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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

Thursday Mar 09, 2023
Slow Dancing and Fluid Encounters (FLORENCE PEAKE)
Thursday Mar 09, 2023
Thursday Mar 09, 2023
Guest artist FLORENCE PEAKE joins ELIZABETH FULLERTON to discuss her multi-faceted, performance-led art practice via 'Stone Butch Blues' 1993 by Leslie Feinberg. It tells the story of life as a butch lesbian in 1970s, working class America and is particularly unique due to the writer gaining full rights to the text, making it fully accessible online and for free.
Florence and Elizabeth talk about hysterical clay, collapsing paintings, mark-making without sight, rigid heteronormative conventions, the patriarchy's rule which brings a perpetual fear of violence, butch lesbians in the 70s, drag queens, sex workers and femmes, extractions of earthly matter and energy, the dance floor as a space for belonging and expression, splattering the audience with clay, tenderness and care, finding comfort in the face of shame, and encountering ourselves imaginatively in relationship to objective reality.
Please support this podcast via patreon.com/ARTFICTIONSPODCAST
FLORENCE PEAKE
florencepeake.com
insta florence_peake
Richard Saltoun Gallery
2023 16 April - 2 July 'Factual Actual Ensemble' at Southwark Park Galleries then touring to Fruitmarket Gallery and Towner Gallery
2023 11 Feb - 7 May 'Earth Spells: Witches of the Anthropocene' at RAM Museum, Exter with Caroline Achaintre, Emma Hart, Kris Lemsalu, Mercedes Mühleisen, Grace Ndiritu, Florence Peake, Kiki Smith, Lucy Stein
2023 18 Feb - 6 May 'Body Poetics' at Giant, Bournemouth with Penny Slinger, Helen Chadwick, Florence Peake, Louise Bourgeois, Judy Chicago, Charlotte Edey, Enam Gbewonyo, Rosie Gibbens, Guerrilla Girls, Evan Ifekoya, Ad Minoliti, Senga Nengudi, Niki De Saint Phalle, Carolee Schneemann, Tai Shani, Kiki Smith, Rae-Yen Song, Holly Stevenson curated by Marcelle Joseph and Bella Pelly-Fry
2021 Factual Actual at National Gallery
2021-22 Crude Care for British Art Show at Aberdeen Art Gallery then touring UK
2019 Apparition Apparition at Venice Biennale
2018 RITE: on this pliant body we slip our WOW! at De La Warr Pavillion
2015 Voicings for Block Universe at Modern Art Oxford, Somerset House
ARTISTS + PERFORMERS
Cameron Armitage
Carolee Schneeman 'Meat Joy'
Donald Judd
Emma Hart
Eve Stainton
Fabian Peake
Igor Sravinsky 'The Rite of Spring'
Gabi Agis
Grayson Duitu
Jo Moran
Jordan McKenzie
Kate Bush
Lee Bowie
Lindsey Kemp
Mercedes Grower
Michael Clarke 'I am a Curious Orange'
Rosemary Butcher
Siobhan Davis Studios
Tai Shani
The Fall
Yvonne Rainer
BOOKS
Juliet Jacques 'Variations' 2021
Carmen Maria Machado 'In the Dreamhouse' 2019
Octavia Butler

Wednesday Feb 22, 2023
Channelling Spirits and Excluded Histories (JENNIFER HIGGIE)
Wednesday Feb 22, 2023
Wednesday Feb 22, 2023
Guest author JENNIFER HIGGIE joins JILLIAN KNIPE to discuss her art writing practice via 'Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead' by Olga Tokarczuk. It's a compelling murder mystery set in a small mountainside village in Poland. As Winter caretaker of neighbouring properties, Janina spends her spare time translating the poems of William Blake into Polish with her friend and ex-student Dizzy.
