The Gift of Painting–The Dreaming by Emily Kame Kgnwarray: EXHIBITION CHINWAG

Exhibition Chinwag is the original segment of the podcast where Joana invites professionals from other fields to visit and discuss the work of an artist through their solo exhibition. 

Guest: Emily Harding the OG Exhibitionistas co-host!

Surprise Guest: John McDonald, Art Critic.

John's Substack.

The artist: Emily Kam Kgnwarray at Tate Modern until 11 January, curated by Kelli Cole.

What can you paint at the end of your life? How does it change if you come from an Aboriginal culture? + Emily's impressions of the Tate exhibition of the great painter and artist of the Northern Territory!

Check out images referred to in the episode ⁠⁠here⁠⁠.

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Key themes: 

Painting; children in art; painting the body; the representation of the body, Jenny Saville

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hello exhibitionistas. Welcome to another episode of
the podcast with me, your host Joanna Pianevis.
Today we have the OG format of exhibitionistas, so if you're
new here or if you've been distracted, we have segments
now. So we have different types of

(00:21):
episodes in this podcast, but westarted the first season with
one single format that is now called exhibition Chinwag, and
it was a very simple formula that was incredibly satisfying
to record. And apparently you enjoy it as

(00:44):
well, which is me, the dusty specialist inviting a guest who
doesn't work in the industry andwho discusses an exhibition with
me. Emily Harding was my Co host.
She was the non art specialist, the exhibition goer as she
called herself during the whole of the first season.

(01:06):
So today is the OG format. But I would say that today is
the OG of the OG because my guest is precisely the one and
only Emily Harding, back by popular demand.
And this time we visited the exhibition together.

(01:29):
Why visit the exhibition separately?
So now is the time to tell you what exhibition we are going to
talk about. If you haven't read the title of
the episode, it can happen. Sometimes you're playing a
podcast episode, then another one follows and you don't know.
So we are going to talk about Emily came Naray, who is or was

(01:54):
she passed away in 1996 an Aboriginal artists.
And for that reason precisely, Idecided to invite someone from
Down Under. John McDonald, an art critic
from Australia, hopped into the episodes and contributed with
his side of the story. Because I'm I don't know John.

(02:19):
We've never met in person. We've never talked beyond or
before the episode. But I read a text of his on Sup
Snack and it was the first article.
I was investigating this episodeand it was the first article
where I learned something beyondwhat everyone says about Emily

(02:42):
Narre. For example, one of the first
things that John says in his article is that he knows from a
pretty reliable source that the spelling of Emily Came Narre's
name was changed by a linguist against the wishes of Emily Came

(03:04):
Narre. And he makes an interesting
point, which is, Can you imagineif you decided to spell Agnes
Martin by replacing the I with AY?
You would not do that. But because she is from a very
specific community, because she is not white, because she

(03:27):
doesn't have power that was changed against her will.
The idea of this episode is precisely to empower you, my
dear, dear, dear listener, and also ourselves, our
professionals and my guests to enjoy exhibitions regardless of

(03:48):
what we know about the artist, what we know about the
exhibition and also to then re evaluate the experience through
the knowledge acquired across the episode.
The knowledge is not to shatter the first impression, it is just
an additional form of relating to the work, sometimes expanding

(04:13):
the satisfaction and other timesproviding an insight into
certain issues regarding curating for example, or
institutional conditions of programming, for instance.
The more you know, the more you enjoy and also if you lose a

(04:35):
tiny bit of your innocence, I think you acquire something else
which. Is.
The expansion and the solidity of your experience, but it will
always be a personal relation with whatever you know.
In this episode we are really going to be faced with that

(04:56):
reality because the three of us have very different
relationships with this exhibition and with the artists.
So it was really interesting to listen to John and you can also
check his page. He has a really interesting and

(05:17):
very, very thought provoking substack page called.
And I am checking as I'm talkingto you, everything the art world
doesn't want you to know. Another thing I wanted to tell
you is for you artists out there, particularly those who

(05:38):
draw or whose practice is centered around drawing, there
is a really interesting residency.
So this is a shout out to Atuli de Zak, which is in France and
have a call for applications at the moment for a drawing
research residency. So this is really interesting

(05:59):
because in most residencies you are there for three weeks, six
weeks, you have to produce something.
And so this particular residencyis really interesting because
it's a research residency, you do not have to produce anything.
So the dates of the residency are from the 3rd to the 30th of

(06:21):
September 2026. The deadline for applications is
the 12th of December, midnight Central European time.
But beware, the call is open to professional contemporary
artists of all ages, but they have to be based or come from

(06:42):
the Oxytani Pyrene Mediterraneanregion.
So if you subscribe to the newsletter already, you will
have a link for the application there if you want to go straight
to the website. So it's atelier.
So atelier as you spell atelier Plural DES auch ARQUE s.com and

(07:08):
you will have on the residencies, I think the call
for applications. It's the first text that you see
when you click on it. We will be talking about Emily
Kameh Nares work. It's at Tate Modern, curated by
Kelly Cole, and this is an exhibition that travelled from

(07:28):
Australia, from the National Gallery of Australia, and that
exhibition was curated by Kelly Cole, Warramungu and the Richer
Peoples and Hetty Perkins Herente and Kalkadun Peoples.
So the exhibition is open until the 11th of January. 1 of the
things you can do is to watch the podcast instead of listening

(07:52):
to it on Spotify. So Spotify has video.
I always do a video episode thatyou can listen to, so you don't
have to watch it. You can just do the audio
version. You can watch it on YouTube as
well. And another thing you can do is
subscribe to the newsletter because usually I always post

(08:13):
when particularly for exhibitions, Chinwag, I do a
newsletter, but then I post another article only with images
of the artist's work and with the little text accompanying it.
So the last one was about Jenny Savo.
So what I want to say about the work is that it is incredibly

(08:36):
proliferous and it starts with these very dense layers and over
layers of paintbrush dots. She had a very particular way of
working, so she sat on the floorand she would hover over the
canvas that wouldn't be stretched.

(09:00):
So she would just work on the canvas almost as if she was
working on a piece of fabric, a rectangular piece of fabric.
But she was very precise about backgrounds.
Sometimes she asked for the canvas to be prepared beforehand
so that she could paint over it.And there are many, many
variations of this very free useof the brush.

