The Gallery Companion

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com In this week’s episode I am talking about lines -- the ones that you can see and the invisible ones that you can only feel. It’s a subject that the geographer Maxim Samson discusses in his recently published book, Invisible Lines, which is an exploration of the hidden g...

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com I’ve been thinking a lot this week about the practice of looking closely at things. It started when one of my readers sent me some wonderful writing and drawings that her boys had done in response to an exhibition in London that I reviewed a few weeks ago. With a brief...

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com I’ve often heard artists talk about how making art for them is not optional, it’s essential. Life-saving, even. In this week's episode I discuss the meaning of the phrase ‘art is life’ by thinking about the work of one of Britain’s leading conceptual artists, Martin Cre...

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com In this week's episode I discuss the highly profitable commercial world of human egg freezing, which has seen a dramatic rise in the UK and across the global north. There are many things about this new phenomenon that I find fascinating: what it says about the strong bi...

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com In this week's episode I discuss the Yoko Ono exhibition showing at Tate Modern in London at the moment. It is a huge show spanning a prolific creative life over more than fifty years, and frankly any contemporary artist that has a retrospective of this size in one of L...

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com In this week's episode I consider what it means to have something ‘useful’ to say in a world saturated with visual and textual information, with some words of wisdom from a stranger, the art of Barbara Kruger, and something very lovely that one of you said to me. Kruger...

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com You know when you’re looking at art and somehow it manages to convey feelings or sensations that are going on for you at that particular moment in time? I had that experience over and over again this week as I walked round the new exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in Lo...

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com In this episode I think about the culture of contemplating art, particularly in the hushed environment of art galleries, and how we approach it with a seriousness that often precludes laughter. I wonder whether we are so primed to search for deeper meanings and wholesom...

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly content at www.thegallerycompanion.com In this episode I discuss the issue of homelessness, and the radical approach that Finland has taken to tackle the problem in contrast to what is going on in the UK. And I reflect on an exhibition I saw this week by the American artist Pope L., whose work throughout his...

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. In this episode I discuss what happens when creatives get stuck and can't finish a piece of work. I explore ideas about what you can control in the process, and how chance, timing and patience factor in to what you can't control. There are wise words from the American artists Pope L and John Baldessari, and an interesting artwork of a clock face...

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. In this episode I discuss the recently opened exhibition on art and the feminist movement in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s at Tate gallery in London, including work by See Red Women's Workshop, Jill Posener and other British artists from this period. I talk about the value of protest / activist art, and why it's important that we record and col...

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. In this episode I reflect on how important the setting is to our understanding and experience of artworks, and the responses we can feel in our bodies when artworks actively occupy space. I discuss the retrospective of the British artist Sarah Lucas at Tate Britain, the amazing installation Behind the Red Moon by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui at Ta...

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. In this episode, I talk about the dangers of AI and the recent political responses to the regulation of these new technologies. I discuss Yuval Noah Harari's book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016) which suggests that the end of human history is nearly upon us. I consider a sculptural installation by the polish artist Alicja Kwade, wh...

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. In this episode, I talk about Naomi Klein's new book Doppelganger, which takes the reader on a journey into conspiracy culture. I consider the power of storytelling in the spread of misinformation, and I think about the work of artists who interrogate the media and who question how power circulates in our world including the great Barbara Kruger...

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. In this first episode of the second series, I consider the value of art for those who create it, and the ways in which artists talk about their process of making. I look at the work of abstract painter Maryanne Hawes, whose process of walking and then painting is integral to her practice; the Swedish artist Anna Bjergen, who describes the freedo...

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. In this episode I give a brief overview of some of the subjects I'll be exploring in the second season of The Gallery Companion podcast: nature and rewilding, the post-human future, conspiracy theories, the invisibility of older women, inequality and social mobility, understanding the world through touch and more... The Gallery Companion is host...

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. This episode explores how artists have represented ideas about civil unrest and rioting. I discuss the recent protests about police brutality and harassment in the Parisian suburbs that quickly escalated into violence. And I consider recent academic research on what riots can tell us about what's going wrong in society and what we need to put ri...

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. This episode is about our perception of time, how memories get lodged in our minds, and how important purposeful distraction is to creativity. I discuss the exploration of time in the work of the performance artist Marina Abramovic. Plus a jarring sculpture by the American artist Henry Taylor, which brings memories crashing into the present. And...

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. This episode considers the importance of public art for marking the memory of marginalised communities in urban areas that are always subject to development and change. I discuss the Met's new rooftop sculpture by the American artist Lauren Halsey, whose work celebrates her home community in South Central LA, an area that is fast becoming gentri...

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. This episode considers recent legal rulings in 'fair use' laws in the USA which have implications for artistic expression and culture more widely. The renowned conceptual artist Richard Prince, whose work heavily appropriates images, is one of the creative practitioners at the coal-face of these decisions. I discuss the meanings and value of his...

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. This episode considers recent legal changes to protest laws in the UK and the continuing importance of freedom of expression through the work of the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, Cuban performance artist Tania Bruguera and the Russian artist collective Pussy Riot. The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a tho...

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023. This episode considers the benefits of arts education for schoolchildren through the work of the American artist Ruth Asawa and the film-maker Steve McQueen. The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores an...

Shortlisted for the Independent Podcast Awards 2023, The Gallery Companion is hosted by writer and historian Dr Victoria Powell. It's a thought-provoking dive into all the interesting questions and messy stuff about our lives that art explores and represents. If you're curious about contemporary art and want to think more on what art does in our world, keep listening. To see the images and watch t...