In this very special BONUS EPISODE of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews one of the most renowned artists alive today, Marina Abramović. *BOOK NEWS!* I have written a book! Order The Story of Art without Men here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-story-of-art-without-men/katy-hessel/9781529151145 **This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.com – use the code "The Artist is Present" at checkout for 15% off!** The “grandmother” of Performance Art, Marina Abramovic has been instrumental in pioneering the genre as a visual art form for the last five decades – a genre defined by risk taking; being present; a state of mind; emptying yourself; and connecting the energies with the surrounding public. Born in Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia in 1946, to communist hero parents, Marina Abramović experienced a strict upbringing. Until the age of 29, she was under a curfew of 10 o’clock – resulting in the artist running away a few months later. Since the beginning of her career in the 1970s, Marina Abramović has stretched the limits of the body and mind as both object and subject. Early works include Rhythm 0 (1974), where she became an object of experimentation for the audience – laying out 72 objects, including a pistol, and stating they could be used on her as desired; or Rhythm 5 (1974), where she lay in the centre of a burning five-point star. She has withstood pain, exhaustion, and danger in her quest for emotional and spiritual transformation. Never slowing down, in 1997 she won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for a work that commented on war in Yugoslavia, and in 2010, she took over MoMA for The Artist is Present, where she sat motionless in a chair for eight hours a day – the show broke records, attracting 850,000 visitors. In 2012, she founded the Marina Abramović Institute (MAI), a non-profit foundation for performance art, and has since exhibited at the world’s most prestigious institutions, earning her a global following. And in 2023, she will be the first woman to have a solo exhibition in the main galleries of the Royal Academy of Arts, London. TODAY Marina Abramović launches The Hero 25FPS – @artistispresent / NFT.CIRCA.ART For her first performance launching today on the blockchain, Marina Abramović revisits one of her most personal and autobiographical works ‘The Hero (2001)’ to present in collaboration with The Cultural Institute of Radical Contemporary Art (CIRCA) this digital exploration of time, immateriality and audience participation. Filmed at 25 frames per second, never before seen footage has been separated into 6,500 unique frames to create The Hero 25FPS, a genesis NFT collection by the warrior of performance art. A call for today’s new heroes! Upon completion of THE HERO 25FPS, Marina Abramović, @nadyariot (Pussy Riot) and CIRCA will award a series of Hero Grants to people working within Web3 who demonstrate a desire to make the world a better place. ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

The Great Women Artists

Marina Abramović

In episode 88, and the SEASON FINALE of Season 7 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the esteemed curator, Caroline Bourgeois on MARLENE DUMAS! *BOOK NEWS!* I have written a book! Order The Story of Art without Men here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-story-of-art-without-men/katy-hessel/9781529151145 **This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.com | use the code TGWA20 at checkout for 20% off!•• A painter of the face, the figure and the human psyche and form, Marlene Dumas is one of the most influential painters alive today. Collecting raw emotion and translating it visually onto the canvas through paint, Dumas derives her work from second hand images. In turn, she creates internal portraits that trigger every sense in your body. Contradictory and complex, verging on the sublime and full of seduction, they are also enveloped in pain. Made without any prior studies, she holds a feeling, an emotion, movement and life in the second of the moment. Although her figures are still, it is like they are moving, and although they are immortalised, it is like they are breathing. I couldn't be more excited to say that she is the artist who we will be discussing today with Caroline Bourgeois, the curator of "Marlene Dumas: Open––End” at Palazzo Grassi in VENICE!! https://www.palazzograssi.it/en/exhibitions/current/open-end-marlene-dumas/ I was astonished going round this exhibition at Palazzo Grassi. I have seen a few works in the flesh by Dumas, but walking around, it was electrifying. Not only do these paintings pulsate with colour and exude sensuality, but they appear full of motion. Dumas captures this raw, internal human emotion that is at once full of strength but vulnerability. Not existing in any physical space, her works teeter on the threshold between life and death, internal and the external… It is like they are memories that are familiar, protective, but also ghoulish and haunting. LIST OF PAINTINGS DISCUSSED HERE: https://www.palazzograssi.it/site/assets/files/9808/guide_marlene-dumas_eng.pdf ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

