Interviews
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Ekaterina Degot – interview: ‘We now have an abyss on all fronts – ecologically, but also politically’
Degot discusses Steirischer Herbst, an annual art festival held in Graz, Austria. Last year, her first as the festival’s curator, it tackled the rise of populism across Europe. This year’s iteration, Grand Hotel Abyss, examines hedonism and whether Graz, in…
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Lubaina Himid – interview: ‘It is my intention to create artworks that examine ideas about how to invent new rules by which to live’
Lubaina Himid’s first solo exhibition in the US opens this week, debuting works that continue her longstanding project on identity, representation and survival. She talks here about this new work and her pioneering role in the 1980s in the British…
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Paula Rego – interview: ‘I’m interested in seeing things from the underdog’s perspective. Usually that’s a female perspective’
From criticism of dictatorship in her native Portugal in the 60s to the 90s abortion series and Dog Women, Paula Rego’s subjects are as relevant today as ever. As Obedience and Defiance, her first UK retrospective in two decades, opens,…
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Julie Cunningham – interview: ‘I had the experience for many years of feeling like an object that was spun around and I don’t want to feel like that any more’
Seeking to erase embedded patriarchal structures and fixed gender identities through dance, Julie Cunningham’s choreography is often inspired by feminist texts. Their new work for Art Night 2019 promises to be full of energy – all night long!
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Lothar Götz – interview: ‘In Britain, people think abstraction is just beautiful, but for me it also has a political aspect’
Artist Lothar Götz talks about designing a monumental mural for Towner Art Gallery, the politics of the Bauhaus and why he rejected figurative art
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Raffi Kalenderian – interview: ‘It’s like banging your head against a brick wall, but if you get through to the other side it feels so good’
For Kalenderian, painting is all about excitement. His radical portraiture – as much of the scene as of the sitter – is a celebration of experimentation and problem-solving. Here, he speaks about what attracts him to his subjects and how…
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Andrew Marr – interview: ‘Everybody is angry and upset. We’ve messed things up – that’s what the paintings are about, which is why I called them the Brexit paintings’
The broadcaster, writer and former BBC political editor talks about how his painting and drawing practice has changed since his stroke six years ago, having two exhibitions this month – and how Brexit crept into some of his work
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Petra Bauer – interview: ‘The crucial thing was to make sure the sex workers were the ones leading the discussions, that they were the ones with agency’
Inspired by feminist film practitioners who emphasise the importance of making films with their subjects, not about them, Workers! is very much a collaboration between film-maker Petra Bauer and SCOT-PEP, a sex worker-led organisation in Edinburgh
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Keith Tyson – interview: ‘I’m quite happy for the world to seep through me and for the work to just emerge’
The artist talks about the joys of scaling back, relearning the craft of painting, and why the flower paintings in his new show, Life Still, at Hauser & Wirth, London, are about so much more than flowers
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Jock McFadyen – interview: ‘The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition doesn’t get a fair crack of the whip from critics’
McFadyen, known for his urban landscapes and putting the marginal centre stage in his paintings, is the co-ordinator of this year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. It’s been challenging and exciting, he says, but he’s finding the baggage of its reputation…
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Casey Reas – interview: ‘There is an increased understanding that software is central to our lives’
Reas is known as the man who helped to create the open-source programming language Processing and brought coding within the grasp of visual artists. Here, he talks about how his work has changed over the course of his career and…
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Lawrence Lek – interview: ‘AI could become the ultimate content creation mechanism. It could also signal the death of the author’
Lek talks about artificial intelligence taking over from human creativity, and AIDOL, his feature-length film on the subject, now showing at Sadie Coles, London
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Victor Wong – interview: ‘The human is inspired by the machine and the machine is modified by the human’
Artist-inventor Victor Wong talks about his robot artist AI Gemini, how he feels about his invention and how it might develop in the future
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Nye Thompson – interview: ‘The bots are actually the primary audience for the show’
In her project The Seeker, a system of machines looking at images on screen, analysing them and whispering to one other, we humans are merely peripheral intrusions, says Thompson. It’s scary, but exciting
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Angelica Mesiti – interview: ‘I really want to maintain ambiguity and possibility in my work’
Representing the Australian Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, Angelica Mesiti is showing a multiscreen video installation entitled Assembly, which uses music to explore the power and complexities of collectivity
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Aliza Nisenbaum – interview: ‘I was torn between wanting to be a social worker or a painter’
The Mexican-born, New York-based artist talks about her first UK public commission, a mural at Brixton underground station, which offers an intimate portrayal of Transport for London staff as part of the Art on the Underground series
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Irina Nakhova – interview: ‘I want my works to provoke curiosity’
The Russian artist talks about her latest exhibition, Museum on the Edge, at the Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, and explains why she sees art not as a profession, but rather as her way of being
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Laura Buckley – interview: ‘I enjoy watching the people in the work as much as the work itself’
Buckley talks about her sculpture and video Fata Morgana, currently on show at the Saatchi Gallery, using her work as a catharsis for difficult times – and the pros and cons of the Instagram moment
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Ronny Sen – interview: ‘The work is about the apocalypse in a certain way, where everything will go to the fire and the dust’
Sen talks about photographing the out-of-control fires burning underground in the coal mines of Jharia, India, how he ensures every image has something it reveals and something it hides, and the death of Kolkata
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Jos Tilson – interview: ‘Motherhood is a form of creativity, and one which I totally believe in’
Tilson has combined the ancient craft of hand-weaving with the language of modern art alongside an obsessive approach to sculptures in clay. She talks here about Italy, her passion for architecture and what’s wrong with the #MeToo campaign
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David Austen – interview: ‘I think Dr Seuss is as great as Picasso’
On the occasion of Underworld, a new exhibition at Dundee Contemporary Arts, the artist talks about writers who have influenced him, from Camus to Dr Seuss, his recurring dream of being chased by a naked lizard woman, and why he…
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Matheus Parizi – interview: ‘Artists are compelled more than ever to make work about what is happening in the street. Art has to be political.’
Parizi talks about the current right-wing climate in Brazil, cuts to funding for the arts, and his new short film First Act, which he made as a direct response to the political events in his country
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Devan Shimoyama – interview: ‘I use my body to explore magic, mythology, history, intimacy, joy, pain’
His portraits consider the black, queer, male body from a personal perspective that is as informed by mythology and folklore as it is by everyday life. Shimoyama talks here about his new solo exhibition, Shh … at De Buck Gallery…
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Martin Parr – Interview: ‘Britain is eternally fascinating … full of contradictions … Photographing it is a form of therapy’
Documentary photographer Martin Parr’s latest exhibition, Only Human, at the National Portrait Gallery, is all about us – us humans, but especially us British. Here, he talks about cake, collecting and Britain in the time of Brexit
