Frieze Masters Podcast
‘You have an idea and it goes off in another direction and you either pull it back or you go on the journey. I knew I wanted to make some portraits, but I also knew I didn't want to. I wanted to create some tension.’ – Barbara Walker In the second episode of the Frieze Masters Podcast, artists Barbara Walker and Ming Smith, and writer and curator Lou Stoppard discuss the evolution of portraiture and ask how it can better reflect and build community. Barbara Walker is a British artist whose work interrogates power, identity and the visibility of Black experience; Ming Smith...
info_outline Episode 1: Good Governance | Chris Bryant MP, Jeremy Deller and Victoria SiddallFrieze Masters Podcast
‘What do we want the UK to look like in 10 years, 20 years, 50 years in terms of culture?’ – Victoria Siddall The first episode of the 2024 Frieze Masters Podcast brings together Sir Chris Bryant MP, artist Jeremy Deller and new director of the National Portrait Gallery Victoria Siddall to talk about ‘Good Governance’. How can everyone in the UK access art? And what role should government play in the country’s creative education? Chris Bryant is the recently appointed as Minister of State at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Department for Culture, Media...
info_outline Episode Eight: On Context | Gilbert & George & Dr Nicholas CullinanFrieze Masters Podcast
‘Sex, death, race and religion’ – these are the topics that the London-based artists Gilbert and George announced they wanted to cover in this talk with Dr Nicholas Cullinan of the National Portrait Gallery. On Context offers insights into the artist’s relationship to concepts: from sculpture to the city, ‘picture making’ to posterity. Gilbert and George resist many of the contexts and interpretations projected onto their practice: trying to keep their work as accessible and open as possible, reflecting their self-proclaimed belief in ‘art for all’. 'We like to let the...
info_outline Episode Seven: On Interiors | Mandy El-Sayegh, Flavia Frigeri & Valerie Cassel OliverFrieze Masters Podcast
The London home of Galerie Thaddeus Ropac is a traditional eighteenth-century Mayfair townhouse, once home to the Bishop of Ely. But for artist Mandy El-Sayegh’s 2023 exhibition ‘Interiors’, its spaces were transformed into a riot of colour and pattern across paintings, textiles and furniture. In On Interiors, El-Sayegh talks to Dr Flavia Frigeri of the National Portrait Gallery, and Valerie Cassel Oliver of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, who is also the curator of the 2023 Spotlight section at Frieze Masters, about the relationship between inner and outer space: the space of the...
info_outline Episode Six: On Space | Rachel Whiteread & Briony FerFrieze Masters Podcast
The year 1993 marked a watershed for the famous Turner Prize, when it was awarded for the first time to a woman. That artist was Rachel Whiteread and the work was House in East London. In On Space, Whiteread is in conversation with the art historian Briony Fer. Together, they discuss the urges and concerns that underpin Whiteread’s work, from seminal works of the 1990s to her more recent projects, such as the site-specific commission unveiled in the summer of 2023 at Palazzo della Ragione in Bergamo, Italy, which responds to the experience and legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic. ...
info_outline Episode Five: On Power | Thomas J Price & Dr Gus Casely-HayfordFrieze Masters Podcast
In On Power, London-based multidisciplinary artist Thomas J Price is in conversation with Dr Gus Casely-Hayford, the inaugural Director of V&A East. Together, they reflect on how monuments created for the public realm are not just aesthetic objects but artefacts often bound up in values, ideologies and power systems. Price, in his words, wants to convey ‘the sense of another person’ and has spent the past two decades creating large-scale figurative sculptures of everyday, unidentified Black individuals, often located in public spaces: such as the commission honouring the Windrush...
info_outline Episode Four: On Studios | Arlene Shechet & Sheena WagstaffFrieze Masters Podcast
In 2023, Frieze Masters fair sought to break the artist’s studio open to a new audience with a new section, Studio, curated by Sheena Wagstaff – the former Chairman of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Met and now Met’s Chair Emerita. In On Studios, Wagstaff talks with one of the Studio artists, Arlene Shechet, exploring how central the place and space of making is to her work, as well as its significance in the realm of creativity. 'It’s not a genius move, it’s just hard work. It just means that you know that you want something more, you know that you want...
info_outline Episode Three: On Photography | Tim Walker & Jerry StaffordFrieze Masters Podcast
On Photography asks what it means today for an artist to work with a living, breathing icon, like the actress Tilda Swinton. Tim Walker, the noted artist and photographer, is joined by his long-time collaborator, stylist Jerry Stafford, to talk about their work together with Tilda Swinton. Dr Nicholas Cullinan, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, moderates the conversation. 'When I’m scared of something or someone, that scare turns into being photogenic. […] The situation becomes very heightened and I become very alert and I then I think I make better work.' – Tim Walker...
info_outline Episode Two: On Display | Shirin Neshat, Jamie Fobert, Dr Nicholas CullinanFrieze Masters Podcast
In On Display, artist Shirin Neshat is in conversation with Jamie Fobert, the architect of London’s newly reopened National Portrait Gallery, and its Director, Dr Nicholas Cullinan, moderated by Tim Marlow, Director of the Design Museum. Neshat reflects on her 2018 portrait of Nobel Peace Prize awardee Malala Yousafzai that was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery. The conversation explores the history of this much-loved institution and how its contemporary meaning is shaped through its program, its work with artists like Neshat, and in the very fabric of its building. 'I think...
info_outline Episode One: On Rebellion | Maggi Hambling & Sarah LucasFrieze Masters Podcast
In 2005, British artists Maggi Hambling and Sarah Lucas met at the historic Colony Room Club in London’s Soho. There, they discovered that they shared the same irreverent and unapologetic attitude – and even the same birthday. In On Rebellion, chaired by Louisa Buck, these two British artists discuss their influences, their reactions to rules and expectations, facing up to mortality and being each other’s muse. 'I think great art creates somewhere where life and death cohabit, where life and death come together' – Maggi Hambling Maggi Hambling is a British painter and...
info_outlineFrieze Masters presents this conversation with Kamala Ibrahim Ishag and Hans Ulrich Obrist in partnership with the Serpentine (@serpentineuk). To celebrate the opening of her solo exhibition at Serpentine, Ishag returns to the RCA where she studied in the 1960s. She discusses her background, her relationship with nature and the influence of the Sudanese Zār cult on her work.
"If people are really genuine with their plants and they respect their plants, they should talk to them as human, as a source of creation from God. Humans and plants, we are all the same." – Kamala Ibrahim Ishag
Kamala Ibrahim Ishag was amongst the first women artists to graduate from the College of Fine and Applied Art in Khartoum in 1963, which she followed with studies in Mural Painting at the RCA in London between 1964 and 1966 and Lithography, Typography and Illustration from 1968-9. Her work bridges the earthly and spiritual through an understanding of our connections with the natural world. Hans Ulrich Obrist (@hansulrichobrist) is Artistic Director at Serpentine
Find images of artwork discussed here.
About the Frieze Masters Podcast
Exploring themes of identity, originality, geopolitics and Blackness through a historical lens, the new Frieze Masters Podcast is now available. Bringing together some of today’s most celebrated artists, art historians and curators, the podcast launches with the Talks programme from the 2022 edition of Frieze Masters – one of the world’s leading art fairs – and offers compelling insight into the influence of historical art on contemporary perspectives and creativity.