We talk about how women found agency within the rise of spiritualism, telephoning the dead, art history as a work in progress, tigers of wrath, the golden age of female detective fiction, hanging out in Greece, bridge builders, astrology, precognitive dreams, human cruelty, climate crisis, bad writers, ghosts, eccentricities that make complete sense, taking your brain with all of its complications wherever you go, and Jennifer's passion for histories of exclusion, particularly those of women.
SUPPORT this podcast via https://www.patreon.com/ARTFICTIONSPODCAST
JENNIFER HIGGIE
jenniferhiggie.com
instagram jennifer_higgie
BOOKS + AUTHORS + PUBLISHERS
Agatha Christie
Annie Besant 'Thought Forms' 1906
Brian Dillon 'Affinities' 2023
Dorothy L Sayers
Fitzcarraldo Editions
Georgio Vasari 'The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects' 1550
Griselda Pollock
Hetty Judah
Jennifer Higgie 'The Other Side: A Journey into Women, Art and the Spirit World' 2023
Jennifer Higgie 'The Mirror and the Palette' 2021
Jennifer Higgie 'Bedlam' 2006
J M Coetzee 'The Childhood of Jesus' 2013
Katie Hessel
Linda Nochlin
Madame Blavatsky
Margary Allingham
Michael Bracewell 'Unfinished Business' 2023
Orion Publishing Group
Virginia Woolf
William Blake
ARTISTS
Dean Kenning
Donna Huddleston 'Brighter' 2021
Frances Richardson
Georgiana Houghton
Helen Johnson
Hildagard of Bingen
Hilma af Klint
Homer 'Odyssey' 1614
Kazimir Malovich
Katie Pratt
Margo Neale
Mary Wigman
Paul Klee
Richard Dadd 'The Fairy Fellers Master Stroke' 1855-64
Sarah Lucas
Tracy Emin
Wassily Kandinsky 'Composition V' 1911
GALLERIES + MUSEUMS + CURATORS
Cabaret Voltaire, Zürich 'Dada'
Camden Arts Centre 'Making and Unmaking' 2016
Duo Olowu
Hugh Lane, Dublin
Margo Neale, First Nations Curator, Museum of Australia, Canberra
Modernity, Stockholm
MUMA, Monash University, Melbourne
Simon Lee, London
Tate Britain
Tate Modern 'A Year in Art: Australia 1992'
The Box, Plymouth 'Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters'
OTHER
BBC3 'The Essay' Jennifer Higgie 'Artists and the Spirit World'
Emanuel Swedenborg
Frieze magazine
Jennifer Higgie scriptwriter 'I Really Hate My Job' 2007
Lucracia Dalt
Marie Curie
Mark Tanner Award
Thomas Edison

Wednesday Feb 08, 2023
Rural Reality and Complex Systems (KATIE PRATT)
Wednesday Feb 08, 2023
Wednesday Feb 08, 2023
Guest artist KATIE PRATT
joins JILLIAN KNIPE to discuss her work via 'Once in Europa' 1987 by John Berger. As part of the 'Into Our Labours' trilogy, the novel is set in an alpine village and describes grounded charm and limiting isolation against the encroaching industrialisation of urban life.
We talk about the disorganised surface, organic and geometric, the French Alps, industrial revolution, the mass of strike actions across UK industries right now (and for good reason), a certain lack of idealism, sharing of the planet's resources, how communities might organise themselves, and the myriad of invisible, and often complex systems, that structure our lives and Katie's paintings.
