Talk Art

We meet legendary poet Joelle Taylor.

Joelle Taylor is the author of 4 collections of poetry. Her most recent collection C+NTO & Othered Poems won the 2021 T.S Eliot Prize, and the 2022 Polari Book Prize for LGBT authors. C+NTO is currently being adapted for theatre with a view to touring. She is a co- curator and host of Out-Spoken Live at the Southbank Centre, and tours her work nationally and internationally in a diverse range of venues, from Australia to Brazil. She is also a Poetry Fellow of University of East Anglia and the curator of the Koestler Awards 2023.

She has judged several poetry and literary prizes including Jerwood Fellowship, the Forward Prize, and the Ondaatje Prize. Her novel of interconnecting stories The Night Alphabet will be published by Riverrun in Spring of 2024. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the 2022 Saboteur Spoken Word Artist of the Year. Her most recent acting role was in Blue by Derek Jarman, which was directed by Neil Bartlett and featured Russell Tovey, Jay Bernard, and Travis Alabanza. Blue sold out its run across the UK and more dates are expected for the future.

WeTransfer x TalkArt special episode! We meet photographer Robin de Puy.

This episode is brought to you by our friends at WePresent, the Academy Award winning

arts platform of WeTransfer. Collaborating with emerging young talent to renowned artists

such as Marina Abramović, Riz Ahmed and Talk Art's own Russell Tovey, WePresent

showcases the best in art, photography, film, music, literature and more, championing

diversity in everything it does.

In this episode we'll be speaking to acclaimed photographer Robin de Puy about her new

project AMERICAN, a collaboration with WePresent, which is an unflinching portrait of a

divided nation. AMERICAN shares Robin's unique perspective on the often-overlooked

faces that represent the country's incredible diversity and complexity, and poses the

question: What does it mean to be American?

It's MIAMI art fair week - we are ready for Art Basel, Untitled, NADA and more! We meet legendary art collecting family THE RUBELL'S!!!! Mera, Don and Jason!!!

Don and Mera Rubell started collecting in 1965 while living in New York, acquiring their first work after a studio visit and paying on a modest weekly installment plan. The Rubells grew their collection by looking at art, talking with artists, and trusting their instincts. Their son, Jason Rubell, joined them in 1982 in building the collection, extending the multigenerational family passion for discovering, engaging, and supporting many of today’s most compelling artists. The Rubells moved to Miami in 1992, and together with Jason and their daughter, Jennifer, began developing hotels and an art foundation and museum to house and publicly exhibit their expanding art collection.

Since the Rubells’ first acquisition, they’ve amassed one of the most significant and far-ranging collections of contemporary art in the world, encompassing over 7,700 works by more than 1,000 artists—and still growing. The collection is further distinguished by the diversity and geographic distribution of artists represented within it, and the depth of its holdings of works by seminal artists.

The Rubells are drawn to emerging and underrecognized artists. They were among the first to acquire work by now-renowned contemporary artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cecily Brown, Keith Haring, Rashid Johnson, Hayv Kahraman, Jeff Koons, William Kentridge, Yoshitomo Nara, Cindy Sherman, Yayoi Kusama, Kara Walker, Purvis Young, and Mickalene Thomas, among many others. They continue to vigorously collect by visiting studios, art spaces, fairs, galleries, biennials, and museums, and by talking with artists, curators, and gallerists. If the work grabs them, they dig deeper—conducting intensive research before they welcome it into their collection.

Jason Rubell started collecting contemporary art in 1983 at the age of 14, acquiring the painting Immigrants from then-emerging George Condo via Pat Hearn Gallery. At first supporting his collecting habit by stringing tennis rackets, Jason’s early support of artists grew into a life-defining passion. Jason’s studies at Duke and experience with organizing and touring the exhibition of his collection were instrumental in the Rubell family’s decision to open their collection to the public, ensuring it would serve as a broader resource for audiences to encounter contemporary art and the ideas it explores. 

