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ART FICTIONS is fortnightly programme, created by artist Jillian Knipe. Each guest artist selects a piece of fiction, which we both explore, then use as a lens through which to view their artwork. We delve into the book‘s themes, context and characters, which opens up and steers a rich conversation about the artist‘s practice. The podcast bounces back and forth between art and text, all the while focussing on the ideas which govern both. It is a way of talking alongside art, rather than directly at it, getting close and personal with the origins of artistic ideas. Follow @artfictionspodcast Instagram for images of works and links, and see the podcast notes for all the references mentioned. Support via patreon.com/ARTFICTIONSPODCAST.
Episodes

6 days ago
6 days ago
Guest artist ANNA CLEGG joins curator and critic VANESSA MURRELL to discuss her multi-disciplinary art practice via 'Loose Threads' 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.
Please!
*rate and review
*support production through patreon.com/ARTFICTIONSPODCAST
*follow us on instagram @artfictionspodcast
*contact us on artfictionspodcast@gmail.com
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
GALLERIES + ORGS
Chelsea School of Art
Greengrassi
Nicoletti Contemporary
Split Gallery

Wednesday Sep 13, 2023
Absent Mothers and Colonised Bodies (OLUKEMI LIJADU)
Wednesday Sep 13, 2023
Wednesday Sep 13, 2023
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

Friday Jul 14, 2023
Suppressed Voices and Transformative Communities (RORY PILGRIM)
Friday Jul 14, 2023
Friday Jul 14, 2023
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

Friday Jun 30, 2023
Word Play and Multiple Meanings (ANNA BARHAM)
Friday Jun 30, 2023
Friday Jun 30, 2023
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

Friday Jun 16, 2023
Resistance Acoustics and Hopeful Uprising (MIKHAIL KARIKIS)
Friday Jun 16, 2023
Friday Jun 16, 2023
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

Tuesday May 23, 2023
Arbitrary Traditions and Alien Observations (ROSIE GIBBENS)
Tuesday May 23, 2023
Tuesday May 23, 2023
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

Friday May 12, 2023
Cultural Fear and Self Permission (CERI HAND)
Friday May 12, 2023
Friday May 12, 2023
Guest artist mentor CERI HAND joins artist and writer JILLIAN KNIPE to discuss her creative practice via 'The Blazing World' 2014 by Siri Hustvedt and published by Hodder & Stoughton. Longlisted for the Booker Prize and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, it tells tales of the life of artist Harriet Burden. Presented across snapshots of journal entries and testimonies by her family, friends and colleagues, the accounts are compiled and edited by academic researcher I.V. Hess after Harriet's death. Furious with the cultural misogyny that's left her all but ignored by the New York art world, Harriet hides her identity behind three male fronts in a series of exhibitions. While their huge success goes to prove her point, when she finally unmasks herself, not everyone believes her.
CERI HAND
cerihand.com
@cerihand
artistmentor.co.uk
ARTISTS
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff 1935–2020
Eva Hesse 1936-1970
Evlyne Laurin, Creative Legacy Steward and Fine Art Appraiser
Jane Hayes Greenwood
Sir Horace Shango Ové CBE
Yayoi Kusama
Zak Ové
WRITERS + BOOKS
Cherry Smyth
Dan Sullivan with Dr Benjamin Hardy '10X is Easier than 2X: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less' 2023
John Milton 'Paradise Lost' 1667
John Steinbeck 'Of Mice and Men' 1937
Margaret Lucas Cavendish 1623-1673
Rachel Cusk
INSTITUTIONS + GALLERIES
Castor Gallery
ICA
Somerset House 'Get Up Stand Up Now: Generations of Black Creative Pioneers' 2019
The Women's Art Library 'Make' magazine

Friday Apr 28, 2023
Second Bodies and Talking Ice (SUSAN SCHUPPLI)
Friday Apr 28, 2023
Friday Apr 28, 2023
Guest artist SUSAN SCHUPPLI joins art critic and author ELIZABETH FULLERTON to discuss her art practice via 'The Second Body' 2017 by Daisy Hildyard, published by Fitzcarraldo Books. Listed by the 'White Review' on their Books of the Year 2018, the essay presents the dissolving boundaries between all life on earth, with an updated dualism between the animal bodies in which we eat, breathe, and sleep and the virtual bodies of our global connections and environmental impacts.
Susan and Elizabeth discuss dissolving boundaries, plausible deniability, beached whales, deep time, gathering poems, chattering glaciers, foetus ownership, critical proximity, living on ice, images creating barriers, Princess Diana's wedding dress, bodies eating distance, and changing paradigms. Plus, they question where environmental knowledge resides and which modes of representation might inspire action.
SUSAN SCHUPPLI
susanschuppli.com
@susan_schuppli
'Can the Sun Lie'
'Cold Rights'
'Earthrise' is a photograph of Earth and some of the Moon 's surface that was taken from lunar orbit by astronaut William Anders on 24 December 24 1968 during the Apollo 8 mission.
Ultrasound was first used for clinical purposes in mid 1950s but not used widely in British and American hospitals till 1970s for foetus imaging.
In April 1965, 'Life' put a photograph called Foetus 18 Weeks on its cover which caused a sensation. The issue became the fastest-selling copy in the magazine's entire history.
The Keeling Curve is a graph of the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere based on continuous measurements taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii from 1958 to the present day.
BOOKS + THINKERS
Christina Elizabeth Sharpe, American academic, Professor of English Literature and Black Studies at York University, Toronto, Canada
Daisy Hildyard 'The Footprint's Story: Princess Diana's Jewels and Carbon' Orion magazine, Winter Issue 30 Nov 2022
Dr Adrian Lahoud, Dean of the School of Architecture, Royal College of Art
Joseph Conrad
Silvia Federici 'Caliban and the Witch: : Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation' 2004
Sven Oskar Lindqvist 'Exterminate all the Brutes: One Man's Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide' 2007
Sheila Watt-Cloutier 'The Right to Be Cold: One Woman's Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet' 2015
Ursula K Le Guin 'The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction' 1986
FILM + DIRECTORS
Chantal Akerman
'Nostalgia for the Light' Patricio Guzmán, 2010
Stanley Kubrick '2001: A Space Odyssey' 1968
ORGANISATIONS
Bergin Kunsthalle, Norway
Berlin Biennale
Forensic Architecture
Goldsmiths University
Sculpture Center, New York
Toronto Biennial of Art