(09:23):
There's a huge phase where therewere these paintings with very
sinuous lines. Then with sinuous lines were
these sorts of underlayers with shapes that could be quite
curved, where you could also seepaw prints, animals, little

(09:46):
lizards, the emus. So the animals that were
important for her culture and that she communicated about.
Then you have other works which are composites or groups of
paintings on the wall as as usual with her work, and they

(10:08):
are quite atmospheric. So they associate these areas of
different colours that are applied with quite a lot of
freedom as always. So there's a lot more that I
could say and that I could describe, but so that, you know,
there is this incredible freedom.
It was always her hand. Her hand guided her, the song

(10:32):
she had in her. The paintings were very much
related to singing and to women ceremonies.
So the way the body was painted,so the body lines were painted
from shoulder to shoulder, thesesort of curved lines that would
accompany the breasts, for example, all of those in some

(10:57):
ways find themselves on the paintings, but they are
completely reinterpreted. So you're not going to find the
same motifs applied to canvases or the canvases seen as bodies.
Actually, when you think about it, there's lines, there's dots,
there's these shapes of colors. So the variation wouldn't seem

(11:21):
to bring as much variety and as much invention as it does.
If it's not the color, it's the shape that's going to bring
something new. So it's quite exciting,
incredibly warm. And when it's not warm, it's

(11:43):
very emotional. So there's something always very
vibrant in the paintings. Some of them are more subdued,
but even those ones which are more in terms of brown, they are
so dense. There's a density, there's an
energy that is contained or released in the paintings.
It's a very, very peculiar exhibition to be experienced, to

(12:06):
be in front of her work and to stay with it.
It, it was really an intriguing and thought provoking and
challenging in some ways experience to them.
Think about the exhibition. Experiencing the exhibition was
marvelous. And then of course thinking

(12:28):
about all the intricacies and the complexities of what it
means to bring a culture onto the contemporary Art Museum.
That's a whole other can of worms, if I may say so myself.
I hope wherever you are that youexperience the exhibition
vicariously through US and if you have the opportunity to come

(12:53):
to London or to see Emily Kamenaray's work in any other
way, I hope you take that opportunity, seize it, because
as far as I'm concerned, it is completely worthwhile.
Now on with the episode. Thank you for sticking around
and thank you for being a faithful listener and welcome if

(13:16):
you are new here. Hello and welcome to Exhibition
Chinwag, which is a segment thatemulates the first season of the
podcast, where Emily Harding andmyself had really wonderful
chats about solo exhibitions. And that's exactly what's going
on today. And precisely with that person.

(13:37):
Emily is back. It's so good to be back.
I'm great. Thank you.
It was, it was so nice to, you know, be back in the habit of
seeing a big show like this. And this is like, since doing
the podcast more regularly, I feel like there has been sort of
a missing link in my life in terms of, you know, seeing art.

(13:59):
So I've obviously seen bits and pieces here and there.
But. But yeah, it was really lovely
to go back and lovely to go withyou, which we didn't normally do
before. So that's shaking things up.
That's it. We completely changed the rules
because why visit exhibition separately?
There's so much to say about artanyway.

(14:20):
We it was a bit naive of me to think that we would exhaust the
conversation right there and then.
Exactly, exactly. You and me both.
Do you know that this segment iscalled Exhibition Chinwag?
And you were the one who introduced me to the word
chinwag, ah? Right.
Nice. Which still feels like something

(14:44):
dirty and sexual to me, but okay, you know, Something you
would have to agree to with yourpartner.
You know what I mean? I'm not, this word does not gel
with me, but I find it so funny.Would it, would it, would it
require a safe word? Something like that I mean.

(15:04):
That, that's my feeling. Yeah, yeah, that's funny.
Good old chin wag. Good old ladder, as they say
here. It's so good to have you back.
So the exhibition we're going totalk about is Emily Kame Nares
exhibition at Tate Modern. Naray is Aboriginal artist who

(15:25):
passed away in 1996. So she is a 20th century artist
and we thought we could use a little bit of a perspective from
down under. So John McDonald and our critic
from Australia, from Sydney is going to join us later because
we felt that and you're going tounderstand why that we could use

(15:47):
an input from someone who's overthere.
I think I wanted to also kind ofgive everyone who's listening a
heads up. We are going to be very
approximative with the philosophies behind the
paintings because it's such a huge tradition.
It's a different language and I think they did that really well

(16:07):
in the exhibition where we are confronted with a lot of words
that we don't know how to pronounce.
And that was done on purpose. And it's a way of thinking and
living the the land that we can only kind of try to approach.
So I thought of looking at the map of Aboriginal Australia
first, because I think that's one of the things that I looked

(16:30):
for first to kind of have a sense of how many peoples were
there, how were the First Nations distributed.
And so I put it in our document that.
Can you see it? Yeah, yeah.
So it is quite different than the Australia map that we were
used to seeing. It is a phenomenal number of of

(16:51):
different regions and areas thatrepresent different peoples.
And the way that it kind of cutsacross the continent of
Australia is, yeah, is very different than the way you'd
normally see it. But also very representative of
her work because she has lots ofthat section, big sections that
represent different pieces of land and, you know, kind of how

(17:15):
different parts of the land joinup to one another.
It felt a little bit resent, representative of of some of the
work that she's doing. Yeah, I'm, I'm really astonished
with the number of peoples. So it looks like a quilt with
very small bits that kind of make up the whole fabric of it.

(17:36):
And so you have an incredible number of peoples and you have
all these little colors. It's very colorful.
And you have all these names of communities that lived in
specific areas of the whole continent.
I was really taken by this map because I thought I don't know a
single word in here. And just to situate you, so

(17:58):
Emily become a Naray is from theNT but not the bit that goes up
to Darwin and then the the coast.
She's more from the inland. So the Sandover area of the NT
specifically Alalkiray in the Sandover area of the NT and she

(18:18):
was born around 1910. We don't have a specific date.
She then lived in a place calledUtopia in the NT and she passed
away in Alice Springs, which is probably the biggest city in
that area, on the 3rd of September of 1996.
But there's also something that is really important to her, and

(18:40):
that's why I wanted to have a look at the map, is that she is
also part of the Anmatiere Central Desert Region language
group. One of the things that also
defines a community is the language they speak.
So this language goes across those different borders that you
see in in that Aboriginal map ofAustralia.

(19:04):
I clearly saw two very distinct narratives coming up.
So let's let's take the the Tates that there's a video on
the website in the presentation of the exhibition.
There's, you know, Tates that always does these short films.
And so the Tate film starts witha voice.

(19:25):
We presume it's Emily talking about her way of life.
And so she says that they lived behind wind breaks.
Sometimes in caves they would make shelters with grass many
years ago. So you have these views of the
landscape. So the landscape of the NT is
very orange, very dry with it's the Bush.

