Art Cast: Recent Episodes
Morley Radio
Art Cast is a series of informal discussions with artists about their work, lifestyle and how they have adapted their work to the challenges of an ever changing world. Art Cast is hosted by Matt Gee, Fine Art Subject Leader at Morley College London and co-hosted by his students.
The guest for this episode is David Shrigley. David works across drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, photography, animation, and print. He publishes books, produces music, occasionally designs tattoos and creates all manner of other paraphernalia. David is one of those unique artists, like Andy Warhol or Keith Haring, who is recognised within the art world but whose reach extends far beyond to impact our wider culture.
He has received international critical acclaim for his work and in 2020 was awarded an OBE for Services to Visual Arts. In 2016, he was awarded the Fourth Plinth Commission for sculpture in Trafalgar Square and was nominated for the prestigious Turner Prize Award in 2013.
David Shrigley has had solo exhibitions in museum worldwide and his works are found in prominent collections, including Museum of Modern Art (New York), Tate Britain (London), the National Gallery of Denmark (Copenhagen), amongst many others.
He has a shop based in Copehagen called Shrig shop.
Student Co-Host: Kathryn MCgeary, Morley College’s Photography student.
The guest for this episode is street artist Hera. Born in Germany, Jasmin Siddiqui is known in the street art world as Hera, and is one part of the collaborative pair, Herakut.
Hera creates mixed media work on huge murals entwined with poetic text that is poignant and distinct in terms of the graffiti writing style. She looks into themes such as political injustice and social awareness. The work is hugely ambitious. One collaborative piece in Berlin measures in at a huge 42 by 16 Metres. The aim of this piece was to remind Berliners about the closeness to nature the city possess by portraying a woman in a hoodie standing holding animals in her palm, symbolically enjoying the beauty and diversity of nature.
The work symbolises an escape from homeland to a foreign nation, the path from the familiar to the unknown, with the mantra being ‘home is where you take it’.
The guest for this episode is Chris Cawkwell. Chris work explores consumer culture within a capitalist framework; utilising contemporary technologies, performative and interactive elements to critique the social systems and processes which operate around us, and highlight the rate at which products are consumed and commodified.
Cawkwell graduated with a masters in Fine Art from Wimbledon College of Art in 2012. He has exhibited nationally and internationally
He co founded Art Lacuna. ArtLacuna is an artist-led space established in May 2013, located in an old coroner’s office near Clapham Junction. It accommodates artist studios, a residency and research program, as well as project and exhibition space, based in Clapham Junction, South London.
The guest for this episode is Soraya Maquez, otherwise known in the world of street art and graffiti writing as Indie 184.
Indie was originally born in Puerto Rico and is of Dominican descent before being raised in New York. An American street artist who has been active for two decades who is coming to us from New York. She predominantly focuses on feminine icons mixed with various signifiers such as hearts and bubbles, personal messages and various textures.
She adopts a mixed media style, collage, and stencil art and creates really impressive large scale murals that coat entire walls on the side of buildings. She owns her own streetwear brand called Kweenz Destroy (queens with a K) Her artwork has been featured in the video game Grand Theft Auto. She was the chief artistic director for Rimmell London in partnership with the ‘Art of Beauty’ campaign. Her art has been featured in New Yorks El Museo del Barrio, and Volkingen Ironworks museum in Germany.
Student Co-host for this Episode: Inigo Farah, Fashion Design Diploma Student
Art Cast is a podcast usually presented by Matt Gee, artist and Subject Leader for Fine Art at the Chelsea Centre, Morley College. But today it will be presented by HNC Fine Art student Phoebe Ingleby and Fine Art Foundation student Barbara Cserny.
The guest for this podcast is Jeremy Deller. Jeremy is a conceptual artist who works across mediums with a huge emphasis on collaboration. In 1997, he produced Acid Brass, a musical collaboration with the Williams Fairey Brass Band from Stockport. It was a project to mix the music of a traditional brass band with acid house and Detroit techno. His work has a strong political aspect, in terms of the subjects dealt with and also by involving the public in the creative process. Folk Archive was a tour of so called “people’s art” and has been exhibited throughout the UK including at Barbican Centre.