Caroline Bourgeois on Marlene Dumas

In episode 87 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the very brilliant young painter, ANTONIA SHOWERING!!! *BOOK NEWS!* I have written a book! Order The Story of Art without Men here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-story-of-art-without-men/katy-hessel/9781529151145 Acclaimed for her richly layered paintings of family, friends, lovers and more that occupy spaces between reality and surreality, memory and imagination, Antonia Showering paints her subjects full of conviction and full of emotion. Layered with narratives of, in her words, ‘stacked recollections’, her paintings can appear at once haunting and ethereal, ghoulish yet protective, and although they are personal to her, they can speak for us all. Infused with both an acidic and muted colour palette, with thick impasto and washy strokes, Antonia’s paintings deal with universal subjects on a personal level. Speaking about the canvas, she has said: “I see the canvas as a physical space where feelings of belonging or displacement, love or loneliness, intergenerational memory, superstitions and regrets can be turned into something visual and shared with the viewer.” Born in London, and raised in Somerset, to an English father and Swiss-Chinese mother, Antonia’s upbringing, family and heritage play central roles in her work. Having completed her foundation year at Chelsea, her BA at City and Guilds, and then her MFA at the Slade School of Art, Antonia, in just a few years, has become one of the most exciting young painters of her generation. Featured in exhibitions at Stephen Friedman Gallery and TJ Boulting, New Contemporaries and of course The Great Women Artists Residency at Palazzo Monti, Antonia recently had her first solo exhibition at Timothy Taylor which was met with acclaim. ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

Antonia Showering

In episode 86 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the esteemed scholar Susan Weininger on the surrealist sensation, GERTRUDE ABERCROMBIE!!! Gertrude Abercrombie (1909–1977) was a formative contributor to mid-century American painting. Based in Chicago, Abercrombie was a surrealist painter and self-dubbed ‘queen of bohemia'. Working independently from the Surrealist group in Europe, Abercrombie spent most of her life immersed in the Chicago jazz scene. With a penchant for cats, crescent and full moons, sinister desert-like landscapes that feature as paintings in bleak, cold interiors, stairs that lead to nowhere or a series of rhythmically coloured doors, Abercrombie forged a unique style, and presented her sometimes postage-stamp-sized paintings in flamboyant frames. Painting some of the most innovative, surrealist, haunting, eerie, bizarre and brilliant, paintings I’ve ever seen – whether they be slightly larger landscapes with moons, cats, doors, or stairs to nowhere, or miniscule paintings of portraits, domestic scenes or still-lifes, or levitating bodies with limbs floating in the air – Abercrombie's works are utterly fascinating. ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

Susan Weininger on Gertrude Abercrombie

In episode 85 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the esteemed writer Patricia Albers on TINA MODOTTI! Tina Modotti (1896–1942) was a trailblazer. Born in Italy, she found herself at the centre of Hollywood in the 1920s, the post-Revolution era of Mexico, in the midst of Communism with the Muralists, the latter of which she captured through raw images, using her camera - her tool - to engage with political and social issues. Nothing short of a revolutionary, Modotti documented the spirit of era. Her own life was never far from drama. Raised in Italy, in1913 she migrated to the US to join her father. Adored for her striking looks, she soon began work as a model, then an actor, starring ina string of Hollywood silent films.  Taking up photography, in 1923she moved to Mexico City to join the cultural avant-garde and experimented with intimate, hazy studies of close-up wilted flowers and light-filled architectural environments – some of the earliest examples of abstraction in photography.  As the 1920s progressed, and her involvement in the Communist movement deepened (officially joining the party in 1927), Modotti turned her lens towards social documentary, photographing empathetic, yet I think triumphant, portraits of locals and labourers, and took her camera to anti-fascist, leftist rallies (with friends Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera).  However, following the assassination of her then-lover, the Cubist revolutionary Julio Antonio Mella, she was forced to leave Mexico and abandon photography entirely. Fleeing Mexico for WeimarBerlin, Soviet Russia and then Spain, in 1939 she returned to MexicoCity, but died three years later in the back of a taxi... Some still question the cause of her death, viewing it with suspicion due to her ardently leftist politics!!!!  ONE OF THE GREATEST STORIES IN ART HISTORY! ENJOY! Patricia is the author of Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti and curator of the formerly travelling exhibition, Tina Modotti and the Mexican Renaissance, a show and a book focussing on one of the greatest photographers of the early twentieth century: Tina Modotti. F ollow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