(19:46):
You know, it really is kind of very specific landscape.
And this is in the olden times. So the idea of the olden times
is presented and at 2nd 27, so this is a a 7.27 minute video,
you know, pops up this archival footage and this voice, this
television voice saying Nara's work has broken record prices.

(20:10):
Her work has, and, I quote, become too costly for even big
public galleries to acquire these days.
Pyongyang was around 80 years old when she first put brush to.
Canvas. She moved on an isolated central
Australian. Community history of enormous

(20:32):
distinction while the world's major artists Emily norwari.
So it's immediately the greatness, 2.1 million history
and that shoe. Just like the highest amount of
woman has ever been paid for a piece of art.
Is that right? Something like that.
Well, no, because in auction sales you're not paid.

(20:52):
That's sales between owners of work.
So if, if, if it had been through her gallery, then she
would have seen the money. But if it's in an auction sale,
then it's a sort of a, you know,it's the speculative side of the
market. Another thing that is said quite
quickly is that she started painting at age 80.

(21:14):
So she became a full blown artist when most people are not
only retired but also kind of, you know, leaving the space for
the juniors, you know. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, they're not. They're not starting their
passion projects typically at AD.
My mom is turning AD in November.

(21:36):
And who knows, I mean, maybe, maybe there's a painter in her
that will blossom from this, but.
I think she's going to stop making installations with old
Cd-roms. Or she could just kind of
continue with her Tuesday card games and, you know, kind of her
normal course of, you know, octogenarian life.

(22:01):
So then you are. So the history then comes up,
obviously. So the name Utopia, we're told,
came from white settlers. It is quite a startling name, I
thought. Wow.
Yeah, it's very specific. It has a very resonant, kind of,
it's a resonant word utopia. And I think especially for that

(22:21):
area, you know, it's like, you know, as you were describing,
like it's a desert. It's harsh, you know, you, you,
you know, you're sleeping behindwind breaks and you know, you
know, it's not an easy life as we would imagine an easy life.
And utopia definitely chimes that, you know, that that
meaning for us of like, oh, withthe easy life, it's beautiful.

(22:43):
So I like, I like the juxtaposition of it.
We learned that that juxtaposition, and I think
that's a great word, came from white settlers.
So what happened is that Aboriginal community settled
there to find work and ended up so this was a pastoral region.
So you had cattle stations that were established by white

(23:06):
settlers and the Aboriginal communities stayed there.
It is said in the video for workand so we learned that nare work
there as a cattle. It is said also camel handler.
I saw that too, actually, yeah. Listen, we don't know, perhaps

(23:29):
even minding the children of white families, We don't quite
know, but it's kind of a hypothetical idea of what she
may have done. And we also learned that she
witnessed the fights for the aboriginal rights to the land.
And then we move on to what was the really pivotal moment in

(23:49):
Naray's life, which was to find out about the batik technique
with the groups, the group of women she was with as part of a
women's education program. And that kind of, as I was
saying to Emily before we started recording, there's a
Portuguese expression. I I have a flea behind my ear.
Which? Means a sort of a nagging

(24:10):
impression of bummer. You need to get some spray for
that girl. So that kind of, I thought,
education program, what does that mean and why we're in the
middle of Utopia 1988, Naray didher first painting on canvas
called MU Woman, which propelledher into the art scene.
That painting was it was seen, it was adored and that marked a

(24:35):
period into painting for her that allowed her to create for
eight years. So she produced about 3000
works, more or less. Yeah.
Give or take. Right.
Yeah, it's incredible. I mean, and that I just love the
fact that there was a women's education program because it's
like, you know, we were talking about before we started

(24:57):
recording kind of all of the differences that are taking
place in terms of the US and values around the Smithsonian
etcetera and part of. The part of.
Yeah. Part of what's been cut though
is like USAID and kind of, you know, those kind of development
programs that would have had, you know, that would have

(25:19):
supported stuff like this. I mean, the British Council does
it here and, you know, you look at what came from one of those
programs. Not that the point of it is to
have somebody like Emily who is artworks win lots and lots of
money. That's not necessarily the point
of it. But but, you know, the fact that
you know, it, it's generative ofso much and so much of the batik

(25:42):
work in general, you know, has come through those programs.
And yeah, anyway. And aside to today's politics
and how it's how it's undermining the next Emily Noir.
And we have batik pieces in the exhibition.
Was quite extraordinary, yeah. It is said in the exhibition

(26:03):
that her works are centered around Ankara, the emu.
So emu woman or Iwelia, which isa body paints but also a term
that more or less means women's ceremony.
So this is the narrative, one way of looking at it, which is
that there's an ancestral way oflife.

(26:25):
There's records breaking prices in auction sales.
There's this announcement of thegreatest Australian artists who,
by the way, started painting at 80 years old and who by the way,
is a woman, which very uncommon things.
So a sort of a phenomenon that comes a bit ex nilo into the art

(26:46):
market and the, let's say, the art fields.
She worked as an animal handler,started with batik and she was
inspired by body paint and is surrounded by a group of women,
which to me is kind of what I gathered immediately when I went
into the exhibition. Of course, I was a bit shocked

(27:06):
with this idea that you could start a anaesthetic career at
80, although it's not the, she'snot the first one.
But as you were saying, exceptions exist, but that's not
obviously the rule. So for me, it is a narrative
that is a westernized cultural narrative, which is my culture.
You know, it's kind of the way I'm going to approach very

(27:26):
naturally. If I don't second guess myself,
I'm going to very naturally approach the narrative in this
way. So we learned that locally, her
work was discovered and minded by a few people.
Sorry, can I just just about that kind of looking at her

(27:47):
within a Western narrative, you wonder if aboriginal in
Aboriginal cultures, maybe they were like, well, of course, you
know, you do the most important things when you're old in life.
You know, I mean, you know, we're, you know, we're, I'm, I'm
totally unsurprised by my mom, you know, having her regular,

(28:07):
you know, coffee clutch in the morning and her card games and
things like that. That seems normal.
But maybe, you know, in that community, it's like, well, of
course, you manifest all of yourwisdom and you manifest your
talents. And you know, it's not a it's
not a slow roll down the hill. It's like a slow roll up a hill.
And in a way, or I don't know, that's probably the wrong

(28:30):
analogy, but you know what I mean.
It's you wonder in your script, in your script for the for the
episode, you have those, you know, bullet points of ancestral
way of life and all the things that you just talked about
worked as a animal handler, started with fatigue.
The thing that really defines her work is that notion that she

