In Talks With

How can a physical space impact an artist’s work? Danielle travels to Charleston, that famous home in the rolling Sussex hills of South East England, which was home to the Bloomsbury Set during the First and Second World Wars  and which still attracts fans of the works of Virginia Woolf, her sister Vanessa Bell their friends who stayed there, and which continues to be held up as a beacon of artist...

Anthony Caro is a giant of British architecture, who designed the London Millennium Footbridge spanning the Thames between St. Paul's Cathedral and the Tate Modern, who worked with Henry Moore, and who, with his vision and restless drive, broke through the stagnation of the art world in post-war Britain. A major exhibition of Anthony Caro’s work is currently on view at Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery...

“I like to break and remake things.” Calling himself-medium-agnostic, London-based British-Pakistani artist Shezad Dawood interweaves stories, realities and symbolism to create richly layered artworks, spanning painting, textiles, sculpture, film and digital media. The breadth of Dawood's output is quite astounding, and his ability to jump across an omniversal divide is worth the time spent listen...

Curator Romy Cockx talks to Danielle Radojcin about Man Ray’s journey from growing up as the son of working-class immigrants in Philadelphia to a towering giant of 20th Century image-making. Man Ray was responsible for some of the most eye-catching photos of women in the 20th Century: Lee Miller’s floating lips, the glass tears of Kiki de Montparnasse, and portraits of fashion stars Coco Chanel an...

Under Touria El Glaoui's guidance, the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair has become a flagship event in the art world, providing a platform for emerging and established artists from Africa and the diaspora to showcase their work. The fair has been held in major cities around the world, including London, Marrakech and New York, and has attracted a diverse audience of art enthusiasts, collectors, a...

What makes a good art fair? In recent years, there has been an ever-growing number of them around the world, their size and number leading to complaints of disregard of environmental impact and general art fair fatigue. So, is it possible to make attending an art fair into a creatively fulfilling experience? Leading art advisor Nazy Vassegh addresses this with her boutique art fair, Eye of the Col...

Spotted as a teenager for his spectacular drawing skills, African-American artist Leonardo Drew was nearly recruited into a world of draughtsmanship for the likes of Marvel and DC comics, but instead found his true calling via the study of fine arts in New York and the impact of Jackson Pollock.

"What is it like to be a young artist growing up - what are your reference points and how do you take ownership and claim that history?” Taking inspiration from 1950s porn magazines, Lucian Freud and her grandfather, the young British artist Somaya Critchlow creates intimate paintings that reclaim ownership of the Black female nude. Danielle visits The Lightbox, the regional contemporary art galle...

An habitué of the vibrant New York art, fashion and nightlife scene of the 1970s and 80s, where the crowd included Cookie Mueller, Basquiat and Holly Woodlawn, Covert's works featuring celebrity graves have become a life’s journey. With his first solo show opening in London, he talks to Danielle Radojcin about past lives, future pilgrimages and being a survivor.

Artist Jenkin van Zyl seeks to portray characters who find transcendence through the freedom of being able to be whomever they want, behind prosthetic, ghoulish masks. Doppelgangers and clones swarm through his work; theatrics and extreme body alteration abound; moments of extreme tension break into the absurd. On the eve of his first solo show, 'Surrender', he talks to journalist Danielle Radojci...

This episode relates the fascinating life story of Cinzia Ruggeri, the artist and fashion designer whose free-spirited creativity saw her achieve extraordinary success during the 1970s and 80s, only for her to walk away, and, since her death, be largely forgotten by the wider creative community.  Born in Milan in 1942 into an industrial manufacturing family, Cinzia Ruggeri studied applied arts in...

 In this episode, host Danielle Radojcin travels to East London to meet Hannah Starkey, the British photographer. Since she first came to prominence in the 90s, Starkey has built up an impressive body of work focusing on women and how they are represented. Born in Belfast in 1971, she studied photography and film at Edinburgh’s Napier University in the 90s and went on to study photography at the R...

"My job is about preparing new problems, and trying to paint back out of them towards something true." The artist, who has a major new show in London, talks to Danielle Radojcin about relishing the challenge of the blank canvas and how he strives to represent what it is to be human.

In her first-ever podcast interview, Vanessa Baird, one of Norway's most pre-eminent artists, speaks to Danielle Radojcin about her life’s work. Taking inspiration from her daily routine at home with her family in Oslo, her drawings are at once darkly comic and profoundly relatable. Vanessa trained at the the Royal Academy in London under Quentin Blake, and is a winner of Norway’s most important a...

The former fashion designer, who has recently pivoted to art, talks to Danielle about the heady days of designing for Clements Ribeiro; why French women love Cacharel; and the special energy of Naomi Campbell.

“Always be upset. We can go backwards, we can lose rights. If you don’t fight for what you have, you will lose it.” The artist talks to Danielle about her upcoming retrospective at MUCEM in Marseille and how she uses feminism, politics and humour in her work.

Born in Iran, the artist Soheila Sokhanvari has lived in the UK since the 70s. Working first as a scientist, according to her family’s wishes, and then retraining as an artist in the 2010s, she became an ‘official’ exile from Iran in 2009. Now based in Cambridge, where she is a studio resident at Wysing Studios, she has her first Her Barbican exhibition, curated by Eleanor Nairne, two years in the...

Selected as one of the creatives in the Theaster Gates x Prada design programme, Catherine Sarr is a jewellery designer for our times. Her sustainable jewellery line, Almasika, was snapped up by Vogue and has adorned the likes of Michelle Obama and Reese Witherspoon; she is also co-founder of the Prix Sarr at Les Beaux-Arts Paris, which presents three awards annually to students for excellence in...

Jaume Plensa is an internationally celebrated artist, whose colossal sculptures enhance the landscape in locations from Japan to Germany, from the United States to Reunion. Born in Barcelona in 1955, he has become known for creating work that aims to build bridges and foster communication between people and nations, principally via his enormous portrait sculptures with closed eyes, which exude an...

“I feel like it’s going to be a tidal wave of appreciation.” The New York artist talks about her friend, the photographer Jimmy DeSana, and a major retrospective of his work she is planning this autumn. She also discusses the meaning of photography in the digital age and how she will always prefer the artificial to reality.

Kaat Debo is the director and chief curator at MoMu, the fashion museum in Antwerp, Belgium. Belgium is famous as a key fashion location, not just for producing contemporary star names such as Raf Simons and Glenn Martens, but also for the Antwerp Six, a group of designers who came to prominence in the 90s and became celebrated for their groundbreaking designs. In September this year, MoMu reopene...

The American photographer Peter Hujar came to recognition for his gritty, tough and glamorous black and white images of the downtown New York scene taken during the 1970s and 80s. Until his untimely death from AIDS in 1987, he was a key player in the group of artists, musicians, writers, and performers who made the city so compelling at this time, and he left behind a complex and profound body of...

The multidisciplinary British artist shares her journey, from juggling motherhood and work, to dealing with grief, to having her work broadcast at Piccadilly Circus and winning the Max Mara Art Prize for Women and major new shows at Whitechapel Gallery in London and Collezione Maramotti in Italy.

Was fashion more fun in the 90s? From grunge to vintage, from McQueen to Margiela - there's a lot to cover. Danielle Radojcin asks Colleen Hill, a curator at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, to give us the lowdown on the stories she uncovered while researching her new book on the subject.

Danielle spends a day at the New Art Centre at Roche Court in Salisbury near Stonehenge, talking to the artists Edmund de Waal and Jacqui Poncelet, and the gallery's founder, Madeleine Bessborough.