Interviews
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Helen Flockhart: ‘Art doesn’t have to be large to be powerful’
The Scottish painter on her time at Glasgow School of Art in the 80s, being influenced by conventional artists as well as models from knitting patterns, and how she produces her detailed, labour intensive works
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Morehshin Allahyari: ‘Suddenly, I had the opportunity of making art without having to censor myself’
The Iranian-born artist, who moved to the US in 2007, talks about important concepts in her work, including exile, censorship, virtual and digital media and the adoption of technology in developing countries
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Janet Biggs: ‘This project traces my very specific memories of my family’
The video and installation artist talks about her latest exhibition, in which she worked with neuroscientists, geologists and musicians in a quest to discover what constitutes our sense of self and identity when our memory fails us
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Fernanda Chieco: ‘I go searching for stories’
The Brazilian artist talks about art residency programmes, and how one led her to look at haunted houses, chase phantoms and, finally, build a ghost town with watercolours
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Haris Epaminonda: ‘I imagined the Cypriot landscape to be the main protagonist’
The artist talks about the making of her four-channel video installation Chapters, filmed in her native Cyprus, and the importance of the space in which her works are shown
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Toyin Odutola: ‘I’m no longer interested in portraying what I think I am in my work’
The artist talks about why she loves pen and ink, where she gets the inspiration for her titles, and why it’s ridiculous to think being African, black and a woman should define her work
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Frederick Wiseman: ‘National Gallery shows more about the ambivalence, depth and horror of human nature than almost any other film’
The American film-maker Frederick Wiseman talks about his latest documentary, a portrait of the National Gallery, and his novelistic approach to his work
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David Altmejd: ‘I believe in the power that art has to generate meaning’
Canadian artist David Altmejd, known for his fantastical sculptures and installations, discusses his current solo exhibition at Modern Art Gallery, London, and talks about heads, hands and the fetishisation of potential
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Saba Qizilbash: ‘I always attempt to speak from personal eye level’
The Pakistani-born artist says much of her works have been in response to stages in her personal life, from documenting the death of her mother, to painting children in beautified battlefields, to looking at how her clothes could tell a…
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Lynn Hershman Leeson: ‘I’ve always been interested in the exchange between reality and virtual reality’
The US artist Lynn Hershman Leeson, known for her performance art and film-making, talks about her latest show, Civic Radar, making films with Tilda Swinton, and her fears about bio-engineering
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Thomas Allen: ‘I want my cave to offer an escape’
Thomas Allen talks about his background in sociology, how his latest work relies on the scribbles of perfect strangers – and why termites are so fascinating
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Gail Pickering: ‘I was interested in the histories of community video production’
The London-based artist Gail Pickering talks about her recent major exhibition at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, which combined visual art, installations, videos, screenings and performances, and the ever-changing, ever-static, ever-replicating nature of images
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Valerie Hird – interview: ‘Drawings are documents of honest and wonderfully human communication’
US artist Valerie Hird studied archaeological illustration and then painting before becoming a compulsive traveller. Her work, she says, is deeply rooted in multiple cultures, the nomadic icons she uses filtered through her own cultural roots to create a transcultural…
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Jessica Stockholder: ‘Art changes, taking account of the present moment’
Jessica Stockholder talks about her work, which combines painting, sculpture, installation and language in a unique creation that calls for a close personal encounter with the viewer
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Nina Lola Bachhuber: ‘The creative process is like a virus in my brain’
The Munich-born artist’s delicate drawings depict invented characters that are then given form in sculptures. She explains her methods and her choice of materials and says a humorous air of surrealism leavens a wild energy in her works
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Sam Belinfante: ‘For galleries, sound is still a terrifying prospect’
Sam Belinfante talks about the role of listening in the visual arts and the challenges he faced in curating this engaging and impressive show, which features some of the key figures in aural art today
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Dan Coombs: ‘Art is grounded in reaching for the real’
The artist talks about how he hoped his recent exhibition, Suspicion, would answer his 20-year quest to find out what narrative in painting is, his regret at the demise of life drawing, and teaching at a new private art school
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Maggi Hambling: ‘Some paintings you’ve just got to cut up. There’s enough bad art in the world’
Maggi Hambling talks about the sea, life, death and love in her work, how, despite being nearly 70, she’s still learning about painting, and why sometimes a painting has to be killed off
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Brian Bress: ‘I come to video with the agenda of a painter’
Brian Bress is an innovative multimedia artist who creates works that combine painting, drawing, animation, video, and performance art into a new form of expression
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Kennedy Browne: ‘With the internet there is no final cut’
Irish artist duo Kennedy Browne talk about how their work has been shaped by free-market triumphalism in the decades since Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, plane-spotting at Shannon airport – and Mark Zuckerberg’s lightsaber
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Nacho Carbonell: ‘I try to communicate to many people through objects’
Nacho Carbonell makes collectable pieces that span the fields of art and design. On the occasion of his first large-scale solo exhibition, he talks about his creative practice and how his design for an inflatable chair, Pump It Up, became…
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Janenne Eaton: ‘My work is deeply political’
Melbourne-based artist Janenne Eaton talks about the inspiration behind her recent installation, Road to the Hills, her love of driving alone through the Australian landscape, and the changes digital technology has brought
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Jockum Nordström: ‘There’s a self-portrait in every single thing I do. Even if I make a tree or a sex-scene, I can play the both of them’
Having travelled from the island of Gotland where his latest solo exhibition was composed, Swedish artist Jockum Nordström talks about his creative process, his communication with the dead, and the problem of exterior definition
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Maisie Broadhead: ‘I was quite happy to be fraudulent’
The photographer and jewellery-maker talks about her latest show, Peepers at Brighton’s Royal Pavilion, and how she takes her inspiration from Old Masters