(28:51):
is in and of the land that she is.
Even when she's making the works, she's sitting down on the
land and you get the sense that everything around her is being
infused into it. And, and that is so different
than aesthetics, which is the Western way of engaging with

(29:12):
things. And she has, you know, as I was,
as I was kind of reading about her and looking at things, you
know, it, it just struck me as like, can a, can a piece of art
be wise? And I think her art can be wise
because it's less about aesthetics.
And oh, I'm going to try it thisway because I think the dots and

(29:34):
the lines look interesting and this but it's she is she is like
transmitting knowledge through her work.
She is this is a history book and a celebration.
And it is so much more than aesthetics.
I mean, you know, before I knew,I didn't know anything really
about her before the exhibition.And when you look at the

(29:56):
adverts, you know, you think Jackson Pollock like that's not.
And, you know, I mean, I think alot of people who don't know her
might think, oh, this is sort oflike, you know, abstraction,
what have you expression and andshe's figurative.
You know, that's what the you know, I don't think I I went in

(30:18):
with a certain mindset thinking that it was going to be, you
know, cut. Wow, she's kind of like modern
without having known about the school and all of that kind of.
Stuff. Yeah, you're absolutely right.
I mean, there's a lot about, there's a lot to say about the
painting, right, in terms of ourown categories to talk about it
and and we're getting there. So just to finish with the this

(30:42):
idea of the market. So there's a market for
Aboriginal art that starts kind of coming up and becoming really
established at the end of the 70s.
And then from there on, Emily came.
Narre is not the only Aboriginalartist in the market, but she's
definitely the special 1. So for example, collector and

(31:03):
dealer Hank Ebbs in a YouTube video says and describes her in
those terms that I have just laid down.
So quote, she was a Stone Age nomad.
She'd never sat in a car before she was 50.
So that's kind of the vision he has of her.
And then he tells the story of her grandson of hers that came

(31:28):
to him because the grandson feltthat Aboriginal artists were
being exploited and he wanted someone trustworthy to take care
of the work. And so Ebes recognized obviously
Naray's name, and he said, OK, I'm going to look into this.
He started dealing her work, butalso others and also collecting

(31:49):
it. So there's this established
market and there's also this idea that the family that I
wanted to introduce as well, that the family participates in
this and we're going to see how and, and why.
So this is not a situation wherethe white person comes, takes
the work and then puts it in themuseum.

(32:10):
It's, it's a more complex situation and very rightly
pointed out to the women's program.
And there's a lot to do with that.
There's a role that it it plays in there.
And so he also says, and I'm quoting him, she's an artist
with a pedigree of 40,000 years.Yeah.
So the idea of the pedigree and the idea of the timelessness

(32:33):
really brings home this notion that Aboriginal peoples don't
have a history, they're static. And we have a progression, you
know, conversely, in not only inhistory, but also in
contemporary, modern, classic, etcetera, art terms.

(32:54):
And so he believes Eves that. And he says this in the video,
had she lived the 100 years before, she'd have done exactly
the same thing. So there's this idea that the
Aboriginal person carries this truth or this aesthetic and just
put it puts it out there. So this is really the Western

(33:15):
narrative that is kind of doubled by a praise, a sort of
praise for her modernity that isalmost seen like a coincidence.
So we have met through a sort ofpreference historically.
And so the Art Gallery of NSW in2022-2023 established or curated

(33:40):
this exhibition called Affinities of Lewitt's later
works. And when you look at them,
they're real squiggles and kind of undulating lines with very
different colors than what he started with in the beginning,
which was no color than primary colors.
And here there's a real mix of very unexpected colors for for

(34:00):
Lewitt. And then the exhibition is in
dialogue with a wall of Anne Matier.
So this language group, artists Nare and Gloria Tamerae Pitiare.
And so there is this idea that there's a modernism and a sort
of a dialogue going on in the work and in the same museum.

(34:26):
The way the artist is presented is, and I quote as a leading
figure in Eastern Almatyar ceremony.
So that already tells us something.
The ceremonial aspect is really important.
Naray was also the artist in whose work many white
Australians first felt the. Force.

(34:47):
Of an Indigenous art that could be seen to negotiate a space
both with the aesthetics of Western abstraction and the
timeless precepts of our Aboriginal cultural traditions.
And again, we have this idea of timelessness and this idea of a
resonance that is also a dialogue between both cultures.

(35:11):
And she's also presented as having a strong relation to
country. And thank you, Emily, because
you did say that earlier on and that is true.
And the way it is described is again in Western terms.
So in there's a the description of a work called Untitled
allocate, and maybe we'll get tothe reason why it's called like

(35:32):
this later on from 1992. And the description is that it
has been quote, perceived as a lyrical mapping of country, a
poeticizing of the desert in bloom, or simply as a
spectacular abstract painting, UN quote.
And so in the Tate film, we alsotalk about thin boundaries
between the worlds of the spiritual and the material in

(35:56):
her work. And her work is explained as the
way these two elements were planes interconnect or
interrelate. And you can see that really well
in the first room of the exhibition as you go in and you
see the dotted paintings of the beginning.
So pre 90, I think where there'sthis sort of really strange

(36:19):
effects of, like you say, pull up from afar, but then you see
it's just dots. And then you have, we were
talking about it when we visitedthe exhibition, which there's
layers and layers and layers of dots, and at a certain point you
feel like you're embedded in them.
I don't know if you did you havethat.

(36:39):
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, it's, it's it, it
felt both like being embedded init, like you can't see the wood
through the trees, you know, like you're really in something.
But then also hovering above it like when you kind of step back
and look at some of the the shapes.
They're almost an integral part of the dots, but at the same

(37:03):
time they're they're also an underlying layer and you have
lizards and geckos and these these little animals embedded in
them. Right.
Yeah. Yes.
By the way, did you look up emos?
Have you seen that emos? Do you know I haven't?
They are the most adorable things.

(37:24):
So they're one of the biggest birds in the world.
Like they're the third biggest bird in the world and they're
flightless. So I mean, and, and to me, like
the notion of a flightless bird is just so endearing.
You know, it's like, we'll give you wings, but they're not going
to be good for the good stuff, you know, so they, they're
enormous. They have these tiny little 6

(37:45):
inch wings that are basically just there to cool themselves
off and they heat and they, but they have these really long legs
and knees that are almost kind of right by their hips.
So they could run up to 30 milesan hour and they they can, you
know, they can, they can take steps as big as like 9 feet in
full stride. But but and their little faces

(38:07):
are so cute. So I can see why she she she was
enthralled. I'm, I'm feeling yeah, Emily on
that one. Yeah.
Well, yeah, it is a really important.
But for her and there's we're going to see there's different
elements for her that are reallyimportant.

