ART FICTIONS

Symbolic Prose and Personal Politics (HELEN JOHNSON)

Guest artist HELEN JOHNSON

joins JILLIAN KNIPE for this final episode of Series 5, to discuss her work via 'The Birds' by Tarjei Vesaas. Published originally in 1957, then by Penguin Random House in 2019, this short novel describes the relationship between Hege and her younger, mentally challenged brother Mattis. With a sense of non-judgemental simplicity and acute sensitivity, we join the siblings as they negotiate everyday life in partial isolation and on the edge of something happening.

HELEN and Jillian's conversation encompasses lightning, tenderness, siblings, gullibility, hiding, tapestry, holding, frustration, anguish, excavation, metaphors, equality, masking, knitting needles, dream worlds, shattered trees, portals, body punctures, art therapy, white supremacy, honest thieves, cartography lines, blinding flies, Oedipus complex, intergenerational privilege, psychotic structure, architectural blueprints, birthing shit, monetising colonialisation, not being othered, the weight of the work, creating a space for healing, writing being like a drawing, and a lot of Lacanian psychotherapy - a real learning experience !

 

HELEN JOHNSON

helenjohnson.net

'Opening' Pilar Corrias Savile Row til 6 Jan 2024

'Agency' Pilar Corrias 2019

'Warm Ties' ICA 2017

 

ARTISTS 

Aleksandra Waliszewska

Aliza Nisenbaum 

Bridget Riley

Christina Quarles

Denzil Forrester

Fred Williams

Georgiana Houghton

Joy Labinjo

Judy Watson

Katie Pratt

Laura Owens

Maja Ruznic

Marcus Coates 'The Directors' Artangel

Melanie Jackson

Nicole Eisenman

Njideka Akunyili Crosby 

Paola Balla

Rosie Mullan

Shanti Panchal

Yhonnie Scarce

AUTHORS + BOOKS

Darian Leader 'The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression' 2008

Jackie Wullschläger 'Monet: The Resless Vision' 2023

Jennifer Higgie 'The Other Side: A Journey into Women, Art and the Spirit World' 2023

Karl Ove Knausgaard

National Gallery of Australia 'Know My Name: Australian Women Artists Since 1900' 2021 Part 1 2022 Part 2

CURATORS + ART HISTORIANS

Helen Molesworth 'Dialogues' David Zwirner

Sarah McCrory

THEORISTS + ANALYSTS + ACTIVISTS

Anna Freud

Donald Winnicott

Jacques Lacan

Joy Shaverien

Melanie Klein

Meriki Onus

Sigmund Freud

Shirley Sharon-Zisser 'What Would a Lacanian Art Therapy Look Like'

Walter Benjamin

Wilfred Bion

GALLERIES + ART INSTITUTIONS

Glasgow International

ICA Institute of Contemporary Art

Kunstverein in Hamburg

Kingsgate Project Space

Latrobe University

MCA NSW Museum of Contemporary Art Australia

NGV National Gallery of Victoria

Pilar Corrias

SeMA Seoul Museum of Art

Tate Galleries

 

 

Closure Difficulties and Performative Reality (ELEONORA AGOSTINI)

Guest artist ELEONORA AGOSTINI joins PELUMI ODUBANJO to discuss her art practice via 'Boxes', a short story featured in 'Elephant and Other Stories' 1998 Collins Harvill. Written by Raymond Carver and originally published in The New Yorker, the story explores connections, disillusion, powerlessness, worry and loss within a mother and son relationship, as well as the distance between listening and hearing. 

ELEONORA and Pelumi's discussion encompasses immortality, microcosmos, waitressing, belonging, mothers, self representation, the grid, family frictions, bitter endings, creepy observation, archival images, being deeply uncomfortable, hiding in bushes, multiple layers of meaning, the complicated teenage years, difficulty bringing closure to relationships, connections between pictures and performance, and not wanting to be the dictator of the image.

