Interviews
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Peter Halstead: ‘People should have their own personal adventure with sculpture’
Cathy and Peter Halstead talk about Tippet Rise Art Center, the remarkable music venue and sculpture park they set up on a vast ranch in the wilds of Montana, and their desire to create a place with the potential for…
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Shilpa Gupta: ‘I am always playing with the idea of the location in the work’
The Mumbai-based artist Shilpa Gupta talks about her practice, notions of identity and nation states, and how she prefers her work to be called ‘everyday art’ rather than terming it political
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Gerfried Stocker: ‘The first time I went to Ars Electronica Festival was mind-blowing’
Gerfried Stocker talks about going from being a media artist influenced by Ars Electronica to becoming its artistic director and the mind behind its organisation
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Chris Alton: ‘By bringing different artists together, there is the possibility to amplify particular political ideas’
Curator and artist Chris Alton talks about his latest venture, You’re Surrounded By Me, which weaves together contemporary issues such as climate change, protest and the subversion of heraldry
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Godwin Bradbeer: ‘the work must have both physical presence and an enigmatic residual beauty’
Bradbeer talks about his technique, why he works on a large scale and what drawing means to him – and reveals his secret to engaging cynical students
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Sol Calero: ‘It’s important that the aesthetics don’t eat the concept’
Beneath the colourful painted surfaces of Sol Calero’s immersive installations, there are deeper, politically informed concepts for those who take the time to unpick the layers
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Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings: ‘Our work poses questions that bridge the gap between the past, present and future of queer culture in the UK’
The collaborative duo talk about their film UK Gay Bar Directory, which is showing at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool as part of its exhibition Coming Out: Sexuality, Gender and Identity
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Julián Zugazagoitia: ‘Museums should generate interest and open a door that leads to further learning’
Since 2010, when Zugazagoitia joined the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, visitor numbers have soared. Now, having received a gift that has almost doubled the size of the museum’s former collection of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings, and a major renovation, he…
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An interview with Marcel Duchamp
’[Marcel Duchamp:] …The whole of modern art—the Impressionists, the Fauves, the Cubists—the whole, except maybe the Surrealists, were retinal. Abstract expressionism was very retinal, and of course, Op art is very retinal. A little too retinal for one’s taste.’
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Lluís Lleó: ‘It was important to me that the sandstone came from Spain and that I made them there’
Lluís Lleó talks about how, for his recent installation on Park Avenue, New York, he was inspired to use stones from Europe that referred to the history of murals and fresco painting as a way of re-establishing a relationship between…
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Marlie Mul: ‘It’s not a refusal. It’s that, basically, nothing was possible’
Until the end of October this year, there will be no exhibition in Gallery 1 of Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art. Here, Marlie Mul, the artist who was meant to be showing in the space from May onwards, explains why
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Laura Youngson Coll: ‘The real catharsis was in the making process, because that’s something that’s personal to me, and it’s the way in which I assimilate things’
Expanding on her fascination with the world of nature and natural sciences, Laura Youngson Coll has produced an intricate series of work in vellum – mixing fact and fiction, beauty and abjection – responding to the loss of her partner…
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Vic McEwan: ‘I played a paddle-steamer to an audience of 1,000 and used a hospital bed as a cello’
The artist Vic McEwan talks about his project on the swan hoppers of the Murrumbidgee river in Australia, and working with Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool to consider the negative effects of high sound levels in wards. He hopes,…
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Alexandra Dementieva: ‘All art is an interactive game. I am offering the viewer an opportunity to take an active part in the work’
Don’t come to Alexandra Dementieva’s exhibition with the hope of being a passive spectator. As she explains, her aim is to draw the visitor in to her installations, to engage them in public performance
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Evgenia Arbugaeva: ‘I’m always making up stories and believing in magic’
The Russian photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva spins gold from the light of desolate places, finding beauty in some unlikely environments
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Esther Rolinson: ‘Light has an immediacy. We are literally woken up by it’
The multimedia artist Esther Rolinson talks about her exhibition Gravitate at Watermans Art Centre, the allure of light and its qualities as an artistic material, the significance of collaborative work and the incessant movement of her art-making
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Afruz Amighi: ‘I wanted to make a procession of characters that embodied both good and bad’
In No More Disguise, Afruz Amighi’s first show of drawings, the New York-based artist discusses the creative impulse she experienced following the 2016 US election, and the role of American history in her most personal work to date
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Willow Hai: ‘The jade burial suit is the single most important object in the show – and the best in China’
Willow Hai, director of the China Institute in New York, talks about its current show, Dreams of the Kings, a spectacular collection of treasures from the Han dynasty, including possibly the earliest dated jade burial suit in existence
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Henri Scars Struck: ‘It was interesting for me to have a physical space to represent something that is completely abstract’
Henri Scars Struck, the French music composer known for his meditative sonic experiences, discusses his soundscape for the Crow Collection of Asian Art in Dallas, which charts the journey of a soul
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Gregory Crewdson: ‘I wanted the photographs to feel like a suburban window, to give a sense that the viewer is looking into a world’
American photographer Gregory Crewdson talks about loneliness and connection in his work and, in particular, about Cathedral of the Pines, his current exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery in London that sprang from a difficult time in his life
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Jay Heikes: ‘I’ve always loved the reminder that the natural world has the upper hand’
Minneapolis-based artist Jay Heikes discusses his experimental approach to materials, the significance of music within his practice, and the role of transcendence in contemporary life
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Abou Farman: ‘I want the tragic to become an acceptable space’
Abou Farman, who co-wrote Icaros: A Vision with Leonor Caraballo, talks about the film, which is based on Caraballo’s exploration of shamanism after she was diagnosed with cancer, and coming to terms with her death
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Joseph Kosuth: ‘I was always interested in the limits of language and there’s no better way of demonstrating that than with definitions of colours’
On the occasion of his curated installation at Mazzoleni, Joseph Kosuth, the pioneer of conceptual art, speaks to Studio International about his insistence that art must question and elicit meaning, the impoverishment of art’s critical bite under market domination, and…
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Jenny Crompton: ‘I enjoy sitting in the work for hours. It becomes a meditation’
Australian artist Jenny Crompton explains how she made her installation Sea Country Spirits, and talks about discovering her Wadawurrung heritage and how it changed her practice as she moved away from man-made materials to using materials she collects from the…