(38:28):
So another element of the exhibition, as soon as you get
into the second room, you see animage of country, which for us
is an image of the NT Where so the central parts of the NT
where Emily Khame Naree grew up and lived, she moved a lot in

(38:49):
that territory, by the way. That's why there's a reference
of her nomadic ways. And some people do say that she
moved quite a lot. But as you say, there's this
idea and this notion that puzzled me a little bit, which
was that very quickly it is introduced to you and very well
done, by the way, very well explained that each painting is

(39:13):
country and it is everything. She says.
She said often this is everything.
And so we were talking about howthe paintings were the land, and
there is no dissociation betweencountry, land and dreaming.
So the dreaming or country, and they seem to, like you were

(39:33):
saying, like you seem to be hovering above the land.
And so very usefully so you haveimages pasted onto the wall,
these very massive expanses, photographic expanses of the
land. So you have a sort of a direct
equivalence between the paintings as expressions of that

(39:54):
landscape. But Emily Kamenare, I'm pretty
sure she never took a plane or ahelicopter.
She's never seen it from above. So it's so interesting to see.
What kind of mapping is this? Yeah, yeah.
And I mean, I guess, I guess from those high points, she
could have seen, you know, quitea bit of the country, even if

(40:14):
she hadn't been, you know, in a plane or, you know, kind of
above it in that sense. I think, you know, in her
relationship to country, you know, she's always looking down.
She's not looking up. You know, there's, there's no
references to Sky that I can think of.
I saw some references to consolations and and looking

(40:37):
upwards in some text that I read, but that didn't come
across in the exhibition. Yeah.
But, I mean, and I thought that was interesting that, you know,
there, you know, there is a verydistinct relationship with the
ground, with the underground, with the lay of the land.
She's a landscape painter in some respects, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, continue. Yeah, So absolutely.

(41:02):
That there's a does it? Yeah, that you are.
That's so true. There's a real kind of like
lowering of onto the ground on on in her paintings.
So when we got out, we picked upa few books and I bought this
book called Song Lines by MargotO'Neill and Lynn Kelly, The
Power and Promise. And Margot O'Neill actually

(41:23):
organized one of the first exhibitions of Emily Kamenare in
QLD. So she describes a little bits.
What's this Aboriginal set of beliefs and histories and
relationships to land? And so she starts by saying

(41:47):
everything starts. And so I'm quoting here.
Everything starts and ends with Country in the Aboriginal world
view, yet there are no endings in this worldview, nor are there
any beginnings. Time and place are infinite and
everywhere. Everything is part of a
continuum and endless flow of life and ideas emanating from

(42:10):
Country, which I'm referred to as the Dreaming.
In the Dreaming, as in Country, there is no separation between
the animate and inanimate. Everything is living people,
animals, plants, earth, water and air.
We speak of sea, land and sky. Country creator ancestors

(42:33):
created the country and its interface, the Dreaming.
In turn, Dreaming speaks for country which holds the law and
knowledge. Country has.
Dreaming Country is dreaming. It is this oneness of all things
that explains how and why Aboriginal knowledges belong to
an integrated system of learning.

(42:55):
And so later on, she says, Country holds.
So I'm quoting here again. Country holds information,
innovations, stories and secretsfrom medicine, engineering,
ecology and astronomy to show social Morris on how to live and
social organization including moiety, division and kinship
systems. It is the wellspring from which

(43:18):
all knowledge originates and gives rise to the expression our
history is written in the land. By history we mean all
knowledge, science, sciences, humanities, and ancestral
knowledge, not only what is compartmentalized as Western
history. If country holds all knowledge,
then country is clever. And then she goes on to say, as

(43:42):
our knowledge system encompassesa concept of time that talks of
the enduring, present and eternal time, the Western
divisions of past, present and future, or historical and
contemporary are not particularly relevant, though
they are useful at times. This recycling of time is
embodied in the expression when you look behind you, you see the

(44:02):
future in your footprints. And so here we have not really a
notion of timelessness, but a different relationship with the
very idea of history, this idea that everything comes from land,
everything comes from country, but not just the sort of
mystical relationship to country, but very specifically

(44:24):
technical relationships and answers for problem solving
basically like engineering and ecological systems and knowledge
of the country. So Lynn Kelly is really
interesting because she explainsthat she didn't know anything
about Aboriginal history. She complaints that at school
she was never taught Aboriginal history.

(44:45):
And the idea that she had was that there was no history and
there was no science. But when she finally had to
study a particular kind of crocodile, I think so she was
looking at an animal. She went to her colleagues,
tried to find out things about this species, and 10 or 12 were
known. And the only people who actually

(45:06):
knew 100 or more specimens and behaviours et cetera about the
animal were the Aboriginal people.
I mean, I think that's so, you know, looking at looking at the
work in the way that she worked,you know, again, that's sitting
on the ground doing the work. It has a real meditative

(45:27):
quality. You know, you get the sense that
she is someone who has been, even though she hasn't been
painting until she was 80 years old, She was she had this deep
observation that comes from actually really being in a
place, you know, when you are really in a place and you know
it intimately. You see the various varieties of
crocodiles, you know what I mean?

(45:48):
And that's just not, you know, again, to your point of, you
know, the the differences in approach and understanding and
you know, defining what is, you know, there's that very lab
scientific, you know, go out andfind approach.
And there's the live observe, embodied approach that she seems

(46:10):
to have with with the work that she's done.
And so one of the things that you learn in this book, and
that's why it's called song lines, is that there's a very
clear articulation between the movement of making those sinuous
lines, for example, and these these lines are very close to
the gestures of applying paint for the ceremonies, for the

(46:34):
women's ceremonies. But there's also another aspect,
which is the voice and the and the song.
And so country is also song and those lines and those these
paintings are also sunk. And so sometimes, apparently,
Emily came. Naray was notoriously silent
about the works and so she didn't explain the work, but she

(46:56):
would sometimes touch a paintingand and sing it.
I saw that. Yeah.
That's so cool. And she.
Yeah. So.
So it was hard to get names of any of the paintings out of her.
So that that's apparently why somany are called country is just
because she would just, yes, say, repeat that again and
again. Country is, is what it is.
Country is everything. Yeah.
Although there were some great names like Wild Potato.