Sacrilege, a 1:1 bouncy replica of Stonehenge created for the 2012 Olympic Games was toured around the UK.
Deller staged The Battle of Orgreave in 2001, bringing together almost 1,000 people in a public re-enactment of a violent confrontation from the 1984 Miners’ Strike. The re-enactment was filmed by director Mike Figgis for Artangel Media and Channel 4. The Battle of Orgreave was ranked second in The Guardian’s Best Art of the 21st Century list, with critic Hettie Judah calling it a “monument of sorts, the performance was at once participatory ritual, spectacle, living archive and a space to mourn”.
In 2004, for the opening of Manifesta 5, the roving European Biennial of Contemporary art, Deller organised a Social Parade through the streets of the city of Donostia-San Sebastian, drafting in cadres of local alternative societies and support groups to participate.
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Deller produced the documentary Everybody in The Place: An Incomplete History of Britain 1984–1992 which covered acid house and rave culture, and political turmoil in Britain in the 1980s and early-1990s, first shown by BBC Four on 2 August 2019.
Deller was the winner of the Turner Prize in 2004 and he was selected to represent Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2013.
The guest for this episode is Peter Kennard. Peter is currently professor of Political Art at the Royal College of Art. He is most renowned for his iconic photomontages comprising of various motifs such as missiles, gas masks, bombs and images of earth. He created work for the posters used by the Campain for Nuclear Disarment (otherwise known as the CND) used on campaigns in the 1970s and 80s. These works included a re-hash of John Constables The Hay Wain, and was called Haywain with Cruisemissiles, a transposition of Constables painting with Cruise missiles ready to launch on the cart. This work highlighted anxieties and tensions in British society during the missile deployment of the 1980s where the East and West stand-off had the potential to push towards nuclear disaster.
Another work Kennard is famous for, a photomontage called Photo Op which was created in Photoshop using an image of Tony Blair taking a selfie during the 2005 General Election campaign. This has then been re-hashed to look as if Tony Blair is taking a selfie against a backdrop of burning oil. It was described by The Guardian as “the definitive work of art about the war”. Kennard says he was trying to change the world and “portray Iraq as it happened and not wait until afterwards and make a history painting”.
In 2013 He expanded his methods of dissemination by sharing images through online platforms such as Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter. His G8 Protest Posters involved him sharing images “designed for protest”. These were created in reaction to the 39th G8 summit , Kennard had encouraged the public to “print, Tweet, Facebook, email and share these images as a sign of protest”
The first major retrospective of Kennard’s work was held at the Imperial War Museum for a year from May 2015.The show then moved to mac birmingham in 2016
Most recently in november 2021 he exhibited at Trongate 103 in Glasgow to coincide with the COP 26 summit, the show was titled: Code Red Cop 26.
Student Co-Hosts for this Episode: Photography Degree students Kathryn McGeary, Danielle Kalinovskis and Maria Green.
For this episode Matt is delighted to welcome Morley College London alumni Hannah Uzor, who completed her studies last year.
Hannah is currently studying her MA at the Slade in London after winning the Milein Cosman scholarship for drawing. Hannah was born in Zambia but spent a few years in the UK while her father was studying in the UK and then moved back to Zambia to complete her Primary and Secondary education. After secondary school she joined Zambia National Arts Council and was one of the youngest members taking part in national and international exhibitions. In 2003 she returned to the UK to complete studies in computing. In 2016 Hannah decided to focus on her art. Obtaining an art qualification was now Hannah’s priority, but costs and time constraints of studying at University meant she wanted to seek a more flexible and cost effective option, Morley College London was her choice and she studied at the Chelsea Centre for the Creative Industries from 2019-2021.
In 2020 her painting of Sarah Forbes Bonetta was acquired by English Heritage and displayed at Osborne house in October for Black History Month.