In 1993, the Rubells’ passion became their mission when they opened the Rubell Family Collection/Contemporary Art Foundation in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood. The establishment of the RFC pioneered a new model for sharing private collections with the public and spurred the development of Wynwood as one of the leading art and design districts in the U.S. After nearly 30 years, the collection relocated to the Allapattah neighborhood in December 2019 and was renamed the Rubell Museum to emphasize its public mission and expanded access for audiences. The opening of the Rubell Museum DC in October 2022 further deepened the family’s commitment to sharing their collection as a public resource, providing opportunities for residents and visitors of the nation’s capital to engage with today’s most compelling artists.

We meet our friend, the legendary artist Sir Michael Craig-Martin RA!!! Michael was the first ever Talk Art guest way back in 2018... and now 6 years later we interview him for a second time to explore his Royal Academy of Arts major retrospective. Covering his 60-year career, make sure you visit this powerful, colourful, dynamic exhibition - it will lift your soul! This is your last chance to visit as it's the last two weeks. Visit before it closes on 10th December 2024.

Michael Craig-Martin depicts everyday items with a nuanced simplicity that exposes the tensions between objects and their representation. His work is distinguished by exceptional draftsmanship, vibrant color, and uninflected line; intensely visual, it is rooted in an exploration of the relationships between perception, language, and meaning.

A key figure in British art, Michael Craig-Martin is one of the most influential artists and teachers of his generation. Since coming to prominence in the late 1960s he has moved between sculpture, installation, painting, drawing, prints and digital works, creating a body of work that has fused elements from pop, minimalism and conceptual art.

Craig-Martin transforms the RA's Main Galleries with work from across his career. See his early experimental sculpture and his landmark conceptual work An Oak Tree alongside the large-scale, vivid colour paintings of everyday objects – from corkscrews and umbrellas to laptops and smartphones. Featuring a dramatic site-specific installation, a group of monumental sculptures and new immersive digital work by the artist, this will be the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of Craig-Martin's work ever held in the UK.

We meet Mary Ramsden to discuss her new solo exhibition Desire Line, opening this week at Pilar Corrias, London.

Captivated by the sheer range of ideas and images that a passage of paint can convey, from a tuft of grass to a soaring patch of sky, Ramsden revels in the boundless versatility of her medium. The artist brings a range of references to this new body of work, including English landscape painting, the subtle palette and chromatic intelligence of Les Nabis painters Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, and a keen engagement with poetry and literature. Ramsden’s title, Desire Line, refers to a phenomenon whereby a path emerges through spontaneous and habitual use, whether in a park, pasture or wilderness.

Based in North Yorkshire, many of Ramsden’s recent paintings reflect the textures of the local landscape as well as the qualities of northern light. The artist considers paint earthy, modest and infinitely adaptable, with the capacity to conjure atmospheres, images and metaphors, all within a single set of brushstrokes. Dark oxygen (all works 2024) evokes a moonlit landscape, with patches of cool lilacs and silvery blues and greens. Touches of rust and warm colours mark the edges, while the whole painting seems to be embraced by a quivering penumbra. If Dark oxygen has a wintry chill, a sense of abundant, generative life characterises the surface of My desire is not a thinking. In a haze of peachy orange, as if bathed in the light of a sunrise, sections of paint emerge on the canvas like patches of lichen or moss, sedately moving with their own inner force or rhythm. Both paintings express a distilled and unearthly beauty, reminiscent of a mythical landscape conjured by Gustave Moreau, though fractured and emptied of narrative. At the same time, these are meditations on paint itself; each canvas a multivalent space for Ramsden to revel in the ambiguity and potential of her surfaces.

Fascinated by how Bertolt Brecht would have his characters change costumes to foreground the drama’s illusory nature, Ramsden likewise conceives of different passages of paint as characters that might, with a simple shift of emphasis or the viewer’s perspective, become something new. The same section of a painting might evoke a stony field or a pool of dappled light, a cracked patch of ice or a window at night. Another touchstone for the artist is Robert Motherwell, who, like Ramsden, adapted many of his titles from poetry, and considered abstraction a kind of universal language capable of communicating both powerful emotions and complex thoughts.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a booklet with an essay by novelist and essayist Daisy Hildyard and a poem by Danielle Wilde.

Desire Line runs until 11th January 2025 and is now open at Pilar Corrias, on Savile Row, London. Free entry.