ABC Radio National, The Art Show with Rosa Ellen
Broadcast: Wed 1 May 2024, 9:30am

Palestinian-Saudi artist Dana Awartani studied at a famously conceptual art school, before learning traditional Islamic crafts and principles, like sacred geometry. Now Dana is exploring the destruction of build heritage in the Arab world, most recently the devastated city of Gaza. Her work is being shown at Adelaide's Samstag Museum of Art and at the Venice Biennale.

Copyright 2024, Australian Broadcasting Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Image: Dana AWARTANI, I Went Away and Forgot You. A While Ago I Remembered. I Remembered I’d Forgotten You. I Was Dreaming, 2017. Mixed media installation with sand and natural pigments, single-channel video, with no sound, 22 mins. Still from video, courtesy the artist.

Listen Here

ABC Radio National, The Art Show with Daniel Browning
Broadcast: Wed 17 Apr 2024, 9:30am

A teapot made by the South Australian ceramic artist Bruce Nuske is a beautiful thing to behold: ornate, whimsical, exquisitely crafted –  and importantly, it can also pour a hot cup of tea… if you’d dare put it to use! Bruce's teapots and vessels are also steeped in a rich knowledge of the history of the arts and crafts movement. Listen to an interview with Bruce's collaborator, the late designer Khai Liew, from a previous episode of The Art Show, at 26 minutes.

Copyright 2024, Australian Broadcasting Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Photo by Sia Duff

Listen Here

Ep 30 | Hayley Millar Baker

Ep 29 I Amrita Hepi

In 2022 Samstag Museum of Art and ACMI commissioned a new moving image work by award winning Bundjulung/Ngapuhi artist Amrita Hepi. Ahead of Samstag’s presentation of Scripture for a smoke screen: Episode 1 – dolphin house (SASA Gallery, 7 July – 11 August 2023), Associate Curator Anna Zagala sits down with the artist to discuss the genesis of the project and her interest in NASAs 1960s 'dolphin house' experiment that attempted to teach dolphins human language in the hope that it would help them learn how to communicate with extraterrestrial life, what training in choreography and a background in the theatre taught her, and why music videos are a source of inspiration.

ON ART is supported by the Gordon Darling Foundation ad Solstice Podcasting and produced by Tilly Balding in Tarntanya/Adelaide. The conversation was recorded on 25 May 2023.

Ep 28 I Archie Moore

Archie Moore (Kammilaroi/Bigambul) is an artist and Samstag Scholar. While a student in Prague, Archie travelled extensively around Europe, including a visit to the Venice Biennale. He returns to Venice 23 years later representing Australia as the 2024 Venice Biennale artist.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Associate Curator Anna Zagala Archie shares his preparations for Venice,  plans for his forthcoming Samstag commission, his experience while on scholarship, and offers an insight into his practice through an in-depth discussion of a number of his key artworks, from the Dwelling series to the public art commission for Sydney airport.

ON Art is supported by the Gordon Darling Foundation and Solstice Podcasting and produced by Tilly Balding in Tarntanya/Adelaide. The conversation was recorded over Zoom on 18 May 2023.

Photo by Anna Hay

Ep 27 | Tarntanya-based Dancer and choreographer Daniel Jaber and Kuala Lumpar-based art critic Lee Weng Choy join Samstag Associate Curator to discuss Jaber’s dance trilogy Rite, Rot and Dirt performed at Samstag Museum of Art in 2022 and explore the nature of engagement from afar.  

Ep 25 | Trans-media artist, writer and performer Virginia Barratt is joined by Em König, a multidisciplinary artist, to discuss their collaboration Exosmosis, premiering at Samstag on Thursday 16 June.

Under the moniker [sadworm], Virginia and Em will present a new performance-based work centered around Virginia as a performer and Em’s responsive live soundscape. Joanna Kitto, former Associate Curator at Samstag Museum of Art, joins them.

ON ART is supported by the Gordon Darling Foundation and Solstice Podcasting, edited and produced in Tarntanya/Adelaide on 8 October 2021.