PLEASE SUPPORT this podcast via https://www.patreon.com/ARTFICTIONSPODCAST
KATIE PRATT
katiepratt.net
instagram katiepratt_artist
'Reverse Parking' curated by Katie Pratt and Peter Lamb, 23 Feb - 12 Mar 2023 Thames-side Studios Main Gallery with Gordon Cheung, Will Cruickshank, Cristallina Fischetti, Oona Grimes, Paul Hosking, Peter Lamb, Katie Pratt
BOOKS
'A Painter of Our Time' 1958 John Berger
'Ways of Seeing' 1972 John Berger
'Why Look at Animals' 2009 John Berger
ARTISTS
Andrew Bick
Franz Haus
Jonathan Parsons
Johannes Vermeer
John Bunker
Jackson Pollock
Lee Krasner
L S Lowry
Matt Dennis
Nan Goldin
Peter Lamb
Rosalind Davis
Vera Mulnár
Wassily Kandinsky
Willem de Kooning
OTHER
'All the Beauty and the Bloodshed' 2022
Guggenheim, New York
'Jean de Florette' 1999
Karl Marx
Tate Galleries, London
Thames-side Gallery and Studios
Turps Painting Course
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
'Ways of Seeing' 1972 BBC

Friday Apr 29, 2022
Gender Entrapment and Performative Mythologies (ANNA PERACH)
Friday Apr 29, 2022
Friday Apr 29, 2022
Guest artist ANNA PERACH
joins ELIZABETH FULLERTON to discuss her work via 'The Victorian Chaise Longue' 1953 by Marghanita Laski. The novel describes the experience of a charming yet childish lawyer's wife who wakes up in the body of her alter-ego eighty years previously. It's a chilling tale of entrapment, which closely links to Anna's sculptural work as she reacts to female stereotypes, trapped in their societal roles, trapped in her tufted wool costumes.
ANNA PERACH
annaperach.com
instagram anna_perach

Saturday Apr 02, 2022
CULTURE EXCHANGE - Artistic Protest and Rightful Sovereignty (PAOLA BALLA)
Saturday Apr 02, 2022
Saturday Apr 02, 2022
Guest artist PAOLA BALLA
joins Jillian Knipe for this special edition of ART FICTIONS | Culture Exchange which is part of the UK/Australia Season, a partnership between the British Council and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Paola and I discuss colonisation in a place widely known as Australia, and its corresponding cost to herself, her family and her extensively long ancestral lineage, via poet Ellen van Neerven's 'Comfort Food' published in 2016.
We dive into Ellen's magically rich text as she describes the simplest of dishes alongside racist cruelty. All with the upper hand of calm reflection and a delicious dollop of sensuality.
Paola is extremely generous in sharing her stories of Indigenous hardship which she relays with clarity, humour and warmth . Our conversation expands on Paola's art practice which includes sculptural installation, curation and academia. We hear of the nature of bush dying and the shocking reality of forced encampment of her people, which continued into recent history. Paola shares her take on the mythological Mok Mok with her wild hair and no underwear, as she serves up well meaning treats in track pants and stilettos.
PAOLA BALLA
paolaballa.art
instagram paola_balla
EXHIBITIONS
'Treaty' 2021
'Wilam Biik' 2021
WORKS
'Banner Time' 2021
'Murrup (Ghost) Weaving in Rosie Kuka Lar (Grandmother's Camp)' 2021
'Unconditional Love Space' 2020
BOOKS & WRITERS
Ellen van Neerven 'Comfort Food'
ARTISTS
Vernon Ah Kee
Madeleine Kelly 'Spectra of Birds' 2014-2015

Tuesday Dec 21, 2021
Tuesday Dec 21, 2021
Guest artist INGRID BERTHON-MOINE
joins Elizabeth Fullerton for this special edition of ART FICTIONS | Culture Exchange which is part of the UK/Australia Season, a partnership between the British Council and the Australian Government's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Ingrid and Elizabeth discuss the absurdity of male domination within cultural identity via film maker Virginie Despentes' novel 'Kong Kong Theory' published in French in 2006 and English 2010. A mix of memoir, autobiographical essay and manifesto, Despentes shapes outrage and resilience alike, as she introduces her own experience of being gang raped. The novel pitches capitalist patriarchy as the true villian; exploiting both men and women, forcing us into rigidly codified, disempowering roles and behaviours that serve the unending cycle of global capitalism.