Patricia Albers on Tina Modotti

In episode 84 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the historian, mythographer, critic and novelist MARINA WARNER on Kiki Smith and Helen Chadwick!!! A writer of fiction and cultural history, with a special focus on myths and fairy tales and the role of women, Marina Warner is one of the leading art writers, and in the past few years published an extensive collection of essays in Forms of Enchantment: Writings on Art and Artists. This incredible book, exploring discussions on myths, transformation, and alchemy, includes texts on the two artists we will discuss today: Kiki Smith and the late, great British artist, Helen Chadwick. Kiki Smith (b.1954) is an American artist who works across tapestry, sculpture and more, exploring ideas of mythology and regeneration. Inspired by the changes in the seasons and her own perception of animals as they change throughout the year, in her work, Smith addresses the social and spiritual aspects of human nature. Fusing images of medieval folklore with mysticism, Smith’s work blends the earthly and the fantastic, and deals with the fragility of life as well as drawing us to the details of our own ecosystem.  Helen Chadwick (c.1953–1996) was a feminist pioneer. One of the first women artists to be nominated for the Turner Prize, Chadwick was known for challenging stereotypical perceptions of the body in unconventional forms. Reinventing what a female nude could be in her work, her famous works include Ego Geometria Sum (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/chadwick-ego-geometria-sum-the-labours-i-x-74215) and The Oval Court, part of the installation 'Of Mutability'. Chadwick had used the a range of dead animals in the installation and used the scanner of the photocopier to position the animals in animated poses as if in life. She used a blue pigment toner in this work to suggest other physical spaces such as the sea (https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1032036/the-oval-court-sphere-chadwick-helen/) ENJOY! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

Marina Warner on Kiki Smith and Helen Chadwick

In episode 83 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the esteemed scholar, Barbara Bloemink, on the Jazz Age visionary, FLORINE STETTHEIMER!! *BOOK NEWS!* I have written a book! Order The Story of Art without Men here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-story-of-art-without-men/katy-hessel/9781529151145 A feminist, multi-media artist, Jazz-Age saloniste, poet and designer who captured the vibrancy and momentum of New York City’s growth between the World Wars, Stettheimer worked across words, painting, furniture and even costume design. To me was a revelation – and just as Georgia O'Keeffe so aptly observed in her friend: "Fantasy and reality all mixed up. She was perfectly consistent with any of her inconsistencies." Although painting the glittering world of Europe and New York at the start of the twentieth century, Stettheimer was so much more than that. Above all, she was a visionary, who pioneered every field she found herself in, whether it be making costumes for Getrude Stein’s opera or boldly presenting herself in a fully-nude self portrait aged 46, reclaiming Manet’s Olympia. Inventing a new language for modernism which was so brilliantly, charmingly and uniquely her own, with its whimsical figures who burst among the skyscrapers of NYC, Stettheimer drenched her paintings in bright shimmering colours and rich thick, textures. ENJOY! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

Barbara Bloemink on Florine Stettheimer

In episode 82 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews one of the most renowned living artists working in ceramics, Magdalene Odundo. *BOOK NEWS!* I have written a book! Order The Story of Art without Men here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Art-without-Men/dp/1529151147/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1647348710&sr=8-1 [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] Born in Kenya, and now living and working in the UK, where we are recording today, Odundo produces ceramic objects filled with beauty and gracefulness with their voluptuous forms and glittering surfaces. Created using a hand-coiled technique, Odundo’s laboriously produced clay-based sculptures, that range from red-orange to black, are executed in an exquisite manner. Akin or reminiscent to the shape of the female body, she has said of her medium, I’ve always equated clay with the humanity that’s within us, fragile like our bodies. It can tip over. You have it on its toes, but if you push just slightly on the wrong pivot, it will break your heart. Born in 1950, Odundo received her initial training as a graphic artist in Kenya before moving to the United Kingdom in 1971 where she enrolled on the foundation course at the Cambridge School of Art. In 1976 Odundo graduated in Ceramics, Photography and Printmaking from the University for the Creative Arts, and later completed her Postgraduate studies at the RCA. In museum collections that range from the British Museum to the the Brooklyn Museum, the V&A and the Met, Magdalene has exhibited across the globe, a recent favourite exhibitions was her spectacular display at the Hepworth Wakefield, where she put her work in dialogue with myriad artworks and artefacts from across time and from across the globe. In 2019, she was appointed Chancellor of the University for Creative Arts (UCA) and was made a Dame in the Queen’s New Year Honours list 2020. But the reason why we are speaking with Magdalene today is because not only is she currently the subject of a major exhibition at the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge, but because she will also feature in this year’s Venice Biennale, a show that will feature a staggering 180 women artists, and that I can’t wait to find out more about. ENJOY! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