ABC Radio National, The Art Show with Daniel Browning
Broadcast: Wed 16 Mar 2022, 10:05am

Over the course of his career Isaac Julien has moved from making art films shown in cinemas to making films shown in art galleries, unfolding over multiple screens. His lavish, cinematic installations tell stories of Black identity, immigrant workers trapped in a British underclass and heroic figures like the 19^th C. abolitionist Frederick Douglass. But also films about architecture and design – such as the revolutionary ideas of Brazilian modernist Lina Bo Bardi. Isaac's work is on show now in Adelaide at the Samstag Museum of Art and at the John Curtin Gallery in Perth.

Copyright 2022, Australian Broadcasting Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Listen Here

Ep 24 | Djon Mundine OAM

UniSA visiting research fellow, writer, curator, activist and proud Bandjalung man Djon Mundine OAM sits down with Samstag’s Associate Curator Anna Zagala to discuss his venerable career.   

Along the way Djon shares his curatorial process, the importance of maintaining a wide perspective and open approach, how the Aboriginal Memorial came about, and what the dingo has to tells us about settler culture.  

ON ART is supported by the Gordon Darling Foundation and Solstice Podcasting, edited and produced in Tarntanya/Adelaide on 11 March 2022.

Ep 23: Helen Fuller and Khai Liew | Samstag Director Erica Green sits down with two Tarntanya/Adelaide-based makers, ceramicist Helen Fuller and designer Khai Liew.

Helen Fuller’s exhibition of objects or ‘pots’ as she refers to them, is currently on at Samstag Museum of Art presented in collaboration with Khai Liew who conceived of the imaginative installation.

They discuss Helen’s love of the night sky in the Flinders Ranges, her recently recent foray in working with clay, how a visit to Helen’s home and studio was a source of inspiration to Khai, and the steps that led them both to the present moment.

ON ART is supported by the Gordon Darling Foundation and Solstice Podcasting, edited and produced in Tarntanya/Adelaide on 8 March 2022.

Ep 20 | In the latest episode of ON ART, Marseille-based, Adelaide-born artist Madison Bycroft on their new moving image commission BIOPIC or Charles Geneviève Louis Auguste André Timothée  (2021) with Samstag curator Gillian Brown. In a wide-ranging conversation, they discuss the making and presentation of a feature length film, the politics of storytelling and the philosophical notion of opacity.

Ep 19 | In this episode, Naarm/Melbourne based artist Alex Martinis Roe on the works that comprise her exhibition, To Become Two with Samstag curator Joanna Kitto. They discuss feminist political practices and relationships within the collectives doing that work, as well as Alex's experience as a Samstag scholar and the ways the scholarship has impacted her practice in the years since.

Ep 18 | Hear from artists of the 2021 Adelaide//International. James Tylor speaks with poet Dominic Guerrera about the mistakes, mistranslations and loss of knowledge resulting from European colonist processes in documenting Kaurna culture. Jesse Jones discusses Tremble, Tremble—a dramatic presentation proclaiming a new social order from a female perspective—with exhibition curator Gillian Brown.

Photo: James Tylor and Dominic Guerrera by Sia Duff

Ep 16 | In the last episode of ON ART for 2020, we are looking at the practice of South Australian artist Kirsten Coelho. Listen in on a conversation she had with fellow ceramicist Honor Freeman, hear poetry and prose from the 2020 SALA Monograph dedicated to her practice by author Wendy Walker, and hear a musical response to Ithaca by Derek Pascoe.

Ep 16 | Brisbane born and Melbourne based painter Anne Wallace joins Samstag's Anna Zagala in conversation. The former Samstag Scholar and subject of a major survey exhibition Strange Ways discusses her practice, how she thinks through her ideas, when she knows a painting is finished, and how painting has changed for her across three decades of making.

Ep 15 | Artist and filmmaker Amos Gebhardt speaks with Naarm/Melbourne-based writer and dancer Adolfo Aranjuez. They delve into Amos's expansive new three-channel moving image installation, Small acts of resistance.

