“If you can get through the conventional way of relating, then often you find that there are these meeting points of understanding,” says Vivienne Binns in our latest episode of The Long Run series featuring conversations with artists who have 60-year practices. A pioneer in feminist and community driven art, Binns has been at the forefront of critically engaged, feminist art from the 1960s onward. While painting is her central practice, she has also worked across printmaking, performance, sculpture and drawing. It is no understatement to say that her art and activism has changed the Australian contemporary art landscape. Binns largely grew up in Sydney and in the 1950s attended the National Art School. She became known in the 1960s for her solo show at Watters Gallery where she exhibited paintings on female sexuality and genitals. As history writes it, these images caused a controversy. From here Binns co-founded the Sydney Chapter of the Women’s Art Movement in 1974, which was integral in supporting women artists, and has spent decades involved in many community art projects, as well as continuing her own painting practice. Alongside exhibiting at national and international institutions, as an educator Binns has been integral in mentoring generations of artists, and in 2021 was the recipient of the Australia Council Award for Visual Arts.Binns talks about her childhood, and in particular her mother and the importance of women’s domestic work, as well as her time at art school. We also talk about Vivienne’s long-standing inquiry into what art really is, and how this links to her own thoughts about womanhood and sexuality.This series is kindly sponsored by Leonard Joel Auctioneers and Valuers, based in Melbourne and Sydney.Produced and presented by Tiarney Miekus, engineering by Patrick Telfer, and music by Mino Peric.

Art Guide Australia Podcast

The Long Run #8: Vivienne Binns on what art really is

Although Stelarc is just shy of the 60 year mark—The Long Run podcast is centred on speaking with artists who have 60 year careers—his performances and installations, and the centrality of the body in his art, get to very meaningful ideas about life and technology.Whether placing an artwork in his stomach, actualising a body with a third hand, giving his agency over to performance viewers, and rather famously growing an extra ear on his arm, Stelarc has gone to true extremes. The way he challenges himself through his art sets down a challenge to his viewers.Through this practice, Stelarc has problematised the limits and capabilities of the human body. As he says, “Walking with six legs on a robot. Being algorithmically actuated by a full body exoskeleton. So, all of these experiences have been about exploring these alternate anatomies.”Born in Cyprus, Stelarc’s family moved to Australia when he was four years old. He studied art in Melbourne, and soon after lived in Japan for almost two decades in the 70s and 80s. He first became well known for his early suspension performances where he’d hang naked, suspended by hooks into his skin, whether in the gallery or in a public setting.In investigating the human body, his later performances are often entwined with technology—and have seen him perform nationally and internationally amongst myriad galleries and institutions.Stelarc is incredibly interesting to speak with, and we talk about his suspension performances and some more recent technology-based performances. We also discuss what Stelarc means when he says the human body is obsolete, as well as questions of agency and death, and the ways in which Stelarc has used his body in his art for almost 60 years.His work is showing for RMIT Gallery’s FutureU exhibition, which is currently closed due to lockdown restrictions.Future URMIT Gallery29 July – 23 OctoberThis series is kindly sponsored by Leonard Joel Auctioneers and Valuers, based in Melbourne and Sydney.Produced and presented by Tiarney Miekus, engineering by Patrick Telfer, and music by Mino Peric.

The Long Run #7: Stelarc on what the body can do

“Black and white photography has always been my…I suppose it’s just kind of my life,” says Mervyn Bishop on his 60-year photography practice. Bishop is a Murri man and is Australia’s first Aboriginal photojournalist and documentary photographer. In the early 1960s, when he was just 17, he began a four-year cadetship with The Sydney Morning Herald. Later in the 1970s Bishop took a government position as a photographer for the Department of Aboriginal Affairs. It was during this time he took one of his most iconic images of prime minister Gough Whitlam and Aboriginal rights activist Vincent Lingiari. The first solo exhibition of Bishop’s images came about in 1991 and was curated by artist Tracey Moffatt, and he currently has a major survey Mervyn Bishop: The Exhibition at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Bishop began taking photos when he was young, and we talk about the influence of his mother in steering him toward photography, as well as the years at The Sydney Morning Herald. We also discuss the stories behind some of his most iconic images, and the emotional aspects of his work. And as a photographer who’s known for capturing incredibly empathic moments, we talk about how Bishop gets photography to such an intimate place. This episode of The Long Run is part of an ongoing podcast series, and you can listen back to previous episodes with Suzanne Archer, Robert Owen, Gareth Sansom, Wendy Stavrianos and John Wolseley. You can also subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, so you never miss an episode. And don’t forget to rate and follow the podcast. Mervyn Bishop: The ExhibitionNational Film and Sound Archive of AustraliaUntil 1 AugustThis series is kindly sponsored by Leonard Joel Auctioneers and Valuers, based in Melbourne and Sydney.Produced and presented by Tiarney Miekus, engineering by Patrick Telfer, and music by Mino Peric.