 

@eleonoraagostini

eleonoraagostini.com

Foam Talent 2024-2025

Bloomberg New Contemporaries, 2019

'A Study of Waitressing'

'A Blurry Aftertaste' 2018

'Laying with Strangers'

'Welcome Sir'

'How to Stand in Front of the Camera'

'How to Stand in Front of the Client'

'Notes for my Clients'

'The Steps'

@pelumi.odubanjo

ARTISTS

Olukemi Lijadu

Ragnar Kjartansson

WRITERS

John Cheever

Raymond Carver

GALLERIES & INSTITUTIONS

Barbican

Borough Road Gallery 'With Monochrome Eyes' 2020

Palais de Tokyo

Royal College

 

Social Mobility and Beyond Language (MELANIE JACKSON)

Guest artist MELANIE JACKSON joins artist JILLIAN KNIPE to discuss her art practice via 'Corey Fah Does Social Mobility' by Isabel Waidner. Published in 2023 by Hamish Hamilton, part of Penguin Random House, the novel explores binaries, boundaries and borders, freeing us to imagine other ways of being within the context of award winning social mobility, cyclical history, and watching reality TV. 

MELANIE and Jillian's discussion encompasses shame, humility, apology, gratitude, wormholes, reconfigured animations, cultural disruption, synthetic biology, persistent amnesia, complicated truths, brutalist architecture, unsustained caretaking, industrial metaphysics, winged penises, synthetic biology, false blaming, clashing ideologies, idealistic social housing, nano scale engineering, vulvas on horseback, ridiculing the middle class, colonialisation of language, pig fat in ice cream, what art can do as an experience, and the way histories and future technologies bounce off one another.         

MELANIE JACKSON

@melanie.jjj

melaniejackson.net

'Rouge Flambé'   

'Deeper in the Pyramid | Share of Throat'

'Spekyng Rybawdy'

'The Urpflanze'

ARTISTS + CURATORS + ACADEMICS

Esther Leslie

Ezra Lloyd Jackson

Kirsten Cooke

Nicole Eisenman 'Bambi Gregor' 1993

Olukemi Lijadu

Pelumi Odubanjo

BOOKS + MAGAZINES + WRITERS

Brian Massumi 'What Animals Teach Us About Politics' 2014

Charles Darwin 'On the Origin of the Species' 1859

Eileen Myles 'Afterglow: A Dog Memoir' 2017

Franz Kafka 'The Metamorphosis' 1915

'Frieze' magazine

Goethe 'Die Urplanze' ('The Metamorphosis of Plants') 1829

Isabel Waidner ' Sterling Karat Gold' 2021

Jo Orton

John Lahr 'Prick Up Your Ears' 1978 (film 2007)

EXHIBITIONS + INSTITUTIONS

Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth

Banner Repeater, London

Block 336, London 'Spekyng Rybawdy' 2022

Grand Union, Birmingham

Matt's Gallery, London 'Mattflix'

Max Mara Prize

Jerwood Drawing Prize

San Mei Gallery, London 'Rouge Flambè' 2023

Wellcome Collection, London 'Living with Buildings' 2018-2019

Wellcome Collection, London 'Milk' 2023

Whitechapel Gallery, London

FILM + TELEVISION

'The Nasty Girl' 1990

'Top Boy' 2011-2023

         

                                                 

Revealing Histories and Gender Variations (JULIET JACQUES)

Guest writer and filmmaker JULIET JACQUES joins artist and writer JILLIAN KNIPE to discuss her creative practice via 'Variations' 2021 by the one and only Juliet herself. Published in 2021 by Influx Press, this book of short stories portrays the mixed, messy and moving lives of transexual women transexual men, non binary, gender queer, cross dressers and inverts, around London, Manchester, Liverpool, Blackpool, Brighton, Belfast, Cardiff and Norwich.

 

Juliet and Jillian focus on 'Standards of Care' and also discuss humour, poverty, divorce, testosterone, rainbow capitalism, fake tits, ink blot tests, electric shock therapy, alternative Miss World, punk rock gender play, friendship in the face of prejudice, making objects that cannot be sold, itchy balls of wool for breasts, fresh meat advertising slogan, interest in post communist countries, the importance of questioning how people pay the rent and the disappointment of greater understanding not necessarily bringing about greater tolerance.