Photo by Thomas McCammon

Ep 14 | In 1996, South Australian artist Angela Valamanesh travelled to Glasgow, Scotland on a Samstag scholarship. Angela joins Curatorial Assistant Anna Zagala to discuss her year abroad, what it taught her, and how it set the course for future work

This podcast was recorded by Denam Moore at Solstice Podcasting, Tarntanya/Adelaide in September 2020.

Ep 13 | Tarntanya/Adelaide-based artist Kirsten Coelho and Samstag curator Joanna Kitto discuss working with porcelain, the significance of the ‘ruin’, and Homer’s Odyssey—the Ancient Greek text that inspired Kirsten's most recent body of work, Ithaca.

Ep 12 | Kaula Lumpur-based art critic Lee Weng Choy joins Samstag Associate Curator Joanna Kitto for a conversation around art and life. They discuss missing the experience of viewing art in person, what we’re consuming, and how the present moment is making us commit to empathy.

Ep 11 | Pittsburgh-based Samstag Scholar Georgia Saxelby joins Samstag Curatorial Assistant Anna Zagala to discuss her experience of applying to study at Carnegie Mellon in the USA, strategies for selecting a school, what it takes to get in and why she can’t wait to get back. Georgia's moving image work Lullaby is currently showing at Samstag as part of the 2020 Adelaide//International.

Ep 10 | Naarm/Melbourne-based artist Zoë Croggon speaks with Samstag curator Gillian Brown about her body of collage works in Effect in three movements. They discuss Zoë’s interest in movement and architecture, and the heightened relevance in thinking about how we occupy domestic space at a time when we’ve all been forced to do so.

Ep 9 | In Hold Me, audiences listen in on a frustrated phone conversation between Tarntanya/Adelaide-based artist Brad Darkson and a Centrelink worker trying to unravel the ramifications of a robo-debt, interspersed by the relentless sound of the hold music. While we're all working from home due to COVID-19, Samstag curator Gillian Brown discusses this eerily prescient work with Darkson, over the phone.

Ep 8 | Did you know that architect John Wardle designed the Samstag Museum of Art, working closely with Director Erica Green? In this episode, they discuss this process as well as John Wardle Architect's intruiging timber structure, Somewhere Other .

Ep 7 | Belgian artist David Claerbout sits down with Rachel Hurst, Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the University of South Australia, to discuss his monumental moving-image work Olympia (the real-time disintegration into ruins of the Berlin Olympic stadium over the course of a thousand years). 

Ep 6 | In our first episode for 2020, Naarm/Melbourne-based artist Helen Grogan speaks with Samstag curator Gillian Brown about her work in Effect in three movements, an exploration of installation processes and movement through gallery spaces titled SET AND DRIFT.

Ep 5 | Naarm/Melbourne-based artist James Nguyen joins Samstag curator Anna Zagala to discuss his experience as a Samstag scholar at UnionDocs, New York on a one-year fellowship in 2015, and how the lab environment subsequently shaped his practice and methodology.

Ep 4 | In this episode, Samstag curator Gillian Brown chats to artist Fiona Tan about her filmic work Ascent. Gillian was Tarntanya/Adelaide in front of a live audience, Fiona was at home in Amsterdam. 

Ep 3 | In this episode, poet Ken Bolton and artist Monte Masi respond to Tarntanya/Adelaide-based artist Louise Haselton’s practice through poetry and performance. Later, listen to a conversation that Samstag curator Gillian Brown had with Haselton amongst her exhibition, like cures like.

Photo: Monte Masi and Louise Haselton by Sia Duff

Ep 2 | Poetry, stories and letters from the Unbound Collective – artists, activists and academics Ali Gumillya Baker (Mirning), Faye Rosas Blanch (Mbararam/Yidinyji), Natalie Harkin (Narungga) and Simone Ulalka Tur (Yankunytjatjara). They are joined by Kaurna Elder and scholar, Uncle Lewis Yerloburka O’Brien.

Photo L-R: Harkin, Baker, Blanch, Turr by Sia Duff

Ep 1 | Aotearoa/New Zealand-based artist Lisa Reihana sits down with Samstag curator Gillian Brown to discuss her moving image work in Pursuit of Venus [infected], a re-imagining of the French scenic wallpaper Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique depicting Captain Cook's arrival on the Pacific Islands.