Visual Arts Interviews
10 Questions for art historian and fiction writer Chloë AshbySaturday, 11 June 2022![]()
“Is she at a pivotal point in her life but unable to pivot…?” Eve, the young heroine of Chloë Ashby’s dazzling debut novel, Wet Paint, asks this question standing in front of Édouard Manet’s painting "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère" (1882). Yet she could easily be asking herself the same question. Read more... |
'A nun destroyed my tent': artist Kate Daudy talks about NFTs, refugees, and having her work thrown out with the trashWednesday, 10 November 2021![]()
It’s been a turbulent week for British artist Kate Daudy. Am I My Brother’s Keeper, her refugee tent (main picture), the art installation and seminal work that propelled her to international fame is gone, thrown out with the trash. Read more... |
Documenting the unimaginable: photographer Sebastião Salgado talks about climate change, dodging caimans and changing perspectivesThursday, 21 October 2021![]()
Sebastião Salgado has carved out his career by documenting the unimaginable. He takes areas of life all too often ignored by wealthy westerners and reveals them in mesmerising, teeming detail. Read more... |
10 Questions for Irina NalisThursday, 19 March 2020![]()
Normally we'd put a descriptor - "cellist", "film maker", "techno producer" for example - in the title of this interview, but for Irina Nalis there isn't space. Like, "10 Questions for psychologist, ministerial adviser, festival founder, architectural consultant, digital humanism activist and techno veteran Irina Nalis" wouldn't fit across the page. But that's the multidisciplinary world for you. Read more... |
10 Questions for author Martin GayfordSaturday, 21 September 2019
Over the past four decades Martin Gayford, The Spectator’s art critic, has travelled the world, been published in an amazing range of print and digital publications and written more than 20 books, many of them involving his fascination not only with looking at art, but also its making. Read more... |
An encounter with John Richardson, Picasso's biographer who has died at 95Thursday, 14 March 2019![]()
When I interviewed John Richardson, who has died at the age of 95, he was edging through his definitive four-tome life of the minuscule giant of Cubism. Of the various breaks he took from the business of research and writing, one yielded The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a gossipy, elegant account of his own friendship with Picasso in the 1950s, when he lived in Provençal splendour with Douglas Cooper, then the owner of the finest collection of Cubist art in the world. Read more... |
10 Questions for Artist David ShrigleyTuesday, 01 May 2018![]()
David Shrigley (b. 1968) is an artist whose work has become broadly popular via a wide range of formats. At first glance, his stark pen-on-paper drawings seem akin to humorous newspaper cartoons – and, indeed, he’s contributed to The Guardian for years – but there's another layer to his work, something odder, slyer, psychologically attuned to the relationship between the... Read more... |
10 Questions for Artist Brett GoodroadFriday, 06 April 2018![]()
Brett Goodroad (b. 1979) is an artist and painter based in San Francisco. Born and raised in rural Montana, in 2012 he received the Tournesol Award, overseen by Sausalito’s Headland Center for the Arts. Read more... |
Brighton Festival 2017: 12 Free EventsThursday, 06 April 2017![]()
The Brighton Festival, which takes place every May, is renowned for its plethora of free events. The 2017 Festival is curated by Guest Director Kate Tempest, the poet, writer and performer, alongside Festival CEO Andrew Comben who’s been the event's overall manager since 2008 (also overseeing the Brighton Dome venues all year round). This year the Festival’s theme is “Everyday Epic”. Read more... |
Artist Tyler Mallison: 'I don’t think about materials as being merely visible objects or things'Saturday, 25 March 2017![]()
Artist and curator Tyler Mallison has chosen the world’s most generic title for his current exhibition. It's called New Material, and the surprising thing one discovers is that the hackneyed "new" really can be quite fresh. Sculpture and painting comprise display units, work desks, gym equipment, packing tape and whitewash. Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
![Tight-knit ensemble: Anjli Mohindra, Deborah Findlay, Gina McKee, Romola Garai, Harmony Rose-Bremner in 'The Years'](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Years%201.jpg?itok=Tc5XqxSD)
Annie Ernaux’s semi-autobiographical book Les Années charts a woman’s life across time and space, history and memory, through...
For all its passing British sea shanties and folksongs, Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony does Walt Whitman’s determinedly global-oriented...
Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof is now an Oscar-nominated refugee, in a bittersweet harvest for his film The Seed of the Sacred Fig....
![Bringing unhinged joy](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/NINA_CONTI_LIVE-07236%28Credit_Paul%20Gilbey%29.jpg?itok=G1I9o9NW)
“I really am the repository for all your shit,” Nina Conti’s famous Monkey hand puppet tells her. Monkey may have a point.
The brilliance of...
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It was the sonically adventurous, shiveringly atmospheric cello piece by Latvian composer Preteris Vasks that proved to be the first showstopper...
![Deus ex machina: Dionysus (Tommy Franzén) takes pity on grieving Ariadne (Kristen McNally) in Minotaur](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Tommy%20Franze%CC%81n%20%28Dionysus%29%20and%20Kristen%20McNally%20%28Ariadne%29%20in%20Minotaur%20%C2%A92025%20Tristram%20Kenton%20%281%29.jpg?itok=GHMuDnZY)
Greek myths are all over theatre stages at the moment, their fierce, vengeful stories offering unnerving parallels with events in our modern world...
![Cyndi Lauper was as colourful as ever on the first night of her European tour](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Rebecca_Miller_Photo_Credit%201.jpg?itok=dRjt79yL)
Cyndi Lauper was preceded onstage by a brief video that zipped through her career, which she drily declared was just in case someone was at the...
![The Lurkers in 1978. Left to right: Pete “Manic Esso” Haynes, Nigel Moore, Pete Stride and Howard Wall.](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/The%20Lurkers_header_1000.jpg?itok=SVrHqgvo)
On its own, the second session The Lurkers recorded for the BBC’s John Peel show on 18 April 1978 is arguably a curio, a footnote. Four tracks of...
![Making faces: Junyan Chen, Sarah Brandwood-Spencer, Ruth Gibson, Eva Thorarinsdottir and Nick Trygstad in Hidden Mechanisms by Héloïse Werner](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Manchester%20Collective%20%28Eva%20Thorarinsdottir%20Violin%2C%20Sarah%20Brandwood-Spencer%20Violin%2C%20Ruth%20Gibson%20Viola%2C%20Nick%20Trygstad%20Cello%2C%20Junyan%20Chen%29%20in%20Hidden%20Mechanisms%20by%20He%CC%81loi%CC%88se%20Werner%20%20Sozosei%20Photography.jpg?itok=gkXMzLSu)
When a piece of music is heard for the first time ever, there’s always the delicious hope that, just by being there, an audience might witness...