(47:18):
Potato. Dreaming and there's like Bush
potato dreaming and. Yeah.
We did have were pretty choice you.
Know we had a moment there with the wild potato dreaming.
We just kind of stood there kindof like, wow, that's gorgeous.
So her role was to learn its ancient history and all the

(47:39):
physical characteristics as wellas responsibilities associated
with maintaining the continuity of the land.
So for her, these paintings are a transmission.
And you use this word, and it's a very, very good one because as
we will see, there's really thisrelationship with communication

(48:03):
with another side of the countryand other people.
So what we learn as well is thather people were forced to work
for pastoralists. So she worked at Wood Green
station looking after domestic animals and also LED camel

(48:24):
trains and even worked in the mine, the Wolfram mine in return
for Russians. And so she was a ceremonial
leader. She was also active, I learn in
this text, in the land rights movement.
And another question that I had was why batik?

(48:44):
What happened? Why were there only women?
Well, so to go back, So the women's programs were built by
someone who was there, who saw women waiting for the children
when they went to school. So and she thought, why not try
and do something with them? And so they started by doing tie
dye, which was kind of this remnant of hippie culture.

(49:06):
And the women took to these things.
The women took to this culture and to these traditions because
they had this practice, this artistic practice for ages.
So they had this knowledge of map making and line making and
pattern making, and they loved tie dye, but they loved batik
even more, which is an Indonesian technique.

(49:26):
And I was kind of baffled. Why Batik?
Yeah, me too. Yeah, and it's really difficult,
but take, I mean, it is not, youknow, I didn't really realize
that the process of it was so involved.
You know, I think it's interesting that, you know, her
batiks, Emily's batiks, a lot ofthe same themes you can see

(49:48):
obviously in the early paintingsin particular.
But just like from an aging perspective, it's like, you
know, you can see her age through her, through her work.
It's like that really. She did batik for 10 years
before she started painting. And that's, you know, you've got
to stretch it across your legs and then you've got to, you
know, make the Marks and then there's a whole process.

(50:10):
It's melted wax. Exactly.
Yeah. So you have to build the fire?
Yeah, to melt the wax. And then, you know, she moves to
paint, and it's this really intensive process where you see
all these little dots and you know that that is, you know, not
easy either. It's like, you know, that's
reasonably laborious, less laborious than batik, but then
you see her kind of move from dots to more of the sinuous

(50:34):
lines of the, you know, of the yam roots or what have you.
And and I just love the fact that, you know, someone who is
that expert at batik could think, man, this is too hard for
me now I'm old and really kind of stick there, you know, and be
like, oh, I'm really going to grieve the fact that I can't do
batik anymore. But she just plowed on like this

(50:55):
woman just moved forward with such force.
I mean, she was obviously, as you said, 3000 paintings and
eight years plus probably, probably even more than, but
there is just no kind of hesitation.
And it was like, oh, well, I can't do this anymore, then I'll
do this. Then I'll just push it to the
next thing and and see what works for me as a human being

(51:17):
where I am right now. And I found that really
inspiring as someone who just had their 50th birthday.
It's like. Yes, happy birthday, Emily.
Well, there's so in that story and then that real progression.
So there's an aspect that this text kind of sheds sheds light
on, which is that all of these materials were brought to these

(51:39):
women. So there's a group of women.
First of all, this is communal. And the reason why the batik
started being made was that thiswas also a way for the group of
people, for this community to besustainable.
So it was supposed to be marketed and sold and for them
to make money. And the way money was made was a

(51:59):
person, one of the artists wouldsell work and then the money
would arrive. It would be shown to everyone
and shared amongst everyone. So Emily Caminare became this is
this artist who was a provider because Christopher Hodges, he
was he had a gallery, I think Utopian Art Gallery is called or

(52:24):
Utopia Art Gallery. But he was also an artist.
He explains that what was absolutely incredible is that
you would have this shop with, you know, a hodgepodge of
things. Then one of Emily Kame nares,
batiks and connoisseurs, non connoisseurs, people be drawn to
that batique. She really had a vibrant quality

(52:47):
to her work even and and we saw that in the exhibition in the
batique works. And so she started selling quite
a bit and she started being really, really successful.
And so she moved on to painting.One of the reasons is basically
what you were saying, she was tired, but she had stuff in her
she that had to come out somehow.

(53:08):
And so another thing much so that in 1992 she received an
Australian Arts Creative Fellowship, which is a huge
recognition of her work as someone who brought an enormous
contribution to the culture for Emily at the time. 1992 was I

(53:28):
had the creative fellowship, I was recognized.
I'm a senior now. I want to pass on my knowledge
to the youngsters. I'm I want to retire.
She was tired, but she couldn't do it because of demands of the
community and the family never made this possible because she
was the great provider. There is no notion of the

(53:49):
solitary genius time. For a short break to let you
into the exhibitionist studio. Look around you.
There is a computer, a good mic,the software in the computer,
which is a sort of virtual spacethrough which you and I meet

(54:10):
with a time and space delay. Then there are my books and two
perfectly round Flintstones. All the magic happens here.
I've been talking to a university whose students need
placements and I could use some assistance with production and
research while also mentoring the future professionals of the

(54:35):
field. And that's where you come in.
Do you know how much a membership costs?
A mere £25 a year. Which means that you pay £2 a
month. 25 lbs for a whole year. When you buy a catalog, that's

(54:56):
the average price for one singlebook with two texts.
If you become a member of exhibitionists through a
platform called Substack, you not only get to support
exhibitionists, but you also receive on average about 18 more
texts minimum that I will have written about many, many, many

(55:20):
fascinating topics of contemporary arts, philosophy of
art, and many other subjects. There's a little bonus that I
added, which is getting to ask me questions.
If you have a question about contemporary art, about the
field, about the market, about studies in contemporary art, I'm

(55:42):
very, very happy. To do the research for you or to
dig into my little well of knowledge and put the
information out there for you, Ican name you or you can be
anonymous. So you get to put me to work as
long as the questions and the prompts you give me are within
my abilities. Otherwise you can go to donor

(56:06):
books in the description notes. If you have 1 LB to spare, you
can just donate one time. It's very, very small amounts.
That's what I do with Wikipedia once in a while.
I put some money in there because I use it almost daily
and I want to reward people who nourish me.

(56:26):
Thank you for spending some timewith me here in my studio.
Thank you for considering this decent proposal.
On with the episode. We've never done this in
exhibition esters to have someone just popping in from
down under and giving us a bit of context, but it's my pleasure
to welcome John McDonald to the podcast.