Wednesday Apr 12, 2023
Disconnected Characters and Contradictory Spiritualism (SOPHIE RUIGROK)
Wednesday Apr 12, 2023
Wednesday Apr 12, 2023
Guest artist SOPHIE RUIGROK joins VANESSA MURRELL of DATEAGLE to discuss her art practice via 'Nobody Belongs Here More Than You' 2007 by Miranda July, published by Canongate Books. Winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, it conveys 16 stories of lonely characters desperately trying to make connections. Their means vary from quirky to the absurd and mostly only result in the disillusion of coinciding in the same space.
Sophie and Vanessa talk about escape, clouds, tears, Buddhism, role playing, manifesting reality, body leaking, collapsing flesh, wearing wigs, cold showers, hypersensitive characters, contemporary spiritualism, movie-set extras, expressing the psyche, masks as mediators, disconnected lonely people, swimming on the carpet, beautifully weird realisations about humanity, the loss of fantasy, appropriating from art history, being allergic to the world, true signs of falsehood, and Sophie using her fingers to make images of fingers before dipping her toe into oil paint.
SUPPORT this podcast via patreon.com/ARTFICTIONSPODCAST
SOPHIE RUIGROK
@sophie.ruigrok
'In Three Acts' Huxley Parlour 27 April - 27 May 2023
'Stilled Images' Tube Gallery, Mallorca opens 10 June 2023
ARTISTS
Alfred Stieglitz
Andrea Mantegna
Francis Bacon
Gian Lorenzo Bellini 'The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa' 1652
Hans Memling, hellscapes
Jan and Hubert Van Eck 'The Ghent Alterpiece' Belgium 1432
Katarina Caserman
René Magritte
GALLERIES
Marlborough 'Love is the Devil: Studies after Francis Bacon' 2022
Tabula Rasa 'It's Better to be Cats Than be Loved' 2022
The Sunday Painter 'Today I Feel Relevant and Alive' 2022
WRITERS
Carl Jung
Susan Stewart 'On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection' 1984
FILMS
'Interstellar' 2014
'The Truman Show' 1998
'Thelma and Louise' 1991

Thursday Mar 23, 2023
Dark Humour and Watery Figures (NICOLA BEALING)
Thursday Mar 23, 2023
Thursday Mar 23, 2023
Guest artist NICOLA BEALING
joins JILLIAN KNIPE to discuss her work via 'Pastoralia' 2020 by George Saunders. Published Riverhead Books, the book contains six short stories each presenting snapshots of contemporary American existence delivered in a deadpan, razorsharp tone, and enshrouded with dark humour.
We talk about dark humour, executions, internal panic, male strippers, 18th century working class fabrics, Goya being God, cruelty, Stasi prison, cave people, hazardous shitholes, bum cracks, lungs filling with blood, penis simulators, pictures popping up behind your eyes, boring objects, unaffordable medical care, apprenticeships, being trapped, funny voices, hot sexy breeding age, slogans of false hope, bags of human waste, hiding what's underneath and the tiny details that make up a life.
PLEASE SUPPORT this podcast via https://patreon.com/ARTFICTIONSPODCAST
NICOLA BEALING
nicolabealing.co.uk
@nicola_bealing
'The Borough' at Matt's Gallery London 15 March - 16 April 2023
ARTISTS
Alice Browne
Alice Neel
Benjamin Britten
Erich Heckel
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Francisco Goya
George Grosz
Hieronymus Bosch
Montagu Slater
Otto Dix
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Sidney Nolan
BOOKS + AUTHORS
Aldous Huxley 'Brave New World' 1932
Broadside Ballads
E M Forster
Federico Garcia Lorca 'Blood Wedding' 1932
'Face' magazine
George Crabbe 'Peter Grimes' Letter XXII of 'The Borough' 1810
George Saunders 'A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life' 2021
GALLERIES + MUSEUMS + GALLERISTS
British Museum
Foundling Museum
Museum of Cornish Life (Helston)
Royal Cornwall Museum (Truro)
Salisbury Art Centre
Tim Dixon