The Long Run #6: Mervyn Bishop on a life of photography

“I guess that is the thread, that I am very open to influences that come into my life, you know, and I respond to them,” says Suzanne Archer in The Long Run, Art Guide’s latest podcast series featuring interviews with artists who have 60-year practices.Based just outside of Sydney in the bushy suburb of Wedderburn, Archer has long-created layered and dense drawings and paintings, alongside sculpture and installations. With a practice always slightly edging on the mysterious, Archer’s work looks at nature, mortality, disgust and decay. Born in Surrey in the United Kingdom, Archer moved to Australia in 1965 and has since gone on to win numerous awards including the Wynne and Dobell Prizes.In a very open conversation, Archer talks about how her immediate environment in Wedderburn pervades her art practice, from conscious to unconscious levels. She further discusses her first exhibition and what she feels about the idea of being called a ‘female painter’, as well as taking about having children and an art practice. Finally, Archer tells us how mortality plays out in her work, her decision to break from traditional portraiture, and what it was like for her to recently reflect on a career of 60 years.This episode of The Long Run is an ongoing podcast series, and you can listen back to previous episodes with Robert Owen, Gareth Sansom, Wendy Stavrianos and John Wolseley. You can also subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, so you never miss an episode.Suzanne Archer is represented by Nicholas Thompson Gallery in Melbourne.This series is kindly sponsored by Leonard Joel Auctioneers and Valuers, based in Melbourne and Sydney.Produced and presented by Tiarney Miekus, engineering by Patrick Telfer, and music by Mino Peric.

The Long Run #5: Suzanne Archer on responding to life

“Art is this amazing subject,” says Robert Owen. “It comes from different people and it contributes to cultural identity in a way that can question ourselves…"In this fourth episode of The Long Run, our podcast series talking to artists who’ve had careers spanning 60 years, Owen talks about what it means to create over six decades, and what he feels is the truth of his art: a sense of oneness.Now based in Melbourne, Owen has led an incredible life of creating, working across painting, sculpture, photography, installation, and public art. While his works are cemented in geometry and abstraction, they quite stunningly bring together a range of references from philosophy, poetry, music, literature, art history, mathematics and science.In this podcast Owen’s talks through his early practice and his ideas on art. He discusses his love of a certain shade of blue, memories of his childhood in Wagga Wagga, and the uncertainty he felt as a young artist. Owen also mentions the four years he spent on the Greek island of Hydra from 1963, living and working alongside well-known creatives like Leonard Cohen, and his time in Britain in the late 1960s working under constructionist painters.Finally, Owen tells us about the spiritual elements of abstraction, his reflections on a practice of 60 years, and his current survey show, Blue Over Time at the Heide Museum of Modern Art.The Long Run is an ongoing podcast series, and you can listen back to previous episodes with Gareth Sansom, Wendy Stavrianos and John Wolseley.Blue Over Time: Robert Owen—A SurveyRobert OwenHeide Museum of Modern Art Until 23 MayThis series is kindly sponsored by Leonard Joel Auctioneers and Valuers, based in Melbourne and Sydney.Produced and presented by Tiarney Miekus, engineering by Patrick Telfer, and music by Mino Peric.