(56:47):
John is an art critic, has, I want to say, 4 decades of art
criticism in there. Am I wrong in saying that?
Unfortunately, you're absolutelycorrect.
It's sort of shocking how long I've been doing, but it is about
four decades now. I've been writing about the
visual arts now for about four decades.

(57:09):
I was art critic. I was senior art critic for The
Sydney Morning Herald at the ageof 23 and I'm now in my early
60s, so it's been a long time. Most of that time I I wrote a
weekly column for the Sydney Morning Herald.
I was actually cancelled last year in rather, well, kind of
shocking circumstances of the way they did it in a very, very

(57:32):
sort of nasty way, as if they wanted me to just disappear off
the planet. But the problem really was not
that I was doing anything wrong.The problem was that I was doing
my job and I was criticizing things and I was taking things
on and I was looking for issues.I found that the last three
years of writing everything, it was getting messed around and

(57:54):
when I found myself out on my own, I started this website on
Substack, which is called Everything the Art World Doesn't
Want You to Know, and it's takenoff like a rocket.
So I can't really complain now. I feel as though it's been all
to the good. So the Emily Show, which I, you
know, I basically funded my own trip to London to see the show

(58:16):
and write about it, has led to at least three pieces and one of
the reasons I wanted to see thisshow so badly and to write about
it. But I had seen all the other
Emily shows. I saw and wrote about the shows
in 1998, in 2008 and the one last year at the National
Gallery in Canberra. And at the time, I mean, I was

(58:38):
critical of the show in Canberra, not of the work
itself, because I think that Emily Karma and Juarez is a is a
great artist at her very best, you know, she's fantastic.
But it was the curatorial aspectof the show, the selection of
works, the way it was done and the fact that, you know, an
artist who really requires a little bit of thought when

(58:59):
you're putting an exhibition like this together was done in a
very pedestrian manner. So I said all these things and I
was quite explicit with the criticisms even of the catalog,
which had enormous clangers in the catalog.
Just to see whether or not the Tate, when they did the show the
following year, would follow theNGA template or whether they
would do something different, whether they would at least

(59:21):
correct the mistakes, Whether they would think again about the
selection of works. Because this particular
selection remarkably leaves out Emily's biggest and something,
her best work, which is Earth's creation, a work shown in 2007
at the Venice Biennale by Aqui en Wazoor Who?
And it was a sensation for a lotof people to see that big work

(59:43):
all by itself in the Italian pavilion.
That's most people's introduction to Emily.
And weirdly, it wasn't in the show.
The other works which are not inthe show, which are absolute
essentials, were the last work she did, which were a group of
small works that were about 24. Most of them are still in with
the hands of one dealer, and they were omitted as well.

(01:00:05):
Whereas the exhibition in 2008 in Osaka, which was everything
in Osaka is a strange museum. It's it's almost underground.
On the top level, you walked in and you were met with Earth's
creation, one big whopping padding, and all of the
information you needed to know about Emily, about the Utopia

(01:00:27):
community, all of the anthropological stuff, all of
the things about the community. Just giving you an introduction
that so you had the knowledge totake into that exhibition.
Then when you went downstairs and you entered the exhibition,
the first thing you saw were allof her last works and it was
really quite stunning because these works are very.

(01:00:47):
Poignant. I read somewhere that the
curators of the show still keep an Emily Day as a sort of a
tradition because of the sensation that yet the
exhibition was and the and the audiences that it brought into
the museum. Is that true?
Did you hear that? No, it's perfectly true.
Every year they keep an Emily Day as a memorial to that show.

(01:01:11):
It was they would have not, theywould not have seen anything
like it. I mean, even to curate an
exhibition with Margot and Neo must have been an incredible
shock to the system because if you know Japanese people, by
nature a very polite, very formal, whereas Margot was
rather the opposite. Margot is, well, as we say in
Australia, rough as guts. Margot Neal is Wait, you're

(01:01:35):
going to tell me if that's correct?
She's an Australian author, historian and curator of
Aboriginal and Irish descent anda Gunbane Giran era Judy woman,
and her Aboriginal name is NgawaGurawa.
Emily, do you have any questionsfor John?
I mean, look, John, my role hereis the novice, OK?

(01:01:56):
So I am not in the art world at all.
And so this might be a little bit of a naive question, but you
mentioned, you know, key pieces that you felt were missing from
the exhibition, the one from theVenice Biennale.
And these smaller works that youreferenced, Why?
Why do you think they weren't included?
Do you think that was a choice of the curator or were they just

(01:02:18):
not able to get them? Well, there are a number of
issues involved here, and one ofthem was the curators Hedy
Perkins and Kelly Cole did not have any personal experience of
Emily. Kelly claims to have seen Emily
when she was 16, you know, out in the country.

(01:02:38):
But Kelly wasn't a curator and didn't have any sense of it
apart from that. So they didn't really have
anybody involved who had, who knew Emily or or had even seen
or remembered some of these big exhibitions.
Neither of the curators had seenthe shows in Japan, for
instance, which are absolutely crucial when it came down to

(01:02:59):
doing a show. They wanted to do a different
show because the previous show was 20 years ago.
They wanted to do something different.
But unfortunately their idea of doing something different meant
to exclude, quite deliberately, all of the people who were
involved in the previous shows and who knew a lot more about
the topic. Someone like Margot.
The Tate originally approached Margot Neil and asked her about

(01:03:22):
this show and she said no, I can't do it or I'm not doing
another. Emily, why don't you talk to the
National Gallery of Australia? So they did talk to the National
Gallery of Australia, with the result being the National
Gallery of Australia. Curators then proceeded to
completely write Margot out of the picture.
She didn't even get an invitation to the opening of the
show in Canberra, Although Hettyand Kelly swore that she did get

(01:03:46):
one and perhaps it got lost in the mail.
They did not. They also wrote doubt as much as
they could. Chris Hodges, who was the
original dealer who took Peyton Canvas to Emily with Rodney
Gooch and showed all of her early work.
It was another remarkable because Chris knows him, knew
Emily very, very well. He spent, you know, years, you

(01:04:07):
know, side by side with her about all sorts of things.
Why would you leave these peopleout?
Instead, they took as their expert knowledge Dylan Davidson,
who is a dealer who's making waves at the moment
internationally selling. Wait, sorry.
The Lane is the gallery that is now associated with Pace in the
the the the selling. Dylan had a show with Pace to

(01:04:30):
coincide with the Emily exhibition at the Tait.
Yes. Right.
And yeah, OK. But Dylan gets most of his
Emily's from one source, which is Delmore Downs, which is the
the Halts. They have a rather controversial
role to play in the Emily Story,in as much as they were the

