Art Guide Australia Podcast

Since embarking on a creative path only a mere 15 years ago, Yolŋu artist Gunybi Ganambarr has been continuously praised for his weaving of Indigenous forms and traditional stories with a contemporary sensibility. He has been called a “revolutionary”, “genius” and “an innovator”, and has accumulated many accolades, including the 2018 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA).

But as Ganambarr explains in the podcast conversation, visual art was not the first form he gravitated towards. His foremost creative experience started as a didgeridoo player, which allowed him to travel nationally and internationally. Prior to becoming an artist, Ganambarr also spent 12 years as a builder, and he credits this experience with familiarising himself with the tools and materials that would later find their way into his creative practice.

Gunybi discusses his 'pre-art' life, the experience of winning the 2018 NATSIAA, and the advice he has for younger artists.

See more at Art Guide online: https://artguide.com.au/podcast-gunybi-ganambarr-on-creating-building-and-etching.

This podcast has been produced in partnership with the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in recognition of the annual Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards.

The Interview with Gunybi Ganambarr was produced and hosted by Tiarney Miekus. Episode mix by Mino Peric and soundtrack by Jessie Warren.

When Luke Scholes talks about being a curator, he turns toward the origins of his role: he discusses how curating means to be ‘a carer of things’. For Scholes, this largely involves caring for art collections, through his role as Curator of Aboriginal Art at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT).

In this podcast Scholes unpacks his curatorial work, revealing how his position falls across three broad areas: facilitating the annual National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Awards, curating exhibitions, and maintaining and developing MAGNT’s Aboriginal art collection. It’s this third responsibility that Scholes particularly delves into. “It’s not just about acquiring more examples, it’s about acquiring the right examples,” he explains. “What a curator should seek to do is develop a really strong and historical record of art movements.”

This podcast has been produced in partnership with the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in recognition of the annual National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards.

See more at Art Guide online: https://artguide.com.au/podcast-luke-scholes-on-curating-caring-and-collaborating

Podcast produced by Tiarney Miekus. Engineered Mino Peric.

Glenn Iseger-Pilkington likes to joke that he’s an “arts handyman”. Yet the phrase does have merit: he’s an artist and writer and has held various curatorial roles at the South Australian Museum, Western Australian Museum and the Art Gallery of Western Australia. Nowadays, he’s the lead consultant at Gee Consultancy, where he works with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and arts workers.

In this podcast Glenn, a Yamatji Nyoongar man from Western Australia with Dutch and Scottish migrant history, talks about his curatorial and consultancy roles, discussing how he sees himself less as a voice of authority and more as a conduit. He also talks about the experience of judging the 2018 National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards and, finally, tells us what changes he’s noticed in the arts in Australia over the last 15 years — both for better and worse.

See more at Art Guide online: https://artguide.com.au/podcast-glenn-iseger-pilkington-on-being-a-conduit.

This podcast has been produced in partnership with the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in recognition of the annual National Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Art Awards.

Produced by Tiarney Miekus. Engineered by Mino Peric.

“I think the challenge with all of the disparate references is not that it’s difficult for all of them to come together. I think that the challenge is not to make the photograph too derivative of one reference, because then I’m just recreating something that already exists."

Georgina Cue’s large-scale, staged photographs bring together many disparate references ranging from film noir, German Expressionism, femme fatales, graffiti, classical Greek aesthetics and contemporary sportswear. In this podcast Cue unpacks the stories, associations and symbolism behind the imagery, as well as her current show 'Scenes' at Neon Parc.

See more at Art Guide online: www.artguide.com.au/podcasts

Podcast produced by Tiarney Miekus and engineered by Mino Peric.

What does it mean to create and innovate over six decades? Art Guide Australia’s newest podcast series The Long Run considers this question with three artists who have had careers spanning sixty years, each reflecting on their art and lives. What can they teach us about the life-stages of an artist?

In the second episode we speak with landscape painter Wendy Stavrianos. Working from regional Victoria, Stavrianos is known for her densely layered landscape paintings and use of line in painting, creating works that evoke different environments in ways that are beautiful, psychological and mysterious. From her early work in the 1960s, to her well-known Rape of a Northern Land series painted in Darwin in the 1970s, and her recent large-scale paintings, Stavrianos is integral to understanding landscape painting in Australia.

In this episode Stavrianos talks about her childhood and youth, and how this set the scene for her to become an artist. She also discusses the gender barriers she encountered as a female painter, how she came to landscape painting, her incredible empathy with the environment and nature, and how mortality and mystery infiltrate her work.

The conversation is an interesting accompaniment to our first episode of The Long Run, where avant-garde painter Gareth Sansom talks about the mechanics and chance of making art, and his feelings on mortality and time.

This series is kindly sponsored by Leonard Joel Auctioneers and Valuers, based in Melbourne and Sydney.

Produced and presented by Tiarney Miekus, music and engineering by Mino Peric.

Wendy Stavrianos is represented by Nicholas Thompson Gallery, Melbourne