Magdalene Odundo

In episode 81 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews Jeﬀreen M. Hayes on the Harlem Renaissance pioneer, Augusta Savage!! *BOOK NEWS!* I have written a book! Order The Story of Art without Men here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Art-without-Men/dp/1529151147/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1647348710&sr=8-1 [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] Overcoming poverty, racism, and sexual discrimination, Savage is one of the greatest American artists of the 20th century and is famed for her emotionally tender and stoic life-size figures and plaster portrait busts. Raised in a strict family in Florida with a father who opposed her artistic pursuits, she arrived in New York with just $4.60, and in 1922 enrolled at The Cooper Union School of Art. Coming to the fore in the 1920s, Savage mastered emotionally tender and stoic life-size figures and plaster portrait busts (painted with shoe polish for a bronzed effect), and her subjects ranged from dignified everyday Black figures to influential Harlemites, including W. E. B. Du Bois. Working with images to elevate Black culture into mainstream America, Savage was also a key community organiser, exhibitor and teacher to so many. Not only did she become the first African American woman in the US to open her own private art gallery, she was also appointed the first director of the Harlem Community Art Center. As confirmed by Jeffreen, who has previously said: “I don’t think about Augusta Savage as someone who only made objects … [but rather as someone who] has really left behind a blueprint of what it means to be an artist that centres humanity.” ENJOY! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

Jeﬀreen M. Hayes on Augusta Savage

In episode 80 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the legendary SHEILA HICKS! *BOOK NEWS!* I have written a book! Order The Story of Art without Men here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Art-without-Men/dp/1529151147/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1647348710&sr=8-1 [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] Working across textiles, fibre, colour and form, Sheila Hicks’s six-decade-and-counting-career has seen her work across multiple mediums, processes and disciplines. From her cascades of colour that pour out of museum ceilings to her smaller woven drawings – she likes to call ‘minimes’ – Hicks pushes all boundaries of fibre in all different environments. Born in 1934, Hicks was educated at Yale in the 50s, where she was taught by Josef Albers and George Kubler, whose teaching inspired her to venture to Chile to witness the weaving culture in the Andes. Moving to Mexico, then Paris, Hicks has designed film sets to a 1000 thread-based medallion sculpture for the Ford Foundation, NY. Recent international exhibitions include the 2020 exhibition at MAK Vienna, the 2017 Venice Biennale, the 2014 Whitney Biennial, plus a major solo presentation at the Pompidou in Paris! But! One of the reasons why we are speaking with Hicks today is because this spring she will unveil a major exhibition at the Hepworth Wakefield, a show featuring over seventy of her vibrant works which collapse all boundaries between art, architecture and design, breaking down all tensions, which in turn create environments where we can be at one with the work. Info about the Hepworth Wakefield show!!! https://hepworthwakefield.org/whats-on/sheila-hicks/ Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

Sheila Hicks

WELCOME BACK TO SEASON 7 of the GWA Podcast! I have some exciting news... I have written a book! The Story of Art without Men will be published by Penguin on 8 September 2022, and is available to pre-order now: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Art-without-Men/dp/1529151147/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1647348710&sr=8-1  Taking its name from Gombrich’s Story of Art (which includes just one woman!!), this book aims to retell art history with PIONEERING non-male artists who spearheaded movements and redefined the canon. Beginning in the 1500s and ending with those defining the 2020s, this ~FULLY illustrated 500+ page~ book is divided into five parts pinpointing major shifts in art history... ...BACK TO THE PODCAST! In episode 79 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews Alexandra Munroe on YOKO ONO! [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] A pioneering authority on modern and contemporary Asian art and transnational art studies, Dr Alexandra Munroe is both the Director, Curatorial Affairs, at the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, and Senior Curator, Asian Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, where she has also led the museum’s Asian Art Initiative.  Yoko Ono – a visionary, performance art and fluxus pioneer, whose extensive career has spanned from the 50s to the present day – is one of the world's leading artists. An advocate for world peace who has trailblazed both music and art, in pieces that continue to raise vital questions about the world we live in today, Yoko Ono is nothing short of an icon. Now aged 89, her extensive career has seen her fight for global injustices and make protest part of her art. She works with her body, uses objects familiar to us, employs words that I find speak to us on such a universal level, an example being her “instructions” series that open up the world in such illuminating ways it’s impossible to not to see the world in an entirely new way. A pioneer in Performance Art, Yoko Ono (born 1933) set the precedent for disruptive performance pieces that simultaneously challenge and enforce a dialogue between artist and viewer. Raised in Japan, by 1953 she had settled in New York, and it was here that she became involved in the city’s avant-garde Fluxus group: a predominantly political group of artists, poets and musicians who were invested in chance encounters and the unpredictability of performance. In this episode we discuss Ono's upbringing in Japan and the state of the country postwar, her foray into the NYC Downtown avant-garde scene, her first encounter with John Lennon who was mesmerised by her 'YES' work, her radical performances, such as Cut Piece, 1964, which questioned the power of trust and was one of the earliest works to invite audience participation. Plus, her Wish Trees, music and poetry, and more!!! MORE LINKS: LISTEN NOW + ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