(01:04:50):
property next door to Utopia where Emily and the other
artists lived. Emily would go there and work
for the halts and really churn out paintings.
So of 30,000 paintings, probably2/3 would have been done.
I'm sorry, 3030 thousand. Goodness, that's Sydney.
An ultimate. I want so just one question, a

(01:05:12):
very quick answer. They're being discredited in the
sense that they're being kind ofignored and set aside, or are
they being discredit at discredited as not being
original or, or fakes or whatever?
I don't know what's the reason. It's totally ambiguous, it's
scuttlebutt, it's saying, it's basically implying that that

(01:05:35):
certain dealers are not honest and not legitimate, that the
works are somehow doubtful. But this is simply not true.
I mean there, there are a lot ofworks out there which are
perfectly valid Emily's that simply were disqualified from
being in the show. And you know, the Tate I believe
really should have done its own research and looked into these

(01:05:58):
things if they want to do a first class assembly show.
What they got instead was they just took everything the
National Gallery did and the Tate in fact gave virtually
nothing back. But when I was there on opening
night and I looked around and itwas Kangaroo Valley and wall to
wall Australians, they were all white faces.
There's nobody from Utopia, and I think that is an unforgivable

(01:06:19):
omission and it says a great deal about the thinking behind
this show, or rather the neglectbehind this show.
Well, thank you so much, John. This was really precious to have
your perspective on things. Yeah, thank you.
That was great. Well, I was just saying I I
think I got a little peek into the underworld of public.
Thank you, John. Bye bye.

(01:06:40):
Thank you, John. Thank you.
Bye bye. Bye.
How do you feel about all this? I think for me it makes me think
of outside the arts and how you manage these collections and how
you manage the production of these artists.
Yeah, I mean, to be honest, it'slike how you manage an artist is
outside of my field of expertise.
I couldn't, you know, I mean, all I can talk about is the

(01:07:03):
exhibition and how I felt about it, to be perfectly honest, and
was talking about how the exhibition felt very flat.
And I mean, to me, it was phenomenally exciting.
You know, it's like this is my first introduction into her.
And, you know, I knew nothing about her before I went in.
And I thought that, you know, for me as someone with novice

(01:07:26):
perspective, going in and seeingthe, the trajectory of her
development, you know, and, and just how much she changed and
was obviously trying new things,I felt, I felt that throughout.
I mean, I felt like there was a propulsion through it.
I mean, I think after you and I saw that video, which was maybe

(01:07:48):
halfway through, maybe a little more than halfway.
Through yes it is. You know, and we went into the
second to last room. I after we saw that video, I
thought, Oh well, I've probably seen what she does.
Like she only did anything for eight years.
She only did painting for eight years.
You know, I, we've probably seenthe thing that she does and this

(01:08:09):
will be a continuation on from that.
And it was just like, you know, you know, diving into a whole
new pool. So it was interesting to hear
his perspective obviously from someone who has known the work
for so long and has seen things that I have not seen and
experienced curation from someone who had such an intimate

(01:08:30):
relationship with the artist or a much more intimate
relationship at the very least. But as he was talking about the
flatness, I was just like, wow, I, I did so didn't experience
that. That's yeah, that's really true,
I think. I mean, I agree with parts of
what you're saying. I was really happy to see the

(01:08:53):
exhibition. And then as you move on to the
other room, there's these kind of atmospheric, almost textual
and almost 3D impressions with incredible arrays of colours
that she asked for, didn't use, then use others, according to
Christopher Hodges that John wasmentioning, she she has, she

(01:09:14):
knew exactly what she wanted to do in the moment.
And then you move on to the to the room where it kind of it
kind of becomes again like thoseramifications of white lines on
black. And I felt I showed you I had
goosebumps in front of a lot of paintings.
So this doesn't, this discourse doesn't take away the fact that

(01:09:34):
this is an incredible experiencethat you should not, you know,
prevent yourself from having in despite all the other politics
that are important. And where I disagree with you is
that that progression I find really sterile.
So in some ways I found the showreally flattening things in this

(01:09:56):
chronological order and then reserving that impact at the end
where I think the works were so impactful all the way through
and it kind of created an artificial highlights that
really corresponds to a modernist idea of painting.
I think I what I would say is just spend time with the

(01:10:16):
paintings that talk to you and just stay there and just, I'm
definitely going to go back. And I'm, I'm going to go back.
I mean, you know, I mean, he wastalking about the batiks and how
they were selling the the batiksfrom all the women who were
making them. And obviously hers had a real
presence that drew people in. And, you know, certainly with
their paintings as well. It's like, I mean, while there

(01:10:39):
there may be different decisionsthat could have been made or
different considerations made inthe curation, it is still rooms
full of these, you know, incredible, incredible works
that I, yeah, yeah. I, I, I'm definitely going to go
again. And yeah, me too, You know, I
mean, and I've told Peter you have to go because he, because

(01:11:02):
he was like, well, you've already been, so maybe I won't
go. And I was like, you have to go
because I'm going again as well.So.
Yeah, So I, I, yeah, I, I loved it.
Yeah. Goosebumps.
Yeah, me too was really exceptional.
And there's another element as well, which you hear the voices
of the group of women singing the paintings as well at a

(01:11:24):
certain point in the exhibition,and that is also really magical.
It's not done in the best way I find, but the pleasure of
actually having the the opportunity to listen, even in
an artificial setting. I think you also have your own
critical sense, and I fight for this idea of you being empowered

(01:11:46):
by your own experience of the works.
And it was so nice going with you.
That was really nice. I loved that Wagamama and a Tate
show with Joanna. I mean, that's that's a good
lineup. That's a very good lineup.
Grab a friend and go see a show.In the fact Wagamala wants to
sponsor us, we're here and we can always try to find the

(01:12:07):
nearest Wagamala museums in London.
I love the hustle, Joanna, thank.
You so much Emily. This was a pleasure as ever.
Thank you. Take good care of yourself.
Take care. Bye bye everyone.
Bye bye. Exhibition.
This is an independent podcast created and hosted by me, Joanna
Pierre Nevers. We have episodes every two weeks

(01:12:28):
and this season, Season 3, is a bit of a turning point.
We have 5 new episode types, from more experimental art
travel logs or art stories to conversational formats about
solo exhibitions with people whoare not part of the industry.
Because we're all both actors and spectators of art and life.

(01:12:51):
If you're new here, you have a whole catalog of episodes to
enjoy this cover them at your own pace.