Hear, Now. A Podcast from Whitechapel Gallery.

In episode 4 of our mini series The London Open Live Podcast, we present 'Futurity - Ignorance is Bliss?' featuring Lois Weaver, Gigi Brathwaite, and Pianka Parna (host). In this conversation, we reflect on ideas of momentum, mapping out what we need from our audiences and each other as live art practitioners and artists. How do we nurture intergenerational and inter-experiential exchange? How can...

In episode 3 of our mini series The London Open Live Podcast, we present 'Community Building & Venues', featuring Lois Weaver, Joseph Morgan Schofield and Pianka Parna (host). We speak to experiences around hiring and accessing venues for Live Art performances, events, and festivals, as well as the changes to health and safety legislation and their impact on putting on this kind of work. The conve...

In episode 2 in our mini series The London Open Live Podcast, we present "Live Art 101: what is it & why do we do it?" - a conversation between Joseph Morgan Schofield, Martin O’Brien, and Pianka Parna (host). Speaking to key concepts and ideas around piercing, blood practices, pain, and nudity, this episode interrogates ideas of 'braveness' and 'insanity' often associated with live art and forms...

For the first episode in our mini series The London Open Live Podcast, we present "My First Live Art" - a conversation between Martin O’Brien, Gigi Brathwaite, and Pianka Parna (host). Diving into our first experiences of live art, the episode speaks to childhood memories, nostalgia, and routes to live art practices, as well as access to and the state of performance and live art education in the U...

Hear from Professors Sara Crangle and Rod Mengham as they discuss the life and work of poet, writer, and artist, Anna Mendelssohn. Drawing on the material presented in the exhibition 'Speak, Poetess' (11 Oct 2023 – 21 Jan 2024), discover how Mendelssohn's powerful written and visual language give form to history and social experience. For more information: www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/an...

Discover the inspiration behind artist Johanna Billing's film 'Each Moment Presents What Happens' (2022), as she discusses her ideas for the work with Whitechapel Gallery Director Gilane Tawadros and curator Judith Winter. The conversation touches on the legacy of Black Mountain College and approaches to collaborative art practice. For more information: www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/johan...

What should public space feel like? How do we find comfort, character and community in it? These questions underpin an immersive environment created by Duchamp & Sons, Whitechapel Gallery’s youth collective, and London-based artist Gaby Sahhar. Hear members of Whitechapel Gallery's youth collective as the discuss their experiences and the process behind making this exhibition. For more information...

Giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the Life Is More Important Than Art summer season, which encompasses exhibitions, social spaces, live performances and listening experiences, award-winning journalist Stephen Smith speaks to the artists, curators and contributors that made it all happen. Featuring interviews with Gallery Director Gilane Tawadros alongside artists Osman Yousefzada, Rana Begum,...

Has performance art become institutionalised or does it still hold the power to challenge the institution? Drawing on two exhibitions, Moving Bodies, Moving Images and Out of the Margins: Performance in London’s Institutions 1990s – 2010s, this episode explores the relationship between performance art and the contexts in which it is shown. Guests featured in this episode include co-founder of Live...

Episode 18 of Whitechapel Gallery’s Hear, Now podcast series delves deeper into the themes that underpin the exhibition Tracing Absence. Students graduating from the MA Curating Art and Public Programmes course, run by Whitechapel Gallery and London South Bank University, had the opportunity to curate this exhibition as part of their course, which confronts the different ways in which absence mani...

Episode 17 of Whitechapel Gallery's Hear, Now podcast series delves into the myriad of ways in which artists have studio spaces. Presented and produced by Marthe Lisson, hear from Russell Schofield, director of MDM Props, and artists Rory Cahill and George Mackness, who collaboratively developed ‘PLAZA’, part of this year’s London Open exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery. This episode of Hear Now is...

Episode 16 of Whitechapel Gallery's Hear, Now podcast series explores the work of Paulina Olowska and her current exhibition The Travel Bureau - selected works from the Christen Sveaas Art Foundation. Listen to fascinating excerpts from a live conversation with Iwona Blazwick, as well as a short introduction of The Travel Bureau by Whitechapel's Assistant Curator Grace Storey. For more information...

Iwona Blazwick speaks with MaryAnne Stevens, a specialist in Norwegian art history, about artist Ida Ekblad’s selection from the Cristen Sveaas Collection, which expose us to the eeriness of night scenes, from moonlit landscapes to dreams and nightmares. We also hear from poet Mark Ford, who reads the eponymous WH Auden poem that inspired the display. For more information: www.whitechapelgallery.o...