Alexandra Munroe on Yoko Ono

In episode 78 – and SEASON FINALE – of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the very brilliant writer, DEBORAH LEVY on photographers Francesca Woodman and surrealist Lee Miller, and painters Paula Rego and surrealist Leonora Carrington!!! [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] The author of seven novels, Levy is one of the leading writers of our time having been shortlisted twice each for the Goldsmiths Prize and the Man Booker Prize. She has also written for The Royal Shakespeare Company and her pioneering theatre writing is collected in Levy: Plays 1. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and, she has also taught writing at the Royal College of Art for ten years. But the reason why we are speaking with Deborah today is because over the past few years, she has brought out one of the greatest – and most emotionally daring – trilogy of memoirs, which she sees as a living autobiography on writing, gender politics and philosophy: Things I Don't Want to Know, The Cost of Living, and Real Estate, which throughout unexpectedly make short segues to female artists – from Francesca Woodman to Louise Bourgeois – as though their work becomes a character, an emotion, or reminds you of elements in your daily life. It is such a beautiful and relatable way about talking about art, and as an art lover, captivating to see artists’ work interwoven like this. So, I thought what better way to celebrate this special episode by looking into the lives and works of four women artists from her brilliantly unique perspective. I am so delighted to say that today we will discuss photographers Francesca Woodman and surrealist Lee Miller, and painters Paula Rego and surrealist Leonora Carrington…  LISTEN NOW + ENJOY!!! Some links: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/253221/things-i-don-t-want-to-know/9780241983089.html https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/295634/the-cost-of-living/9780241977569.html https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/295635/real-estate/9780241977583.html and more books! https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/7514/deborah-levy.html THANK YOU FOR LISTENING TO SEASON 6 OF THE GWA PODCAST! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

Deborah Levy on Francesca Woodman, Lee Miller, Paula Rego, Leonora Carrington

In episode 77 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the fantastic artist, BISA BUTLER!!! [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] One of the leading artists working today, Butler uses the medium of textile for her vivid and vibrant portraits of subjects that weave personal and historical narratives of Black life. From integrating members of her own family derived from old photographs to immortalising celebrated figures from Chadwick Boseman to Frederick Douglass, or those unknown from depression-era photographs, Butler’s oeuvre aims to, in her words, “tell the story – the African American side – of American life”. Born and raised in New Jersey, where she still resides today, Butler studied for her BA at the prestigious Howard University – where she was taught under the AfriCobra group – and for an MA at Montclair State University, it was here when she first began using the medium of textiles after assembling together a portrait quilt for her grandmother. Working as a high school art teacher for more than a decade, Butler worked on her fibre creations in school holidays and at the weekend, exhibiting at churches and community centres. And it is this medium which she has come to pioneer – not only by integrating portraits in such meticulous ways, but by fusing a range of fabrics in her work – from her father’s homeland of Ghana, batiks from Nigeria, and prints from South Africa. Butler’s rise has been astronomical. Having had her first solo exhibition in 2017, within just a few years she has had solo exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Katonah Museum of Art; made two covers for TIME Magazine, as well as a cover for New York Magazine featuring Questlove, and for those in Los Angeles, her work is currently and prominently on view at LACMA’s hotly anticipated exhibition, Black American Portraits. LISTEN NOW + ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