‘Painting our Past” which was covered widely in the media including the Times, the Guardian, the Economist, BBC History and British Archaeology.
Student Co-Hosts: Christine Udoh and Che Dorant.
The guest for this episode is Helen Kirkum, a London based designer who makes handmade one-off bespoke trainers from waste material. The pieces are tactile and sculptural, and very distinct with their individual features that show an aesthetic of cut n paste or a mash up where logos and specific forms are teased out from the surface.
Helen went to the Royal College of Art where she studied MA footwear, accessories and millinery. Helen has collaborated with a huge range of companies and individuals including, Gucci, Lacoste, Reebok, Adidas, Melissa Core, Bethany Williams, Matthew Needham and Takashi Murakami.
Helen was also part of the recent exhibition at the Design Museum; Sneakers unboxed, studio to the street and won the International Talent Support prize in 2016, and the Vogue Talent award.
The guest for this episode is Barry Reigate. Barry is predominantly a painter, but also makes sculptures. There are various themes explored including desire and horror. He combines Graphic Design techniques with looser and more expressionistic styles, encompassing a range of Modern Art and Cartoon motives mashed up in to one image, which are sometimes presented on three metre canvases.
Reigate has been quoted as saying, “the cartoons are about death, the death of our exhausted visual culture. Cartoons are used because they have already been used, used to death. It plays with notions of freedom, in regards to an ideal of creativity. My work is dealing with structures and systems in regard to play and progress”
Reigate’s work has been shown at the Tate Britain, Saatchi Gallery, Art Gallery of South Australia as well as many more notable institutes around the world.
This episode was recorded in October 2021 before the untimely passing of Morley Radio's close friend and highly respected artist Mira Calix.
Mira Calix was a multi award winning artist and composer signed to Warp Records, where she released her latest LP (absent origin) on November 5th, 2021.
Mira was known for producing predominantly electronic music, but over the past two decades incorporated classical music, recently doing a remix of John Cage. Recently incorporated performance and multidisciplinary art, Mira considered sound a sculptural material.
In 2003 she collaborated with the London Sinfonietta, and Nunu premiered at the Royal Festival Hall and has gone on to create music for film, theatre and other performances for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Manchester International Festival, Sydney Festival, The Royal Northern Sinfonia and more.
The albums she created are all titled in lower case as a rejection of Capitalism, and in this interview Matt not only discussed her work as an activist and protester, which again like with Russell in the previous episode is a hot topic for our Foundation students who are looking at art as protest.
Student Co-host: Ethan Hamilton
The guest for this episode is Russell Shaw Higgs. Russell was born in Oswestry Army Camp. Based predominantly in London, Russell has a long history as being an artist but also a political activist. In the late 80’s he was engaged as a frontline civil disobedience activist with campaigns such as ACT-UP and Outrage. Act up was a political group working together to end the AIDS pandemic, and continues to work on medication, treatment, legislation and public policies. He was a frontline Civil Disobedience activist and chaired the inaugural meetings of queer activist group Outrage in 1990 which was set up to advocate that gay, lesbian and bi-sexual people have the same rights as heterosexual people and to end Homophobia.
In the early 90’s Russell moved into Contemporary Dance which included performances at the ICA, with his contemporary dance group 2MEN and with Manact at Londons Place Theatre. In 2010 his improvised self portrait video compilation was shortlisted for a Guggenheim and Youtube prize and projected outside the museum in New York. Since 2013 he has focused more on the streets, pasting up works and engaging in the world of street art and graffiti. Russel is also very much engaged within the world of British Politics, and for the elections in 2015 and 2017 he stood as an independent candidate for Hackney South and Shoreditch.
In this episode, Matthew is also joined by Jasmine Walsh a student at Morley College London, Chelsea Centre for Creative Industries.