 

JULIET JACQUES

julietjacques.com

'Monaco' Toothgrinder Press 2023

'Variations' Influx Press 2021

'Trans: A Memoir' Verso Books 2015

'Transgender Journey' 2010-2012 The Guardian

'Suite 212' 2017-2021 Resonance FM

'Revivification: Art, Activism and Politics in Ukraine' 2018

 

ARTISTS

Boris Mikilov

Cecilia Sjoholm

David Goymer

Deborah Tchoudjinoff

Garth Gatrix

Hatty Buchanan

Iain Hales

Laura Moreton-Griffiths

 

WRITERS

Susan Stryker 'Transgender History' 2008

 

MUSIC

Genesis

Joy Division

Man Enough to be A Woman (Jayne County)

New York Dolls

NME magazine

Sex Pistols

Siouxsie and the Banshees

Siouxsie Sioux 

The Fall

The Roxy

Wayne County and The Electric Chairs

 

FILM + TV

Adam Curtis 'Can't Get You Out of my Head' series 2021 BBC

Bill Grundy 'Today' 1968-1977

Derek Jarman 'Jubilee' 1978

Hattie Jacques 'Carry On' series 1958-1992

Oksana Kazmina, camera and editor

Josh Appignanesi 'Female Human Animal' 2018

 

EDUCATION + INSTITUTIONS

ICA London

Somerset House Studios

The Royal College

 

POLITICS + MOVEMENTS

Black Lives Matter

Femen 2008 Ukraine founded by Anna Hutsol, Alexandra Shevchenko, Oksana Shachko

Gay Liberation Front

Margaret Thatcher for Section 28

Revolution of Dignity 18-23 Feb 2014 Ukraine

ReSew - Kyiv based feminist sewing cooperative

Viktor Yanukovych

Unwavering Sensitivity and Valuing Confusion (ANNA CLEGG)

Guest artist ANNA CLEGG joins curator and critic VANESSA MURRELL to discuss her multi-disciplinary art practice via 'My Loose Thread' by Denis Cooper. Published in 2002 by Canongate Books, this claustrophobic novel circulates around teenage Larry who is wrestling with the point of his own existence and explores teen depression, moral vacuity and the confusion of love.

 

Please be warned that in following the content of Cooper's text, the programme contains references to violence and suicide.

 

Anna and Vanessa's discussion also encompasses psychedelics, obsession, faux Nazis, feeling violated, animal stickers, unwavering sensitivity, stupid imagery, internal rhyming, Santa Claus, swimming through mud, looping back on oneself, eyes being gummed shut, the value of confusion, dark and disturbing worlds, begrudging awareness of the reader, not being able to fathom the logic of decision making, writing through an idea rather than creating a story, and the steampunk weaponisation of ice skates.

 

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Recorded at Cubitt Community Radio by Andi Armishah

Music GRIFFIN KNIPE

Production consultant LORI E ALAN

Logo JOANNA QUINN of BERYL PRODUCTIONS

 

ANNA CLEGG

relevant-confluences.com

'Half Truths' curated by Vanessa Murrell til 30 November 2023 at Unit 2 Cassia Building 97-101 Hackney Road Shoreditch London E2 8ET

 

ARTISTS

David Musgrave 'Lambda' 2022

James Turrell

John Baldassari 'Wrong' 1967

Joseph Cornell

 

BOOKS + MAGAZINES + WRITERS

Artforum magazine

Barry Pierce 'Another Magazine'

Beatrice Forster

Brett Eastern Ellis

Denis Cooper 'The George Miles Cycle' series 1989-2000

Denis Cooper 'I Wished' 2021

Elliot Jeffries

Frieze magazine

George Bataille 'Story of the Eye' 1928

Hervé Guibert 'Ghost Image' 2014

Interview magazine

Kathy Acker

Katja Kemnitz 'Too Much Love' on Tumblr

Nour El Saleh

Paul Auster

Roland Barthes 'An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative', 1975

Spin magazine

Tao Lin 'Leave Society' 2021

Tom of Finland

Victory Burgin 'Remembered Film' 2004

Vivian Sobchack

William Burroughs

 

