Cathy Lomax and Jennifer Caroline Campbell talk to writer and artist Jennifer Higgie about her most recent book The Other Side: A Journey into Women Art and the Spirit World. 

This is the latest episode in our Biography series and we discuss the way the book is structured around elements of memoir. The conversation takes in The Dark Monarch, weaving, Emily Kam Kngwarray, Georgiana Houghton, conspiracy theories, Annie Besant, Ithell Colquhoun and much more!

The painting on the cover of The Other Side is by Donna Huddleston

For episode five of our first season we talk to artist Luke Burton. Our discussion is centred on Luke's chosen cultural artefact, the 2004 Philip Guston retrospective at the Royal Academy, an exhibition he saw as a student at Chelsea College of Art, which alongside the 2023-24 Guston show at Tate Modern, bookends Luke's career as an artist. Guston is of course a hugely influential painter and the stylistic switches in his career – from figurative to abstract to figurative – are just one of the subjects we discuss. Also on the table are painting's connections to other artforms, the language of painting, Guston's controversial subject matter, and how we as artists are influenced by the work we see. Please be aware that we do deal with some sensitive material around Guston’s paintings of KKK figures which some listeners may prefer to avoid. 

We end the episode with a podcast extra made up of Luke’s vox pops about Guston gathered from other artists. 

You can see Luke Burton’s work in his solo exhibition ‘Westminster Coastal’ at Bosse and Baum, London, at the beginning of February 2024. He is also showing at The Gerald Moore Gallery at Eltham College in April 2024. 

For episode four artist Kathy Bailey selects a significant episode of Star Trek for us to talk about. 'Rejoined' was first aired in 1995 and features one of the first lesbian kisses on mainstream television. Kathy tells us about the importance of queer representation on mainstream television and the resulting discussion takes in fandom, feminine multiplicity, science fiction, collecting and the paucity of working class students in UK art schools.