Delve into the ideas behind Theaster Gates’ new exhibition, with curator Lydia Yee in conversation with the artist. We also hear from historian Jason Young about the work and legacy of David Drake, an enslaved man whose pottery, engraved with poetry, was an act of resistance in the nineteenth-century American South. For more information: www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/theaster-gates-a-clay...

Artists’ Film International is a collaboration between Whitechapel Gallery and 20 global partner organisations. In 2021 the works selected give us pause to reflect on the meaning of care in today’s society – from bodily, mental or spiritual care to healing, trauma and solidarity. Curator Emily Butler is in conversation with Agnė Jokšė, and artist Rehana Zaman speaks with curator Jemma Desai, to co...

Damascus-born artist Simone Fattal is in conversation with curator Laura Smith about her new commission for Whitechapel Gallery, an environment of ancient ceramic architectures and flowers emerging from memories of lost landscapes. For more information: www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/simone-fattal-finding-a-way Transcript: www.whitechapelgallery.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Transcript_He...

‘Mend carefully. / Think of mending the world / At the same time.’ These are the instructions offered by artist Yoko Ono for her 1966 work Mend Piece. In this episode curator Cameron Foote reflects on the meaning of this work within Ono’s wider practice, alongside art historian Midori Yoshimoto and art therapist Nicky Roland. For more information: www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/yoko-ono-me...

Join curators Nayia Yiakoumaki and Cameron Foote as they examine the pivotal role of women as both artists and as behind-the-scenes organisers within the Surrealist movement in Britain in the 1930s, explored through the lens of the 1936 London Surrealist Exhibition and the women involved. They are joined by the curator Tor Scott and art historian Richard Shillitoe, investigating the legacies of Ed...

Whitechapel Gallery Curator Laura Smith is in conversation with Whitney Hintz, Curator of the Hiscox Collection, about a new display of works selected by the artist Sol Calero. They consider Calero’s immersive installation, comprising a brightly coloured, densely hung environment celebrating the natural world and the many ways that artists in the Hiscox Collection explore it. For more information:...

Artist Ayo Akingbade discusses her new film Fire In My Belly, co-developed with Whitechapel Gallery’s youth collective, Duchamp & Sons. Echoing the precarious times we live in, this newly commissioned work offers a compelling take on questions of home, community and crisis in London. Akingbade is in conversation with Curator Renee Odjidja, members of the collective and the Co-Founder/Director of M...

Celebrating the work of pioneering artist Eileen Agar, Whitechapel Gallery Curator Laura Smith and Assistant Curator Grace Storey share reflections on her legacy, alongside special guests including artist Lucy Stein, poet Daisy Lafarge and designer Beca Lipscombe, who tell us why the multi-talented Agar remains a leading light for contemporary creatives. For more information: www.whitechapelgaller...

CONTENT WARNING: This episode features a reference to rape and sexual violence. In her new video installation Indian artist Nalini Malani explores global issues of social injustice, positioning the voiceless and the invisible alongside gods and goddesses, intellectuals and poets. Here Malani is in conversation with curator Emily Butler to interrogate the myriad stories and political truths in her...

Portuguese artist Carlos Bunga creates monumental structures out of everyday materials to propose architecture as transitory and corporeal. Having destroyed the gigantic painted cardboard environment he had created for Whitechapel Gallery, Bunga discusses structure as memory, the movement of the body in painting and the Shaker’s idea of making as a form of prayer, with curator Emily Butler. More i...

In the late 1970s in London’s East End, Whitechapel Art Gallery developed a pioneering approach to art and education. Jenni Lomax, Community and Education Organiser at the time, invited artists to work alongside communities to set up residencies in schools, workshops at the Gallery and local partnerships with key organisations. Lomax joins curators Sofia Victorino and Nayia Yiakoumaki to return to...

Renowned artist, ceramicist and writer Edmund de Waal joins Whitechapel Gallery Director Iwona Blazwick to discuss the legacy of British artist and potter Bernard Leach. Founder of the Leach Pottery in St. Ives 100 years ago and celebrated in Kai Althoff’s current show, Leach drew on traditional Japanese ceramics to lay the foundations for modern Studio Pottery. Author of a critical account of Lea...