MUSICIANS + FILM

Brooke Shields

Claire Denis, director and screenwriter

Larry Clark 'Bully' 2001

NLE Chopper

Terence Stamp

Xaviersobased

 

GALLERIES + ORGS

Chelsea School of Art

Greengrassi

Nicoletti Contemporary

Split Gallery

 

Absent Mothers and Colonised Bodies (OLUKEMI LIJADU)

Guest artist OLUKEMI LIJADU joins curator and PHD researcher PELUMI ODUBANJO  to discuss her multi-media art practice through the prism of 'The Stranger' (aka 'The Outsider' aka 'The Foreigner') by Nobel Prize winning writer Albert Camus. Published in 1942, the novella tells of an indifferent French settler who, soon after his mother's funeral, commits the senseless murder of an unnamed Arab man on a Algerian beach. Heralded in the west as a classic text which explores the absurd, their exchange questions the mono-critique which underlies this status, through their personal and uniquely individual experiences. For Olukemi, this is being Nigerian born and raised, where she was educated in the British system, going on to study philosophy at Stanford, USA. While Pelumi is British with Nigerian heritage.

 

Olukemi and Pelumi's discussion also encompasses psychoanalysis, philosophy, elusive racism, European critique, American critique, contradictory affection, self knowledge, segregated Algeria, compilation of memory, disregard for women, disregard for black people, anonymous Arab characters, ancestors speaking in the first person, the presence of absent women, who can make claims of objectivity, who can make claims of the absurd, women fading from the novel as male desire for them fades, the assumption that one must divorce one's positionality from how they engage with work for their opinion to be valid, the black woman as photographer and therefore narrator, as well as the radicalised and colonised body. 

 

Please support the production of this podcast via https://www.patreon.com/ARTFICTIONSPODCAST

Contact Art Fictions via artfictionspodcast@gmail.com

Follow Instagram @artfictionspodcast

OLUKEMI LIJADU

olukemilijadu.com

insta @kemlij

contact@kemkemstudio.com

'Guardian Angel' commissioned by ICA 2022

ARTISTS + EXHIBITIONS 

Atong Atem

Kahlil Joseph 'BLKNWS' 2018 ongoing

Theaster Gates

Wura-Natasha Ogunji

'A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography' at Tate Modern til 14 Jan 2024

'Genetic Automata' by David Blandy and Larry Achiampong at Wellcome Collection til 11 Feb 2024

BOOKS + AUTHORS + FILM

Frantz Fanon

Fred Moten 'Black and Blur' 2017

Harper Lee 'To Kill a Mockingbird' 1960

James Baldwin 'The Fire Next Time' 1963

Jane Austen 'Pride and Prejudice' 1813

Lola Olufemi

Paul Gilroy 'The Black Atlantic' 1993

Saidiya Hartman 'Lose Your Mother' 2006

Saint Omer 2022 director Alice Diop

Timothy Ogene 'Seesaw' 2021

Toni Morrison

MUSICIANS

Aretha Franklin

Bob Marley

Christopher Williams

Frankie Knuckles

Lee Scratch Perry

Rokia Traoré

Whitney Houston

GALLERIES + INSTITUTIONS

Sanford University

Institute of Contemporary Art

Tate Modern

V.O Curations

 

 

 

Suppressed Voices and Transformative Communities (RORY PILGRIM)

Guest artist RORY PILGRIM joins author and critic ELIZABETH FULLERTON to discuss his musically inspired, community-based art practice through the prism of 'The Bell' by Irish British writer and philosopher, Dame Jean Iris Murdoch. Published in 1958, this funny and sad novel explores religion, human frailty and who has the right to a voice, set within the confines of a lay community.

Please be warned that in following the content of Murdoch's text, the programme contains references to sexual abuse and to suicide.

Rory and Elizabeth's discussion also encompasses unheard voices, sunken voices, historical voices, awoken voices, shutting down voices, empathy, songwriting, drawing, poetry, kissing, dancing, stories, transformation, spiritual striving, moral dilemma, social practice, closet homosexuality, transformative moments, nuns getting naked and writing off people who are too complicated. They also delve into the toxic politics of speech, wrestling with faith, music as a first language, pathways of self destruction, the stress of being part of communities, suppression leading to the harm of others, the desire and courage to learn and to listen, experiences shaped by nuance and interconnections, and ways in which direct democracy can be built on consensus and intergenerational dialogue. And together, they question: how can you be completely yourself within a group, how can we imagine new forms of law through storytelling, and how can art play a civic role in transforming lives and developing networks of care.

