon des Refuses. He has exhibited in over 25 solo shows and his work is held in public and private collections internationally. ‘Womerah Lane’, the latest of several books he has written, was shortlisted in the NSW Premier’s literary awards last year.

You can see the edited video version of this recording on my YouTube channel here and listen to the previous podcast episode (ep 78) where Tom talks with me about his life and how he became an artist here.

To hear this podcast episode click on ‘play’ beneath the above photo.

The video of this episode’s fabulous artist, Nicole Kelly, is the second most watched on the channel, which currently has over 150 videos*.

Nicole Kelly is an acclaimed Sydney artist, having won multiple art prizes, and you can find out more about her career and how she became an artist in my original 2019 podcast interview (episode 75).  In this episode she talks about working en plein air, how she sources colour for her work, the importance of making mistakes and lots more.

Her next solo show ‘Opacity of Time’ with her Melbourne gallery, This Is No Fantasy, opens on 25 February 2022 and I’ve included a selection of the exciting works going into that show below.

Nicole also has a solo show coming up in August with Arthouse Gallery in Sydney and her work will be included in a curated show ‘Quintet: 5 southern Sydney Artists’ at Hazelhurst Arts Centre in September.

Its hard to explain what I love about Nicole’s work but there’s a kind of mystery and romance to her paintings through her use of colour and mark which draws me in every time.

To hear this episode press ‘play’ beneath the above feature photo.

* The most watched video is the first ‘loading dock’ video where I interviewed entrants to the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2019. Link to the YouTube channel in links below.

We also recorded a separate video and this episode is the first of my 2022 Summer Series which is a collection of extended audio recordings from videos I’ve taken of my podcast guests.

Joshua’s works are extraordinary. His paintings often involve an element of carving into the wooden surface of the work and in some cases he inserts pieces of cane which add a further dimension to the work. But it’s the physical method of doing that work which enhances his creative process and you’ll hear him explain this and many other aspects of his practice in this episode.

If you’re in Sydney you can see several stunning Yeldham works in Arthouse Gallery’s Summer group show which also includes work of podcast guests Colin Pennock, Susan Baird, Nicole Kelly, Jo Bertini, Michaye Boulter and Belinda Fox as well as many other skilled artists. The exhibition continues until 29 January 2022.

See below for a short video version of this episode filmed in Joshua’s Sydney studio.

Working from life, it is vitality which Robert aims to capture in his work and by painting alla prima and completing the work in one session, the viewer ultimately witnesses the movement and life which has been captured in each brushstroke.

He has won the NSW Parliament Plein Air Art Prize and the Manning Art Prize and has been shortlisted in the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes multiple times as well as being shortlisted in many others. He is represented in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and New York, has had 25 solo shows and his work is held in many public and private collections.

We met in his studio in Sydney (he also has a studio in the Blue Mountains) and there was a series of recent breathtaking works lining the walls.

In this podcast episode you can hear Robert talk with me about his early career in animation, how he learnt to paint, how and why he paints alla prima and much more.

To hear the podcast episode click on ‘play’ beneath the above feature photo.

See below for video highlights of the conversation which includes footage inside his studio on the Talking with Painters YouTube channel.

https://youtu.be/SAf7U0q0zCc

A video version of this episode can be viewed here

‘Matisse: Life and Spirit, Masterpieces from the Centre Pompidou, Paris’, now showing at the Art Gallery of NSW, is an uplifting collection of paintings, drawings and sculptures which not only brings with it excitement, joy and optimism, but also is immediate in its nature. 

“As these works have come out of their crates I’ve really had the feeling that the paintings are almost making themselves before your eyes … he’s not giving you a sealed off, finished, product”, Justin tells me in this podcast episode. “He’s showing you his thinking. He wants you to feel as though you’re looking over his shoulder as he revises, adjusts, amends a line, sands something back’.

And this proximity to Matisse is not only felt in the works themselves, but in the way they are presented to us. His sculptures and paintings seem to talk to each other and the breathtaking space which evokes the artist’s Chapel of the Rosary in Vence takes us a step closer to what he might have felt in the moments of its creation. The space is designed by renowned Australian architect Richard Johnson.

Justin Paton is the head curator of international art at the Art Gallery of NSW. He talks with me about the exhibition, from the early works from the Fauvist period and Matisse’s time connecting with the Australian artist John Russell to the later cut-out works and how they came about. He also talks with me about the ‘Matisse Alive’ exhibition which he also curated.

Justin is also an acclaimed writer and his books include ‘How to look at a painting’ (which was adapted into a TV series) and more recently  ‘McCahon Country’ about the works of the famous New Zealand painter Colin McCahon.

To hear our conversation click on ‘play’ beneath the above photo.

The exhibition ‘Matisse: Life and Spirit’ continues until 13 March 2022. You can buy tickets here. ‘Matisse Alive’ is a free exhibition and continues until 3 April 2022.

Links

But they also have distinctly different personalities and it’s this contrast that makes their arts podcast ‘Art Wank’ so interesting and entertaining.

They interviewed me earlier this year and when I heard they were exhibiting at The Other Art Fair in Sydney I thought it was the perfect opportunity to interview them back.

So here it is! A fun chat about their lives, their podcast and their art.

See below for details of The Other Art Fair, examples of their beautiful work and for links to the podcast and other things we chatted about in the show.

Photo of Fiona and Julie by Jasmine Higgins

Watch highlights of this episode on the YouTube channel

Over the last 14 months, with no other deadline than his upcoming show at Yavuz Gallery, he has taken the opportunity to free himself from the usual demands of an imminent exhibition and created a body of work which has explored exciting new directions. 

Jules is well known for his beautiful portraits and still life works – painted in thin layers of translucent oil paint and often mistaken from afar as watercolour – but his stunning large scale landscapes over recent years are now taking centre stage and incorporate elements of abstraction to the point where in some works the representational drops off altogether. 

And yet there is a strong link to the mysteries of the natural world in his work. Ideas surrounding the moon and tidal forces, sleep cycles, dreams, heartbeat rhythms and light rays drive his landscape paintings adding to their symbolism and allure.

I caught up with Jules last week at his Sydney studio where he works among other high level creatives. In this podcast episode we talked about how it all started (his first career might surprise you), his ideas, his techniques and the unexpected energy required to create these still works. 

He has exhibited in close to 30 solo shows and has been shortlisted in many major art prizes in Australia including the Archibald (four times), Wynne, Doug Moran, Glover and Shirley Hannan. 

To hear our conversation press play beneath the above feature photo.

See below for a short video of highlights of this episode from the Talking with Painters YouTube channel.

https://youtu.be/QtFOx0IGmsQ

See the YouTube video version of this podcast episode here

To add to this, in early December 2021, Orange Regional Gallery will be exhibiting what promises to be a blockbuster Tomescu show, looking at the artist’s latest large works and how they connect to a group of key paintings and etchings from the past twenty years.

Tying in with these shows, I recently came across some footage I’d taken in the lead up to Aida’s 2019 show with Fox Jensen Gallery, ‘The Open Wounds of White Clouds’. Watching the video again, I soon realised there were many timeless gems in that conversation which I had never published, so here is the full exchange.

We filmed this conversation in Aida’s studio in August 2019, in the midst of many dynamic works lining the walls and with Aida standing in front of the triptych titled ‘Sewn onto the Stones in the Sky’. That work has since been acquired by the Art Gallery of NSW (see below) and Aida talks in this episode about her approach to that work.

Scroll down to see the video version of this episode as well as four previous videos of Aida currently on the channel.

To hear the audio podcast conversation click ‘play’ beneath the above feature photo.