The Great Women Artists

• Ekow Eshun on Toni Morrison, Octavia E. Butler, Hilary Mantel, Wangechi Mutu, and more

  I'm so excited to say that today’s guest on the Great Women Artist Podcast is the esteemed curator, writer, broadcaster and cultural trailblazer, Ekow Eshun. Born in North-west London in 1968, Eshun has been at the forefront of creative culture for decades. Writing across subjects and presenting documentaries, Eshun has curated groundbreaking exhibitions. From the 2022 In the Black Fantastic, at the Hayward in London – to The Time Is Always Now, a study of the Black figure and its representation in contemporary art, that began at London’s National Portrait Gallery, and has since travelled across the US. The author of multiple books: in 2006, he published his memoir: “Black Gold of the Sun: Searching for Home in England and Africa” an exploration of identity and race, that sees Eshun travelling through Ghana in search of his roots. And in 2024, The Strangers, a stunning work of creative nonfiction that tells the story of five pioneering Black men set against a vivid backdrop of art, culture, and resistance. So for this special episode we are going to deep dive into the women writers and artists who have influenced his life and career, including Morrison, the pioneering science fiction writer, Octavia E. Butler, Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu, the Rotterdam based artist Ellen Gallagher, and photographer Liz Johnson Artur. Because, as Eshun himself says, “The great thing about working with artists is they don’t walk a straight line or think along linear paths; they think in patterns, allowing us to approach long-established conversations from a novel perspective.” Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) Wangechi Mutu (b.1972) Ellen Gallagher (b.1965) Liz Johnson Artur (1964) Toni Morrison (1931–2019) Exhibitions mentioned: In the Black Fantastic, 2022, Hayward Gallery, London: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/venues/hayward-gallery/past-exhibitions/in-the-black-fantastic/ The Time Is Always Now, 2024-present, touring: https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2024/the-time-is-always-now The Clearing, space Un gallery, Tokyo, November 2025; https://www.artweektokyo.com/en/institution-gallery/space-un/ Books mentioned: Octavia Butler - Parable of the Sower (1993) https://www.waterstones.com/book/parable-of-the-sower/octavia-e-butler/9781472263667 Octavia Butler - XenoGenesis trilogy; Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), and Imago (1989) https://www.octaviabutler.com/xenogenesis-series Hilary Mantel - The Wolf Hall trilogy; Wolf Hall (2009), Bring Up the Bodies (2012), and The Mirror & the Light (2020) https://www.waterstones.com/book/wolf-hall/hilary-mantel/9780008381691 Ekow Eshun - Black Gold of the Sun: Searching for Home in England and Africa (2006): https://www.waterstones.com/book/9780141010960?sv1=affiliate&sv_campaign_id=117976&awc=3787_1761656125_d069bd054bf50de1a9bfc45991a52d17&utm_source=117976&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=Penguin+Books Ekow Eshun - The Strangers (2024): https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-strangers/ekow-eshun/9780241990698 Herman Melville - Moby Dick (1851) https://www.waterstones.com/book/moby-dick/herman-melville/andrew-delbanco/9780142437247 Toni Morrison - Beloved (1987) https://www.waterstones.com/book/beloved/toni-morrison/9780099760115

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• Sally Mann

  I'm so excited to say that my guest on the Great Women Artist Podcast is one of the world's most renowned photographers working today, Sally Mann. Hailed for her images of nature in the remote American south –  full of deeply layered memories and rivers that become characters of their own – and intimate portrayals of her children Jesse, Emmett and Virginia, Sally Mann creates photographs full of beauty. Beauty being something that is tied up with ephemerality, that is alive, that is in motion, something that we have to catch. As she aptly wrote in her 2015 memoir, Hold Still, “there cannot be any real beauty without the indolic whiff of decay.” Mann's photographs are therefore both painterly and fleeting. They capture people on the cusp of something else, whether that be illness or an increasingly decaying body, but she also captures the land, connecting us to the ancient and the natural worlds. Using an eight by 10 bellows camera and 19th century photographic techniques, her black and white aesthetic - that can be both dreamlike and hazy - chimes with her interest in memory and decay. Born in 1951 in Lexington, Virginia, Mann began her artistic career as a poet, but a deep dive in photography in the late 1960s whilst attending the Ansel Adams Gallery Yosemite Workshops was one of the catalysts for her photographic career. Words have always also taken center stage - she studied literature at Hollins College in Virginia in 1974 and completed an MA in creative writing the following year. She is the author of Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs and was the subject of two documentaries, Blood Ties in 1994, and What Remains in 2006. However, this year she also released the New York Times bestselling book, Art Work: The Creative Life, a part memoir, part insight into her creative life, which is a strange and lonely one; one that is so personal and insular, and one that we can often take for granted and get angry at. Yet it was reading this that really reminded me about why so many of us do what we do… Books mentioned: Sally Mann - Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs: https://www.waterstones.com/book/hold-still/sally-mann/9780241699287 Sally Mann - Art Work: The Creative Life: https://www.waterstones.com/book/art-work/sally-mann/9780241774540 Artists mentioned: Ansel Adams (1902–1984) Edward Weston (1886–1958) Cy Twombly (1928–2011) Bill Brandt (1904–1983) Robert Capa (1913–1954) Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879) Mary Ellen Mark (1940–2015) Joseph Szabo (b.1944) Lady Clementina Hawarden (1822–1865) Imogen Cunningham (1883–1976) Artworks mentioned: Sally Mann, The Perfect Tomato (1990): https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/10396 Sally Mann, Immediate Family series (1984–1992) Sally Mann, Dead Duck (1988): https://observer.co.uk/culture/photography/article/sally-mann-my-quest-to-take-the-perfect-photograph-memoir Sally Mann, Marital Trust series (1990s to the early 2000s, to be exhibited at Gagosian in 2027) The Family of Man, a 1955 exhibition at MoMA, organised by Edward Steichen: https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2429 -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