 

Please support the production of this podcast via patreon.com/ARTFICTIONSPODCAST.

Contact Art Fictions via artfictionspodcast@gmail.com or instagram @artfictionspodcast.

 

RORY PILGRIM

rorypilgrim.com

insta @rainbowsofgorse

'Turner Prize' at Towner Eastbourne 28 Sep 2023-14 Apr 2024

'Rafts' 2020 The Migros Museum of Contemporary Art in Zurich, EVA International 31 Aug – 29 Oct 2023 Limerick city of Ireland, 49 Nord 6 Est Frac Lorraine in Metz of France

'The Undercurrent' 2019

'The Resounding Bell' 2018

ARTISTS

Abba 'The Visitors' 1981

Barbara Hepworth

Evelyn Taocheng Wang

Helen Cammock

Ilona Sagar

Jane Jeffcot

Mel Brimfield 

Ragnar Kjartansson 'The Visitors' 2012

Robyn Haddon 

Sands Murray-Wassink

Sonia Boyce

Susie Green

BOOKS + AUTHORS

Lucy Lippard 'Mapping the Terrain: New Genre in Public Art' 1994

Suzi Gablik 'The Re-enchantment of Art' 1991

Toni Morrison 'Beloved' 1987

Toni Morrison 'Song of Solomon' 1977

Toni Morrison 'The Bluest Eye' 1970

GALLERIES + MUSEUMS + ORGANISATIONS

Auto Italia

Chisenhale Gallery

Green Shoes Arts

Interfaith Sanctuary, Boise, Idaho

Serpentine Gallery 'Radio Ballads' 2022

Site Gallery

 

 

 

Word Play and Multiple Meanings (ANNA BARHAM)

Guest artist ANNA BARHAM joins artist JILLIAN KNIPE to discuss her art practice via 'Companion Piece' by Ali Smith. Published in 2023 by Penguin Books, the novel explores language, meaning, relationships and contemporary politics in what may be seen as a way of bringing a form of conclusion to Smith's urgently written then quickly published, seasonal texts: Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring.

ANNA and Jillian's discussion encompasses disfluencies, purity, transcription software, unfolding meanings, easy solutions, social spaces, silent conversations, showing off, undermining binary, performing language and dog eyebrows. As well as the body in the digital, pushing language around, stories being questions, and the pain of a pain within another body.

Please support the production of this podcast via patreon.com/ARTFICTIONSPODCAST. 

And you're welcome to contact the team directly on artfictionspodcast@gmail.com and follow what's happening on Instagram @artfictionspodcast. 

ANNA BARHAM

annabarham.net

insta @banana_harm

apria.artez.nl/zyx

'Magenta Emerald Lapis' 2009 The Tanks in Tate Modern til 10 Sep 2023

'Stilled Images' Tube Gallery in Palma Mallorca til 6 Aug 2023

ARTISTS

Laura Owens

Lindsay Seers

Moyra Davey

Nicola Bealing

Sophie Ruigrok

William Blake

WRITERS + BOOKS

Ali Smith 'The Accidental' 2005

Ali Smith 'How to be Both' 2014

Anna Barham 'Return to Leptis Magna' 2010

Anna Burns 'Milkman' 2018 voiced by Brid Brennan

Bridget Crone

Cherry Smith

Claudia Rankin

Elizabeth Fullerton

Gertrude Stein

Gustave Flaubert 'The Temptation of Saint Anthony' 1874

Nick Cave

Jennifer Higgie

Russell Hoban 'Ridley Walker' 1980

Judith Butler

Lisa Robertson 'The Baudelaire Fractal' 2020

Lisa Robertson 'Thresholds: A Prosody of Citizenship' 2018

Lisa Roberton 'Cinema of the Present' 2014

Plato 'Cratylus' 360BCE

GALLERIES + ORGANISATIONS

Banner Repeater

bookshop.org

Chelsea College

Flat Time House

Large Glass Gallery

401 Contemporary

 

 

Resistance Acoustics and Hopeful Uprising (MIKHAIL KARIKIS)

Guest artist MIKHAIL KARIKIS joins poet and art critic CHERRY SMYTH to discuss his art practice via 'Human Acts' by Han Kang, 2016 published by Granta Books. Set in 1980 South Korea, the novel tells the gruelling story of a violently suppressed student uprising and the inevitable fallout from the original trauma.