The conversation sharpens with painful, frustrated outrage and bubbles with giggles around the flop, juice, willy and boobies of genitalia. Ingrid describes her strongly feminist art practice that includes men as she probes ideas around masculinity including her 'I Lack it, I Like it' is instagram project in response to the stupidity of Freud's concept of penis envy.
INGRID BERTHON-MOINE
ingridberthonmoine.com
instagram ingridberthonmoine
instragram lackitlikeit
EXHIBITIONS & PROJECTS
'Hand-Held' 2021 co-curated with Holly Stevenson
'Lack It , Like It' ongoing on instagram
'You Tear Us' 2018 solo exhibition at Kelder Projects
'Looking at a Lack of Perspective' 2017
BOOKS, AUTHORS & FURTHER READING
Byung-Chul Han 'The Disappearance of Rituals'
Camille Froidevaux-Metterie
Camille Paglia
Charlotte Perkins Gilman 'Herland'
Grace Jones
Hettie Judah
Eileen Miles
Etel Adnam
Holly Stevenson
Judy Chicago
Maggie Nelson 'The Argonauts'
Ocean Vuong 'On Earth We are Briefly Gorgeous'
Paul B Preciado 'Testo Junkie'
Sitt Marie Rose
Ursula K Le Guin
Virginie Despentes 'King Kong Theory'
ARTISTS & EXHIBITIONS - mentioned and admired -
Barbara Walker
'Georgia O'Keefe' Centre Pompidou, Paris
'Life Between Islands' Tate Britain
'Magnus Plessen' White Cube
Marcia Michael
'Nicola Tyson' Sadie Coles
'On Hannah Arendt' Richard Saltoun Gallery
Wilma Woolf 'Domestic'
ARTS ORGANISATIONS
Goldsmiths
Mark Tanner Sculpture Award

Thursday Nov 18, 2021
CULTURE EXCHANGE - Ghostly Tales and Artistic Lineage (Richard Ayodeji Ikhide)
Thursday Nov 18, 2021
Thursday Nov 18, 2021
Guest artist RICHARD AYODEJI IKHIDE
joins Jillian Knipe for this special edition of ART FICTIONS | Culture Exchange which is part of the UK/Australia Season, a partnership between the British Council and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Richard and I discuss his disjointed cultural story, via Amos Tutuola's second novel 'The Bush of Ghosts', published in 1954. We follow a young boy, separated from his mother and brother, into a forbidden place of ghostly slavers, violators, friends and foe, as he navigates his way through a foreign land, coming to understand his sense of rightfulness and identity.
We go on to discuss Richard's formative years in Nigeria, a country whose name itself is stained with the nasty history of colonial subjugation. He speaks of his paternal lineage, steeped in story telling, from an area of the world, rich with artisans and stolen artworks. His world suddenly changes in his teens when he and his brother arrive in the UK to live with his mother. At this point, his own negotiation in a new land begins.
Our conversation expands on Richard studying drawing and textiles, and researching mythologies, semiotics, rituals, archetypes and visual systems. He describes the courses he's developed at The Royal Drawing School which attempt to inform students about the global lineages of and connections between imagery, representations and artistic practices across different cultures. His observations uncover the unexpected around petroglyphs, nazca lines and stone tablets of the ancient past to glass tablet phones and emojis of the high tech present.