The Long Run #4: Robert Owen on colour and oneness

What does it mean to do feminism rather than be a feminist? In the third and final episode of our FEM-aFFINITY podcast, feminist critic and art historian Anne Marsh explains the idea of doing feminism in Australian contemporary art, from the 1970s to now. For over four decades Marsh has been researching and writing at the cross-sections of feminism and contemporary art. As a leading academic in this field, she’s currently undertaking an expansive research project titled Doing Feminism which, consisting of events, residencies and a soon-to-published book, looks at women, feminism and art in Australia since 1970.In a very insightful conversation Marsh discusses feminism in the arts from the 1970s to now, and reflects on how female, marginalised and neurotypical artists can also be activists. Marsh further talks about why artists with a disability have been on the periphery on the art world, and how the Western art canon can be expanded to include the true diversity of 20th and 21st century art making. This podcast takes its name from an exhibition with the same title: FEM-aFFINITY is also a collaborative, female-led show that first began in 2019. It features a series of collaborations between seven female artists who practice from Melbourne’s Arts Project Australia, a studio and gallery for artists with an intellectual disability, and seven female contemporary artists.FEM-aFFINITY is a nationally touring exhibition and will soon show at Riddoch Art Gallery at Mount Gambier in South Australia. Exhibiting artists include: Bronwyn Hack, Cathy Staughton, Dorothy Berry, Eden Menta, Fulli Andrinopoulos, Heather Shimmen, Helga Groves, Jane Trengove, Janelle Low, Jill Orr, Lisa Reid, Prudence Flint, Wendy Dawson and Yvette Coppersmith.FEM-aFFINITYRiddoch Art Gallery22 May—4 JulyBenalla Art Gallery6 August—17 OctoberThis series is kindly sponsored by NETS Victoria who are nationally touring FEM-aFFINITY, assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.Produced and presented by Tiarney Miekus. Engineered by Patrick Telfer. Music by Mino Peric.

FEM-aFFINITY #3: Anne Marsh on doing feminism

What does it mean to create art between two cultures? What relationships are formed when artists collaborate? What are the links between feminism, contemporary art and disability? These questions, and more, are explored in the second episode of our newest podcast series FEM-aFFINITY, featuring a very honest and intimate conversation with photographer Janelle Low. This podcast takes its name from an exhibition with the same title: FEM-aFFINITY is also a collaborative, female-led show that first began in 2019. It features a series of collaborations between seven female artists who practice from Melbourne’s Arts Project Australia, a studio and gallery for artists with an intellectual disability, and seven female contemporary artists.Low is one of the exhibiting artists in FEM-aFFINITY who collaborated with Arts Project artist Eden Menta, producing a series of vivid and poignant photographs. Low talks about this collaboration—the friendship, humour and life experiences that gave it strength—while also discussing her upbringing and art world experiences, and being the youngest person (and second female) to win the National Photographic Portrait Prize in 2013. Low is of Peranakan/Teochew heritage, and both of her parents migrated from Singapore. Low discusses how her work explores a sense of otherness between her cultural heritage and Western upbringing, and she further talks about navigating the art world as a person of colour, and why institutions need to curate diverse exhibitions with genuineness. FEM-aFFINITY is a nationally touring exhibition and is currently showing at Melbourne’s Bunjil Place Gallery. Exhibiting artists include; Bronwyn Hack, Cathy Staughton, Dorothy Berry, Eden Menta, Fulli Andrinopoulos, Heather Shimmen, Helga Groves, Jane Trengove, Janelle Low, Jill Orr, Lisa Reid, Prudence Flint, Wendy Dawson and Yvette Coppersmith.FEM-aFFINITYBunjil Place Gallery30 January—14 MarchRiddoch Art Gallery22 May—4 JulyBenalla Art Gallery6 August—17 OctoberThis series is kindly sponsored by NETS Victoria who are nationally touring FEM-aFFINITY, assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.Produced and presented by Tiarney Miekus. Engineered by Patrick Telfer. Music by Mino Peric.

