ART FICTIONS

Guest artist RORY PILGRIM joins author and critic ELIZABETH FULLERTON to discuss his musically inspired, community-based art practice through the prism of 'The Bell' by Irish British writer and philosopher, Dame Jean Iris Murdoch. Published in 1958, this funny and sad novel explores religion, human frailty and who has the right to a voice, set within the confines of a lay community.

Please be warned that in following the content of...

Guest artist ANNA BARHAM joins artist JILLIAN KNIPE to discuss her art practice via 'Companion Piece' by Ali Smith. Published in 2023 by Penguin Books, the novel explores language, meaning, relationships and contemporary politics in what may be seen as a way of bringing a form of conclusion to Smith's urgently written then quickly published, seasonal texts: Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring.

ANNA and Jillian's discussion encompasses d...

Guest artist MIKHAIL KARIKIS joins poet and art critic CHERRY SMYTH to discuss his art practice via 'Human Acts' by Han Kang, 2016 published by Granta Books. Set in 1980 South Korea, the novel tells the gruelling story of a violently suppressed student uprising and the inevitable fallout from the original trauma.

MIKHAIL and CHERRY's discussion encompasses trust, courage, coalminers, eco-activism, protest and pearl-divers. As well ...

Guest artist ROSIE GIBBENS joins VANESSA MURRELL of DATEAGLE to discuss her art practice via 'Life Ceremony' by Sayaka Murata, 2022 published by Granta Books. This off-kilter collection of short stories brings a grotesque whimsy to fables of cultural norms, including society rituals that develop when the human species is endangered . 

ROSIE and VANESSA's discussion encompasses ritual, nothingness, meatarianism, shit and vomit . A...

Guest artist mentor CERI HAND joins artist and writer JILLIAN KNIPE to discuss her creative practice via 'The Blazing World' 2014 by Siri Hustvedt and published by Hodder & Stoughton. Longlisted for the Booker Prize and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, it tells tales of the life of artist Harriet Burden. Presented across snapshots of journal entries and testimonies by her family, friends and colleagues, the a...

Guest artist SUSAN SCHUPPLI joins art critic and author ELIZABETH FULLERTON to discuss her art practice via 'The Second Body' 2017 by Daisy Hildyard, published by Fitzcarraldo Books. Listed by the 'White Review' on their Books of the Year 2018, the essay presents the dissolving boundaries between all life on earth, with an updated dualism between the animal bodies in which we eat, breathe, and sleep and ...

Guest artist SOPHIE RUIGROK joins VANESSA MURRELL of DATEAGLE to discuss her art practice via 'Nobody Belongs Here More Than You' 2007 by Miranda July, published by Canongate Books. Winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, it conveys 16 stories of lonely characters desperately trying to make connections. Their means vary from quirky to the absurd and mostly only result in the disillusion of coinciding in the sa...

Guest artist NICOLA BEALING

joins JILLIAN KNIPE to discuss her work via 'Pastoralia' 2020 by George Saunders. Published Riverhead Books, the book contains six short stories each presenting snapshots of contemporary American existence delivered in a deadpan, razorsharp tone, and enshrouded with dark humour.

We talk about dark humour, executions, internal panic, male strippers, 18th century working class fabrics, Goya being God, crue...

Guest artist FLORENCE PEAKE joins ELIZABETH FULLERTON to discuss her multi-faceted, performance-led art practice via 'Stone Butch Blues' 1993 by Leslie Feinberg. It tells the story of life as a butch lesbian in 1970s, working class America and is particularly unique due to the writer gaining full rights to the text, making it fully accessible online and for free.

Florence and Elizabeth talk about hysterical clay, collapsing paintin...

Guest author JENNIFER HIGGIE joins JILLIAN KNIPE to discuss her art writing practice via 'Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead' by Olga Tokarczuk. It's a compelling murder mystery set in a small mountainside village in Poland. As Winter caretaker of neighbouring properties, Janina spends her spare time translating the poems of William Blake into Polish with her friend and ex-student Dizzy. 

We talk about how women found agenc...

Guest artist KATIE PRATT

joins JILLIAN KNIPE to discuss her work via 'Once in Europa' 1987 by John Berger. As part of the 'Into Our Labours' trilogy, the novel is set in an alpine village and describes grounded charm and limiting isolation against the encroaching industrialisation of urban life.  

We talk about the disorganised surface, organic and geometric, the French Alps, industrial revolution, the mass of strike actions across...

Guest artist ANNA PERACH 

joins ELIZABETH FULLERTON to discuss her work via 'The Victorian Chaise Longue' 1953 by Marghanita Laski. The novel describes the experience of a charming yet childish lawyer's wife who wakes up in the body of her alter-ego eighty years previously. It's a chilling tale of entrapment, which closely links to Anna's sculptural work as she reacts to female stereotypes, trapped in their societal roles, trapped ...

Guest artist PAOLA BALLA

joins Jillian Knipe for this special edition of ART FICTIONS | Culture Exchange which is part of the UK/Australia Season, a partnership between the British Council and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Paola and I discuss colonisation in a place widely known as Australia, and its corresponding cost to herself, her family and her extensively long ancestral lineage, via poet...

Guest artist INGRID BERTHON-MOINE

joins Elizabeth Fullerton for this special edition of ART FICTIONS | Culture Exchange which is part of the UK/Australia Season, a partnership between the British Council and the Australian Government's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. 

Ingrid and Elizabeth discuss the absurdity of male domination within cultural identity via film maker Virginie Despentes' novel 'Kong Kong Theory' published ...

Guest artist RICHARD AYODEJI IKHIDE

joins Jillian Knipe for this special edition of ART FICTIONS | Culture Exchange which is part of the UK/Australia Season, a partnership between the British Council and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Richard and I discuss his disjointed cultural story, via Amos Tutuola's second novel 'The Bush of Ghosts', published in 1954. We follow a young boy, separated fro...

Guest artist NIKA NEELOVA 

joins Jillian Knipe on this special edition of ART FICTIONS | Culture Exchange which is part of the UK/Australia Season, a partnership between the British Council and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Nika and I discuss the flow of her cultural story, via poet Rainer Maria Rilke's only novel 'The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge', first published in 1910. We follow Brig...

Welcome and Welcome Back to this special edition of ART FICTIONS | Culture Exchange which is part of the UK/Australia Season, a partnership between the British Council and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.  ART FICTIONS | Culture Exchange will run until the end of March 2022. Elizabeth Fullerton and Jillian Knipe will discuss the artistic practices of our guests in the usual way - through the pris...

Guest artist HOLLY HENDRY

joins ELIZABETH FULLERTON to chat about her work via Tom McCarthy's 2005 novel 'Remainder' in which the nameless narrator must re-learn body movements after a debilitating accident. He is awarded a ridiculous sum in compensation which he uses to re-enact past happenings in microscopic detail, increasingly absurd and violent in nature.

Holly is a lot more pleasant. However, she is also compelled to open up ...

Guest artist FIONA GRADY

joins me to chat about her work via Jun'ichirō Tanazaki's 1933 essay 'In Praise of Shadows'. The text describes eastern aesthetics being driven by the west, resulting in the loss of Japanese tradition and the loss of the shadow. 

Fiona Grady and I discuss her own praise of shadows, working with semi translucent colours on glass, wall murals and watercolours which celebrate subtlety, reflection and the elusi...