Click play for the podcast episode – you can also watch an edited video version of this episode on the TWP YouTube channel. 

Daniel describes himself in those university days in Canberra as ‘a shy young First Nations man from Far North Queensland’. That reserved nature still comes through even though I was speaking with him at the exhibition ‘Treasure Island’ which celebrates his career with over 80 works in one of Australia’s most important art institutions, the Art Gallery of NSW.

Daniel’s First Nations heritage is central to his work. His ancestors were part of the Stolen Generation. Forced to let go of their culture and language, they lived in fear that if they shared it with their children they would be taken away from them. In an interview in the Gallery’s Look magazine Daniel said that that forced  withholding of culture meant that he always felt there was something missing and it was at university that he tried to make sense of that.

One of the striking aspects of Daniel’s work is the way he both reveals and obscures his subject. Using a pointillist technique, he places a multitude of translucent dots over the image creating a series of convex lenses, as he refers to them, and while you can see the image through these lenses the rest of the image is painted out.

Although this creates a visually alluring effect, there’s more to this technique than just the physical use of the material. There are concepts behind it which relate to ways of seeing and perception and which are interestingly explored in the book accompanying the exhibition (see link below).

The show has been curated by Isobel Parker Philip, Senior Curator of Contemporary Australian Art and Erin Vink, curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, both at the Art Gallery of NSW.

Daniel has exhibited in over 30 solo shows, has won the Bulgari Award amongst others, and his work is held in many other public institutions including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and the Natural History Museum in London.

Click play beneath the above feature photo to hear the podcast episode watch the YouTube video of this edited conversation here.

‘Treasure Island’, Art Gallery of NSW, current to 29 January 2023

https://youtu.be/IUlMxJOHjSY

Scroll down to watch two videos of Sam on the TWP YouTube channel.

The two artists to achieve this rare distinction before him were 20th century greats Sir William Dobell and Brett Whiteley.

I remember seeing those two small paintings hanging in the Art Gallery of NSW and being struck by their beauty and exquisite detail. The debate surrounding his Wynne Prize painting that year, which caused a small media storm, is something we dive into in this episode.

I’ve been intrigued by Sam’s work ever since then. His art delves into the areas of science and nature, and in more recent years, he’s used Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to initiate his paintings. It was fascinating to hear him talk about this approach.

With a distinctly surrealist feel, Sam’s work also reveals his continued interest in the Dutch masters of the 17th century which began in his early career. In his current show at Sullivan+Strumpf in Sydney, moody utopian landscapes team up with incongruous elements such as huge ‘bubbles’ and globular and tubular forms often hinting at or including a human presence.

Other works depict animals, particularly polar bears, created from machine learning. These paintings, and the rather comical-looking Polar Bear Detector devised by Sam (where you can test how closely you resemble a polar bear) encourage us to see ourselves and the creatures with which we share the planet from a new perspective.

The exhibition, with the unsettling title  ‘Everything Will Probably Be Fine’, continues until 16 July 2022.

Sam has exhibited in 30 solo shows nationally and across the globe, has won several other awards apart from the Archibald and Wynne, and his work is held by many private and public collections including Australia’s National Portrait Gallery.

Scroll down for two YouTube videos of Sam talking about his work.

Scroll down for images of the works we discuss in this episode.

Press play to hear our conversation and scroll down for images of the works we talk about in this episode.

Above feature photo supplied by the artist

https://youtu.be/li3tAUhvrHY?si=i4M61Sy5IwLa8tve

https://youtu.be/H8bZlog0heM?si=-upV2WHstzXFORnD

The winners of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes have been announced at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and in this episode you’ll hear my interviews with each of those artists about their winning works:

The Archibald Wynne and Sulman Prizes exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW runs until 28 August 2022 and will then travel to Victoria and regional NSW until July 2023.

Congratulations to all the winners and finalists!

Internationally renowned, Del is well known in Australia for having won the country’s most famous art prize twice – the Archibald Prize – and her works are held in many private collections and public institutions. This year the National Gallery of Australia acquired her largest single-panel work she has made to date, ‘my heart is blazing 11 hours’, and we talk about the work in this episode.

Although difficult to describe in words, Del’s work often depicts a female sensuality which is at the same time beautiful and confrontational – set in an intricately detailed imaginary world. She is also a self-described optimist and the work hanging in this exhibition is a testament to that, with vivid colour bursting from the canvas.

We also discuss other art forms she has recently been engaged in, including a major project she has been developing over the last 4 years which has now come to fruition. Del’s first feature film ‘Blaze’, a very personal work which she directed and co-wrote, is debuting at the Tribeca Film festival in June and it’s one of only 10 films selected in the International Narrative competition. It has also been selected for Official Competition in the upcoming Sydney film festival, again one of only ten films selected internationally.

You’ll also hear about the origins of her arresting timber sculptures included in the exhibition. Large shell forms inlaid with exquisite materials which reference very personal themes.

To hear the conversation press ‘play’ beneath the above feature photo. You can hear the previous 2019 podcast interview where Del talks about her life and art here.

Scroll down for a short video of highlights of this conversation and footage of the exhibition on the Talking With Painters YouTube channel. 

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