RICHARD AYODEJI IKHIDE
instagram pandagwad
EXHIBITIONS
February 2022 - Galerie Bernhard in Zürich
WORKS
'Awon Osere' 2020 watercolour and ink on paper
'Contemplating with Effigies' 2020 oil on wood
PODCAST
The Compendium Podcast with Dexter Orszagh
BOOKS & WRITERS & SCREEN
Alejandro Jodorowsky & Juan Giménez 'The Metabarons' or 'The Saga of the Metabarons'
Alex Grey 'The Mission of Art'
Amos Tutuola 'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts'
Amos Tutuola 'The Palm Wine Drinkard'
Carl Jung 'Man & His Symbols'
Erich Neumann 'The Origins and History of Consciousness'
Joseph Campbell 'Hero with a Thousand Faces'
'Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myths' Netflix
Simon Blackburn, philosopher
'Spirited Away'
'Tales by Moonlight' Nigerian Television Authority
ARTISTS
El Greco
Giacometti
Giotto
Picasso
William Blake
COUNTRIES & CULTURES & HISTORIES
Ancient Greece
Benin Empire 1440 - 1897
Benin Expedition : Or the Benin Punitive Expedition in February 1897. Invasion of the Kingdom of Benin by the British Empire. After which Benin was absorbed into colonial Nigeria. Approx 2,500 religious artefacts, mnemonics and artworks were taken by Britain, including the Benin Bronzes, then around 40% were given to the British Museum.
Benin Bronzes : A collection of metal plaques and sculptures created by the Edo people from the 13th century onwards, which once decorated the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin. Over 1,000 items were taken by the British as part of the Benin Punitive Expedition.
Biafra War 1967 - 1970 : Civil war between Nigerian government and the Republic of Biafra.
Brazil
Christianity
Cuba
Egypt
Ghana
Ifá gods
Igbo people
Mesoamerica
Nigeria
Sabongida-Ora, Edo state
Yoruba
ARTS ORGANISATIONS
British Museum
Central Saint Martins
National Gallery
The Royal Drawing School
Zabludowicz Collection

Wednesday Oct 20, 2021
CULTURE EXCHANGE - Human Vessels and Architectural Fragments (NIKA NEELOVA)
Wednesday Oct 20, 2021
Wednesday Oct 20, 2021
Guest artist NIKA NEELOVA
joins Jillian Knipe on this special edition of ART FICTIONS | Culture Exchange which is part of the UK/Australia Season, a partnership between the British Council and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Nika and I discuss the flow of her cultural story, via poet Rainer Maria Rilke's only novel 'The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge', first published in 1910. We follow Brigge into the depths of the down and out cityscape as he contemplates his fellow street people, acknowledging his urgency to write while being ill-equipped to do so.
We go on to discuss the constant country hopping of her childhood. Back then, architectural details became more reliable than the passing parade of friends, schools, neighbourhoods and languages. So she now mines these ideas for her studio practice where architectural details are re-purposed and renewed, creating unexpected sculptural forms, drifting back, forth and around in meaning and time.
Our conversation taps into overlapping past and future, finding modes to retrieve, drifting in and out of focus, slipping through time, panic spasms, hypersensitivity, and reality, experience and stories overlapping to become an indiscriminate montage.
EXHIBITIONS
2022 '(Everything) is Not What it Seems' NITJA Museum, Oslo
25 Nov 2021 - 7 Jan 2022 'b bl b' Garage off-site project, Moscow
10 Nov 2021 - 30 Jan 2022 'Not Painting' Copperfield, London
22 Oct 2021 - Dec 2022 'Silt' Brighton CCA
11 Sep 2021 - 20 Nov 2021 'One of Many Fragments : Edward Allington and Nika Neelova' New Art Centre, Roche Court, Salisbury
NIKA NEELOVA
nikaneelova.com
instagram nikaneelova
ARTISTS
Ana Mendieta
Andrei Tarkovsky (film director)
Barbara Hepworth
Emma Cousin
Eva Hesse
Eva Rothschild
Fra Angelico
Holly Hendry
Jane Hayes Greenwood
Louise Bourgeois
Phyllida Barlow
Rachel Whiteread
Piero della Francesco
BOOKS & WRITERS
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing 'The Mushroom at the End of the World'
Annie Ernaux 'The Years'
Donna Haraway 'Staying with the Trouble'
Edmund de Waal 'The Hare with the Amber Eyes'
Henrik Ibsen (playwright)
Maggie Nelson 'The Argonauts'
Manuel DeLanda 'A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History'
Margaret Atwood 'The Testaments'
Martin Heidegger 'The Basic Problems of Phenomenology'
Max Frisch 'Man in the Holocene'
Jean Paul Sartre 'Nausea'
Ocean Vuong 'On Earth We're Briefly Beautiful'
Rainer Maria Rilke 'The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge'
Susan Sontag 'The Volcano Lover'
Tibor Fischer 'The Collector Collector'
Tom McCarthy 'Remainder'
Tom McCarthy 'Satin Island'
Virginia Woolf 'The Waves'

Saturday Oct 16, 2021
Welcome to Art Fictions CULTURE EXCHANGE !