FEM-aFFINITY #2: Janelle Low on creative relationships and otherness

What are the links between feminism, contemporary art and disability? FEM-aFFINITY, a new three-part podcast series, delves into this question by focussing on an exhibition of the same title. First exhibited in 2019, FEM-aFFINITY is a collaborative, female-led show. It features a series of collaborations between seven female artists who practice from Melbourne’s Arts Project Australia, a studio and gallery for artists with an intellectual disability, and seven female contemporary artists.This first episode features artist, curator and academic Catherine Bell who not only curated the exhibition, but made the collaborations happen. Bell talks about the process behind the show, as well as the subjective nature of feminism and what the word means to her. She also discusses how she became familiar with Arts Project Australia, her collaborations with artist Cathy Staughton, and what it means to break down art world structures to give a voice to marginalised artists.FEM-aFFINITY is a nationally touring exhibition, and is currently showing at Melbourne’s Bunjil Place Gallery. Exhibiting artists include; Bronwyn Hack, Cathy Staughton, Dorothy Berry, Eden Menta, Fulli Andrinopoulos, Heather Shimmen, Helga Groves, Jane Trengove, Janelle Low, Jill Orr, Lisa Reid, Prudence Flint, Wendy Dawson and Yvette Coppersmith.FEM-aFFINITYBunjil Place Gallery30 January—14 MarchRiddoch Art Gallery22 May—4 JulyBenalla Art Gallery6 August—17 OctoberThis series is kindly sponsored by NETS Victoria who are nationally touring FEM-aFFINITY, assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.Produced and presented by Tiarney Miekus. Engineered by Patrick Telfer. Music by Mino Peric.

FEM-aFFINITY #1: Catherine Bell on inclusion and collaboration

For over 60 years John Wolseley has been visiting, capturing and sharing his experience of landscapes. But what does it mean to create and innovate over six decades? And what can Wolseley teach us about the life-stages of an artist? Art Guide Australia’s newest podcast series The Long Run considers this question with artists who have had careers spanning 60 years, each reflecting on their art and lives. In this third episode Wolseley, one of Australia’s most well-known landscape painters and printmakers, speaks to us from his home in regional Victoria. Moving to Australia from England in 1976, he’s known for immersing himself in an environment before painting it, capturing landscapes ranging from the mountains in Tasmania, to wetlands and rivers, to the floodplains of Arnhem land. Known as a great storyteller, Wolseley captures worlds that invite engagement with nature and the environment. In this episode Wolseley talks about how he came of age when England was coming out of World War II, and his experience of growing up on a farm and later attending boarding school. The artist also talks about studying under prestigious artists, what it takes for a landscape to capture his attention, and how he balances an environmental awareness in his work without being didactic. And finally, Wolseley tells us what having a 60-year practice feels like, and whether he’s optimistic about the future.If you like this conversation, you can listen to the first episode where avant-garde painter Gareth Sansom talks about chance in making art, and his feelings on mortality and time; and in episode two hear Wendy Stavrianos discuss her experience of being a female landscape painter. 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.John Wolseley is represented Roslyn Oxley9, Sydney and Australian Galleries, Melbourne.

The Long Run #3: John Wolseley on revealing landscapes for 60 years

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

The Long Run #2: Wendy Stavrianos on landscape, nature and gender barriers

Creating, evolving and innovating over decades takes great stamina. Art Guide Australia’s latest podcast series features conversations with three established Australian artists who each reflect on their art and lives. What can they teach us about the life-stages of an artist?Our first episode in The Long Run features a lively conversation with Gareth Sansom. Based in Melbourne, Sansom is regarded as one of Australia’s most well-known and esteemed avant-garde painters. He had his first exhibition in 1959, and since then has gone on to create admired and debated works that look into pop culture, sexual transgression, the unconscious, and the history of painting itself. In works that are simultaneously chaotic and balanced, Sansom layers and blends everything from abstraction to collage to T.S. Eliot to Swedish film.Sansom talks about his talent in drawing, his great sense of ambition, the importance of chance in painting, his thoughts on death, and what changes he’s noticed over a 60-year practice and what remains the same. Sansom’s latest exhibition A Case of the Old and the New is currently showing online with STATION gallery.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. 