MIKHAIL and CHERRY's discussion encompasses trust, courage, coalminers, eco-activism, protest and pearl-divers. As well as chance encounters, female superheroes, community collaboration, violent suppression, active listening, self censorship, activist imaginary, heteronormative language, acoustics of resistance, Greek working class, repercussions of trauma, our relationship to the earth, sounds to engender change, giving over artistic power, speaking on behalf of the dead, sound as a sculptural material, a tsunami of screaming, plus being out of tune with ourselves, our social context and the environment.

Please support the production of this podcast via patreon.com/artfictionspodcast.

And you're welcome to contact the team directly on artfictionspodcast@gmail.com and follow what's happening on Instagram @artfictionspodcast.

 

MIKHAIL KARIKIS

Greek-British artist based in London & Lisbon, working in video, sound and performance.

mikhailkarikis.com

@mikhailkarikis

'Because We Are Together'

National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens 28 Jan - 8 Oct 2023

'The Weather Orchestra' 2023

'Ferocious Love' 2020 Tate Liverpool as recommended by Laura Cumming in 'The Guardian'

'I Hear You' 2019

'No Ordinary Protest' 2018

'The Chalk Factory' 2017 Aarhus Denmark, commissioned by European Capital of Culture

'Sounds from Beneath' 2011-2012

 

CHERRY SMYTH

'If the River is Hidden' co-authored with Craig Jordan-Baker

'Famished'

 

ARTISTS + MUSEUMS + PRACTITIONERS

Ceri Hand

HOME Manchester

Mathilda Bevan

Tate Liverpool

The Granary Gallery

Thelma Hubert Gallery

The Showroom

Whitechapel Gallery

 

BOOKS + AUTHORS + WRITERS

Alison Branagan 'The Essential Guide to Business for Artists and Designers' 2011

Hartmut Rosa 'Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World' 2021

Arbitrary Traditions and Alien Observations (ROSIE GIBBENS)

Guest artist ROSIE GIBBENS joins VANESSA MURRELL of DATEAGLE to discuss her art practice via 'Life Ceremony' by Sayaka Murata, 2022 published by Granta Books. This off-kilter collection of short stories brings a grotesque whimsy to fables of cultural norms, including society rituals that develop when the human species is endangered . 

 

ROSIE and VANESSA's discussion encompasses ritual, nothingness, meatarianism, shit and vomit . As well as ribcage tables, mocking Freud, recycling flesh, consuming oneself, anatomical Venus's, muscle suits, pointless products, human hair jumpers, an alien point of view, dried stomach lampshades, humans resembling cockroaches, eating Spongebob figurines, and to borrow Rosie's words, it's all kinda dark and kinda beautiful . 

 

ROSIE GIBBENS

rosiegibbens.com

@rosiegibbens

 

ARTISTS + CURATORS 

Becca Pall-Fry

Helen Chadwick

Marcel Joseph

Mike Stubbs

 

BOOKS + WRITERS

Albert Camus

Aldous Huxley 'Brave New World' 1932

Angela Carter

Barbara Creed 'The Monstrous Feminine' 1993

Julia Kristeva

Megan Milks 'Slug and Other Stories' 2021

Perfume

Steven King 'Carrie' 1974

 

FILM

'Alien' 1979

'Evil Dead II' 1987

'Ex Machina' 2015

'Hellraiser' franchise

'RAW' 2017

'The Human Centipede' 2009, 2011, 2015

 

GALLERIES + EXHIBITIONS

GIANT 'Body Poetics' 2023

Museum of the Home

Pictorum Gallery

The Bomb Factory