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• Eva Helene Pade

  I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most exciting young painters working today, Eva Helene Pade. Born in Denmark in 1997, and based in Paris – where we are recording today – Pade is known for her rich and emotionally-charged, large-scale canvases populated with figures that morph in and out of abstraction. Often set in a dreamworld that can feel akin to being lost in a dance or state of unconsciousness, with fiery blazes and dark intense shadows, Pade’s paintings exist in places beyond the realm of our world. They are full of ambiguity: as a viewer, you are unaware of whether they are in day or night, heaven or hell, if the figures are male or female, or set in an ancient world or contemporary life. Stylistically, Pade seems to borrow from a lineage of Northern European figurative artists, from Edvard Munch to Otto Dix, creating work akin surrealism or expressionism: artistic movements born out of a time of political tumult, yet exude freedom and liberation in their subject and handling of paint. This creates an interesting conversation about the state of the world vs then, and now. But she also goes further, imbuing her work with ancient stories and figures – such as Eve or maybe Ophelia – and stories, such as Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, a ballet she was inspired by after seeing a performance choreographed by Pina Bausch, the influential German dancer. And like Bausch, Pade was drawn to rework the story from a female lens, which served as the foundation for her first ever museum show at Arken Denmark, opening just a year after she graduated from The Danish Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen… Today, we meet Pade in her Paris studio on a very hot day ahead of a new exhibition of paintings that opens at Thaddeaus Ropac in London in October, and I can’t wait to find out more… Exhibition: https://ropac.net/exhibitions/764-eva-helene-pade-sgelys/ -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

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• Hilton Als on Jean Rhys

  I am so excited to say that my guest, returning for his second interview on the GWA Podcast, is the esteemed American writer, critic, and curator, Hilton Als… A staff writer at The New Yorker for over 30 years, and a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2017 and a Guggenheim Fellowship for creative writing, Als is the author of numerous books. He is a teaching professor at Berkeley, Last time Als came on the podcast, we discussed two significant artists for him, the photographer, Diane Arbus; and the painter of people, Alice Neel – the latter of whom he has curated exhibitions of, exploring her life in uptown Manhattan, and her various friendships with artists, writers, dancers, neighbours and social activists. 119 But today I meet Hilton on the occasion of a new exhibition he has curated: Postures: Jean Rhys in the Modern World at Michael Werner Gallery in London, which explores the extraordinary and complex life of Creole-British writer, Jean Rhys, born in Dominica in 1890 to plantation owners, who grew up a white person, or Creole, in a largely Black society, and moved to Britain aged 16 and lived most of her life in Europe until her death in 1979. She was known for telling stories of women in exile, often at the whim of powerful men, and celebrated for her last and best-selling novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, published 1966, that told the life story of the so-called mad woman in the attic, Antoinette Cosway, from Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, from Cosway’s perspective. And what a beautiful, complex, show this is. Featuring Hurvin Anderson, Celia Paul, Gwen John, Sarah Lucas, Kara Walker, and more, it is a rich portrait of a complex figure who lived between worlds, cultures, reality and fiction. And I can’t wait to find out more. Postures: Jean Rhys in the Modern World is at Michael Werner Gallery, London, until 22 November. For more on the show: https://www.michaelwerner.com/exhibitions/postures-jean-rhys-in-the-modern-world. Books/poems mentioned: Good Morning, Midnight - Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys Smile Please - Jean Rhys Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë Self-Portrait - Celia Paul Jean Rhys (poem) - Derek Walcott Autobiography of My Mother - Jamaica Kincaid A View of The Empire at Sunset - Caryl Phillips Artists/writers mentioned: Hurvin Anderson Kara Walker Eugène Atget Eugène Leroy Cynthia Lahti Francis Picabia Celia Paul Gwen John Augustus John Sarah Lucas Hans Bellmer Caryl Phillips Jamaica Kincaid Derek Walcott -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

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• How to Live an Artful Life (Audiobook Taster!)

  It’s officially one month to go until the publication of How to Live an Artful Life, my new book that features a quote by an artist or writer for everyday of the year: https://www.waterstones.com/book/how-to-live-an-artful-life/katy-hessel/9781529155204 To celebrate, I wanted to share a teaser of the audiobook with an extract from the month of October, featuring its introduction and the first six days, so you can get a feel for the book. Each month is based around a theme. For example, January is about seeking out ideas, February is about love, and September focuses on time. October’s is transformation and features thoughts, reflections, creative exercises and daily routines from the likes of Virginia Woolf, Barbara Hepworth, Rose Wylie, Joan Mitchell, Marina Abramović, Zanele Muholi, Cindy Sherman, to name a few…

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