Saturday Oct 16, 2021
Saturday Oct 16, 2021
Welcome and Welcome Back to this special edition of ART FICTIONS | Culture Exchange which is part of the UK/Australia Season, a partnership between the British Council and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. ART FICTIONS | Culture Exchange will run until the end of March 2022. Elizabeth Fullerton and Jillian Knipe will discuss the artistic practices of our guests in the usual way - through the prism of their selected piece of fiction - though, for CULTURE EXCHANGE, there'll be a particular tilt towards cultural identity : the boundaries, hurdles, opportunities and possibilities which both curb and open up the artist's practice, as a result of their sense of culture being upended or especially challenged in a way that is unique to each life story.
instagram artfictions2020, jillaroo2020, fullerton_eliz

Thursday Sep 30, 2021
Mechanical Bodies and Dissected Detritus (HOLLY HENDRY)
Thursday Sep 30, 2021
Thursday Sep 30, 2021
Guest artist HOLLY HENDRY
joins ELIZABETH FULLERTON to chat about her work via Tom McCarthy's 2005 novel 'Remainder' in which the nameless narrator must re-learn body movements after a debilitating accident. He is awarded a ridiculous sum in compensation which he uses to re-enact past happenings in microscopic detail, increasingly absurd and violent in nature.
Holly is a lot more pleasant. However, she is also compelled to open up the surface of objects to discover what's inside. How things work. And when that cannot be done physically, it is explored as an idea.
Elizabeth and Holly discuss her major recent, current and upcoming exhibitions:
Jan 2022 solo exhibition at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London
29 May - 12 Nov 2021 'Invertebrate' De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill
May 2021 - Mar 2023 group exhibition 'Breaking The Mould, Sculpture by Women since 1945 An Arts Council Collection Touring Exhibition, for venues refer to artscouncilcollection.org.uk/exhibition/breaking-mould-sculpture-women-1945
Oct - Mar 2022 group exhibition 'Beano: The Art of Breaking the Rules' Somerset House, London
19 May - 30 Aug 2021 'Indifferent Deep' De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill
Sep 2019 - Apr 2020 'The Dump Is Full of Images' Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield
HOLLY HENDRY
hollyhendry.com
instagram h.ollyh.endry
stephenfriedmangallery.com
ARTISTS & DESIGNERS
Andy Holden
Astrida Neimanis
Helen Turner, E-Werk Luckenwalde, Berlin
Isamu Noguchi
Le Corbusier
Louise Bourgeois
Rebecca Horn
BOOKS & AUTHORS
Albert Camus 'The Stranger'
Beatriz Colomina 'X Rays in Architecture'
Eric Carle 'The Very Hungry Catepillar'
J G Ballard 'The Drowned World'
Maggie Nelson
Miles Orvell 'The Real Thing'
Rebecca Tamas 'Strangers : Essays on the Human and Nonhuman'
Tom McCarthy 'C'
GALLERIES & ASSOCIATES
De La Warr Pavilion
Liverpool Bienniel
Professor Parick Goswami, University of Huddersfield
Royal College of Art
Selfridges
Somerset House
Stephen Friedman Gallery
The Baltic
The International Necronautical Society
Whitehall Fabrications
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
FILMS & PERFORMERS
Buster Keaton
Pauline Oliveros
Robert De Niro
'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'