The Long Run #1: Gareth Sansom on painting, chance and mortality

I would ask you the question, does it help to feel scared?” wonders Lucy McRae.  How do you think about the future at a time when the future feels so uncertain? In this third edition of Faraway, so close—a podcast dedicated to considering the anxieties and opportunities emerging in the arts in our new COVID-19 world—artists Cyrus Tang and Lucy McRae give their thoughts and feelings on where we are now, and where we’re headed next.While Cyrus talks about loss and transformation, sitting with anxiety, and her experience of migrating from Hong Kong over 15 years ago, Lucy discusses what it’s like in Los Angeles, the importance of resilience and optimism, the fallibility of human bodies, and the future of art, biology and technology in our ‘new normal’.  As Lucy sums up, “There’s a potential revolution rendering in the background, and the opportunity that comes out of hitting rock bottom, despite the discomfort and the suffering, is a really great to create change and transformation.”You can subscribe to the Art Guide podcast on iTunes or Spotify, and listen back to the first episode of Faraway, so close with artist Yvette Coppersmith and curator/director Alexie Glass-Kantor on solitude, and episode two with artists Tai Snaith and Ross Coulter on creating and parenting. 

Faraway, so close #3: The future with Cyrus Tang and Lucy McRae

Raising children, having an art practice and making it through isolation—how do you do it in a way that works for everyone in the family? In this second edition of Faraway, so close—a podcast dedicated to considering the anxieties and opportunities emerging in the arts in our new COVID-19 world—we’re considering what parenting and creating looks like during isolation with artists Tai Snaith and Ross Coulter. While schools have gradually started reopening this week, the pair talk through how they make life work at a day-to-day level, looking after young children while working, the stress they’re feeling right now and how they’re coping, and the ways in which, rather than keeping a strict divide between art and family, they’re bringing art into their family life, and expanding the idea of art altogether. As Snaith says, “... it sort of made me think, ‘Maybe what I do is something I can share with the kids and we can make that part of the school thing’. So I was starting to feel a bit like, how do I juggle all of these things and have my practice and have the kids at home. And I think I just went through a phase of thinking, ‘Okay, I’ve got to try and combine them somehow’”. Produced and presented by Tiarney Miekus. Music and engineering by Mino Peric.

Faraway, so close #2: Parenting and creating with Tai Snaith and Ross Coulter

What does it mean to be in isolation, but in isolation together? In this first edition of our new podcast series Faraway, so close, we take a personal look at solitude, creativity and the arts under COVID-19, talking with Archibald-winning artist Yvette Coppersmith and executive director of Artspace, Alexie Glass-Kantor. “We’re just going to have to be more accountable, more present, more determined, to be open to creating space for complexity, contradiction and difference, and for supporting communities who are most affected and most vulnerable to the turbulences of the moment we find ourselves in…” says Alexie Glass-Kantor when thinking of creative life beyond COVID-19.

Faraway, so close #1: Solitude with Yvette Coppersmith and Alexie Glass-Kantor

“In some ways I don’t think of my life and art as separate things, I think it’s one in the same thing,” says artist Louise Weaver when speaking of her creative pursuits. “I don’t see it as a career as much as something that is an extension of my life and would go on regardless of whether I had opportunities to exhibit or not.”With a practice spanning three decades and multiple mediums, Weaver has continuously worked both within and beyond a variety of juxtapositions: nature and culture, metamorphosis and concealment, reality and unreality, and the beautiful and the uncanny. Becoming well-known in the 90s for her crotchet animal forms, over time Weaver has created a vast array of painting, installation and sculptural works, threading interests in mythology, shamanism, the fantastic, the domestic, high fashion, art history and ecological awareness.Weaver discusses these elements in the podcast interview, and further builds upon an earlier conversation published in Art Guide’s January/February 2020 issue, which can now be found online.In particular Weaver talks through her major survey exhibition 'Between appearances: the Art of Louise Weaver', showing at Buxton Contemporary, and filters through the ideas and associations that inform her tactile works. She also discusses the dream-like qualities found in her work, her studio process, how she gets beyond self-doubt, questions of gender and creativity, and what she means when she says creating art is how she relates to the world.See more at Art Guide online: www.artguide.com.au/podcastPodcast produced by Tiarney Miekus. Engineered by Mino Peric. Music by Jesse L. Warren.

Interview: Louise Weaver on creating as relating to the world

Art Guide Australia is a print and online publication exploring contemporary Australian art.

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Art Guide Australia Podcast

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