Bisa Butler

In episode 76 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews William J Simmons on the legendary CINDY SHERMAN!!! [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] Emerging in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the “Pictures Generation”, Cindy Sherman, one of the greatest living artists, once said, “through a photograph you can make people believe anything". Transforming herself into unsettlingly convincing identities evocative of Hitchcock films, horror movies, clowns, housewives, supermodels, or valley girls, Sherman’s works so brilliantly hold a mirror up to our complicated and warped society. She explores our ever-changing, superficial, abject, aspirational or society obsessed identities, of which she has said “mask the life that we put on daily”. Born of her own frustrations with societal expectations of women, Sherman began to use her body as a political tool. Playing on society’s obsession with youth, artifice, and the so-often silent, objectified female character in movies, she began work on her Untitled Films Stills, 1977–80, a series which we discuss in depth. Made up of 69 small, black-and-white images of unnervingly familiar (and disturbing) filmic characters, she plays the blonde pin-up, the perfect housewife, and the secretarial graduate about to take on the big city. At other times, she appears stranded on the road alone. The power of Sherman’s work is that she shows us versions of the truth; making us question both the reality for women, but also the context in which this character exists. Cementing her name and earning much acclaim in the New York art world, as the 70s and 80s progressed Sherman continued to reinvent the wheel. From the valley-girl-style Centrefolds, she then went totally against society and the art market’s idea of beauty and switched her lens to one of abjection for Fairy Tales and Disasters, 1985–89. Later, she turned to history and then in 2008, her Society Portraits: with Sherman playing uncomfortably lifelike, wealthy socialites, blown up to the scale as if hung in the subject’s grandiose hallway – complete with gilded frames. Their faces are filled with prosthetics, their bodies fashioned from fake nails, visible wigs, warped tights, and dolly-like shoes, the closer you look, the clearer it becomes that they are visibly and intentionally complete living façade!!!! A curator, writer, and poet based between Los Angeles and New York, Simmons is also an expert on the Pictures Generation, a group of American artists who came of age in the early 1970s known for their critical analysis of media culture, one of whom includes the great Cindy Sherman. Sherman – who today rarely ever gives interviews, as she has said it is not her place to speak about her work – is known for redefining portraiture with her performative works in which she produces, stars and directs. MORE LINKS: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000775t https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/cindy-sherman/exhibition/ https://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/31810-cindy-sherman LISTEN NOW + ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

William J Simmons on Cindy Sherman

In episode 75 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews one of the most exciting young painters working today, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami !!!! [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] Born in Zimbabwe and raised between there, South Africa, and the UK, Hwami is fast becoming one of the leading artists of her generation. Having received her BA from Wimbledon College of Arts, where she was shortlisted for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries, among many other prizes; this year, Hwami completed an MFA at the Ruskin School of Art at Oxford University. In 2019, she represented her country of birth at the 58th Venice Biennale alongside three artists, and in the same year had her first institutional solo show at Gasworks in London called (15,952km) via Trans – Sahara Highway N1. Rich in colour, subject, and scale, Hwami’s exuberant and vivid paintings of self-portraits and her extended family draw on the artist’s autobiographical history. Sourced from images ranging from the internet to family photo albums, they explore representations of the black body, along with notions of sexuality, gender and spirituality. Experimenting with photography and digitally collaged images, and often incorporating other media such as silkscreen, pastel or charcoal, Hwami’s bold painting’s offer an insight into a deeply personal world, whilst also appearing universal and familiar; the artist has said, ‘with the collapsing of geography and time and space, no longer am I confined in a singular society but simultaneously I am experiencing Zimbabwe and South Africa and the UK, in my mind. I’m in the UK, but I carry those places with me everywhere I go.’ But the reason why we are speaking with Kudzanai-Violet today is because she is currently the subject of and featured in two of my favourite exhibitions up in London right now: the Hayward Gallery’s painting show “Mixing it Up” and her solo exhibition, “when you need letters for your skin” at Victoria Miro Gallery, a show i found utterly spellbinding with its poignant, personal and raw paintings -- painting she describes as “visual letters”. https://www.victoria-miro.com/artists/240-kudzanai-violet-hwami/ https://www.gasworks.org.uk/exhibitions/kudzanai-violet-hwami-2019-09-19/ https://www.instagram.com/mwana.wevhu/?hl=en LISTEN NOW + ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami

Created off the back of @thegreatwomenartists Instagram, this podcast is all about celebrating women artists. Presented by art historian and curator, Katy Hessel, this podcast interviews artists on their career, or curators, writers, or general art lovers, on the female artist who means the most to them.

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The Great Women Artists

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