The guest of this episode is Andy Holden. Andy is a mixed media artist. Works are formed using video, ceramics, printmaking, painting, animation, and most notably, installations encompassing all of the above. He came to national attention with his exhibition ‘Art Now: Andy Holden’ (2010) at TATE Britain, for which he exhibited ‘Pyramid Piece’, an enormous knitted boulder based on piece of pyramid which he stole from the great pyramid of Giza as a boy, and then later returned. Andy has been asked to curate Somerset Houses exhibition, Beano: The art of breaking the rules which will open on 21st October and be on until 6th March 2022.
Because of last season beginning in the January lockdown, and then in the months that followed there still being some form of restrictions, Matthew was unable to invite students to the sessions because of social distancing restrictions.
In this episode, Matthew is also joined by two students, Ethan Hamilton and Che Dorant who are both studying with us at Morley College London, Chelsea Centre for Creative Industries.
The last guest for this series is Susan Collis, alumni of Morley College London, Chelsea Centre for the Creative Industries (formerly known as Kensington and Chelsea College). Susan studied under Peter Stanley.
Susan creates extremely carefully crafted objects. These objects consist of a wide range of valuable and seductive materials. They tend to imitate the mundane and everyday spillages, drips, stained overalls, paint splattered tools, and are executed to incredibly precision. The works are based on themes of craft, labour, value, the art gallery context, and the everyday.
The guest for this episode is Goldie. Goldie initially gain exposure as a graffiti artist in the UK and New York before going on to be one of the pioneers of drum and bass, co-founding the label Metalheadz. He currently curates the Aurum Gallery of contemporary, urban and street art.
The guest for this episode is street artist Fin DAC. Through his work Fin DAC explores themes related to female emancipation and empowerment, while revealing their sensuality and sensitivity at the same time. The artist’s artwork aims to tackle racial and sexual stereotypes that surround women while readjusting the male gaze and former colonialist attitudes surrounding the Eastern experience.
Fin DAC has collaborated with brands like Armani, G-Star, Red Bull and has painted for the Royal Albert Hall and the 2012 Olympic Games in London. He has exhibited his work in galleries and museums mainly in Europe but also in the USA, and has painted murals in USA, Canada, Mexico, France, UK, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Cambodia, Australia, New Zealand and Tahiti.
The guest for this episode is Miami-based muralist Douglas Hoekzema, aka Hoxxoh. Hoxxoh attempts to show us a different way of viewing time through a means of exploring its natural fabric. His work creates a new foundation and approach to evaluating and appreciating time. The oscillation of the pendulum paints time through gravity’s natural pull. Expressing how we can be pulled in one direction, when we are really meant to be going in another. How resistance creates a struggle and a false sense of control. Where if we follow the natural flow of times predetermined, yet unseen path, an experience of beauty and pure form will take shape.
The guest for this episode is Anne Ryan. Anne will be talking to our Fine art students at Morley College London. Anne recently had a solo show open last year at Hastings Contemporary.
To quote from Hastings Contemporary, “For Earthly Delites, Ryan created a new installation occupying the entirety of Hasting Contemporary’s main ground floor gallery space. Taking inspiration from Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden Of Earthly Delights, Ryanhas curated a ‘pleasure garden’ of work assembled from throughout her career that will invite visitors to wander around and get lost in her work.”
Ryan is renowned for her ‘cutouts’ – virbant, three-dimensional paintings made from card, collage, canvas, ceramic and metal. Many of her cutouts focus on the physicality of the human form – often depicting groups of figures dancing, posing, swimming, frolicking in the woods, even cutting loose in a mosh pit – and are inspired as much by scenes found in nightclubs and cinema as by classical painting and sculpture.
The guest for this episode is Matthew Burrows MBE. Matthew will be talking to our HE students about his work. Matthew has run several artist support initiatives over the years including an artist mentor scheme.
The guest for this first episode is Susie Olczak, renowned artist and educator who has been commissioned for numerous public sculpture projects. Susie also provides exciting and engaging workshops on utilising materials around the house to create sophisticated sculptures and prints with minimal means.