THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, @katy.hessel interviews is one of the world's most influential artists: Barbara Kruger. Hailed for her distinctive poster-style language, Kruger merges text and image to bring attention to urgent political concerns. Bold, loud and readily available, her tabloid-esque works confront everyday issues. And, evocative of advertising, have the ability to bring meaning to often meaningless signage.  Born in Newark, NJ, and educated at Syracuse then Parsons, where she...

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most groundbreaking artists working today, Karon Davis. Hailed for her life-size sculptures, that she covers in white plaster dust and bases on her own or friend’s bodies, Davis’s works often take the form of installations, that very powerfully explore vital narratives of current and historical political events, as well as speak to the history of dance and performance. While they speak on a universal level, Davis...

I am so excited to say that my guest on the great women artists podcast is the renowned curator, scholar, and expert in 15th- and 16th-century Italian drawings, Furio Rinaldi to discuss TAMARA DE LEMPICKA! Dubbed “the Baroness with the Brush'', Lempicka at the height of the 1920s found herself at the centre of Parisian life, and constructed some of the most radical, liberal and avant-garde images. From reworking traditional subjects to melding the meticulous techniques of Renaissance...

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most renowned artists alive today, Doris Salcedo. Born in Colombia, where she is based today, Salcedo, is hailed for her mid to colossal-scale sculptures and public installations that push the boundary of the artform, while simultaneously addressing vital political narratives of Colombian history of conflict that also have the power to transcend both time and geographies. Salcedo challenges scale and perspective;...

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the renowned art historian, Kirsten Pai Buick to discuss EDMONIA LEWIS! Edmonia Lewis (1844–1907) is hailed for her stunningly chiselled marble busts and figurative sculptures – with their elegantly coiled hair, elastic-like folds of drapery, idealised nudes with strong, robust builds. She was the first sculptor of African American heritage (of any gender) to achieve such fame and recognition. Buick is the author of a highly...

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most brilliant writers around today, Lauren Elkin! On today's episode we speak about feminist pioneers, Carolee Schneemann and Hannah Wilke!! Elkin is an American in London who has lived and spent extensive time in Paris, Liverpool, Tokyo, Venice and New York – as outlined in one of my favourite of her books, Flaneuse, which sees her trace cities through the eyes and steps of female writers and artists as the feminine...

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the world-renowned Classics scholar and professor at the University of Cambridge, Caroline Vout! Today we are discussing all sorts of figures in Classics, from Venus to Hermaphroditus. Born in Durham, Vout studied for a BA at Newnham College Cambridge, completed her MA at the Courtauld, and PhD back in Cambridge, where she spent a very formative year as a Rome Scholar at the British School at Rome. Since 2006, she has been based...

I couldn’t be more excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most renowned writers, curators, critics, and cultural commentators in the world right now… Hilton Als! A Pulitzer prize winner, a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the theatre critic at the New Yorker, where he has been writing since 1994, Als is also the author of numerous books – from White Girls (a collection of 13 literary essays, exploring race, gender, interpersonal relationships) to more...

I am so excited to say that my guest on the great women artists podcast is one of the most pioneering – and my favourite – writers alive today, Elif Shafak! In this episode, we talk about the power of storytelling, the importance of writing women's lives into history and fighting for their rights. Shafak has said: "...as a young Turkish student, it occurred to me that the history that was taught to me top down could be seen in different ways depending on who is telling the stories..." We...

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, we interview world-renowned scholar, Julia Bryan-Wilson – the Professor of Art History and LGBTQ+ Studies at Columbia University – on the trailblazing artist, Louise Nevelson! “It’s not the medium that counts. It is what you see in it and what you do with it, " said Nevelson, the sculptor working in the mid-20th century New York City, hailed for her monochromatic, architectural wall sculptures amassed from found, recycled and discarded objects. Nevelson’s...

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast – for the second time! – is Dame Professor Marina Warner, one of the leading historians on this planet! A writer, lecturer, author of almost 40 books, and former president of the Royal Society of Literature, Marina Warner, according to the New Yorker, is an authority on things that don’t actually exist – from magic spells, monstrous beasts, to pregnant virgins. A world specialist on myths, fairy tales and stories from ancient times,...

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most pioneering artists alive today, Rachel Whiteread. Working across sculpture and drawing, in mediums ranging from concrete to resin, and in scales that go from miniscule to colossal – from casting domestic hot water bottles to entire immersive libraries – Whiteread is hailed for her poetic, stoic works that draw so intimately on our human experiences. Discussing how her work gives, in her words “authority to...

I am so excited to say that my guest is one of the most renowned painters working in the world right now, Christina Quarles. A painter of bodies that stretch, condense, tangle, and meld into shapes that range from fleshy to stringy, Quarles is globally hailed for transposing this warm-blooded vessel onto a flat surface with ambiguity and effervescence. Her paintings make us feel, viscerally react both physically and emotionally with their fluorescent colouring, limbs that dismantle from the...

In this episode, of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel reads 30 MINS of her chapter on SURREALISM from her book – and audiobook! – The Story of Art Without Men. The Story of Art Without Men is published by Penguin (UK), WW Norton (US). AUDIO BOOK: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-Story-of-Art-Without-Men-Audiobook/B09P1RK3GV?utm_source=Authorpost BOOK:...

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, I interview one of the most important, pioneering and impactful writers and novelists working today, Ruth Ozeki.  In this episode, we deep dive into looking, writing, observation and perception in a fascinating discussion that traverses objects, the written form, imagination and memoir. She is the author of four novels, My Year of Meats (1998); All Over Creation (2003); A Tale for the Time Being (which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2013 and won...

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, I interview one of the most exciting artists working in the world right now, Anna Weyant. From girls on the cusp of adolescence swept up in an eerie atmosphere to dollshouses with doors only slightly ajar, the subjects of Weyant’s paintings are nothing short of haunting, humorous, witty, and tense. Rooted in a style that feels like a cross between Old Master Painting and the unnerving perfection of Disney animations, Weyant’s works feel at once familiar, but...

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, I interview one of the most renowned artists working in the world right now, Mickalene Thomas. Working across painting, photography, installation, film, collage and more, Thomas, for the past two decades has been instrumental in forging an identity for figuration in the 21st century. Positioning her subjects – bold, beautiful women – in often large-scale work that commands the same power as that of Old Master Painting, Thomas lionises her subjects, whether they...

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, I interview one of the most pioneering artists alive today, Kiki Smith! Born in 1954, in Germany, raised in New Jersey, and now based in the Catskills and New York City, where we are recording today, Kiki Smith is an artist who works across a whole range of mediums ranging from sculpture to printmaking, tapestry to collage. She focuses on subjects of mortality and decay, the body and the earth, what it means to be human and our relationship to nature. She has...

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, I interview one of the most renowned artists living today, Adriana Varejão Best known for her sculptural, almost architectural, paintings that extend far beyond the frame, Varejão has tackled themes of Brazilian cultural identity, challenged ideas of modern monuments, and in her art exposes colonial truths through traditional processes. Drawing upon the visual language of the European Baroque, Chinese Song ceramics as well as Brazilian and other South American...

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, I interview the renowned painter, photographer and filmmaker, Marylin Minter!  A legend on the New York art scene for over 50 years, Marylin Minter is a pioneer of electrically graphic, photorealist paintings which take the form of some of the most criticised elements of culture – from high fashion to female desire – and explore how advertising and the the media have set the stereotypes of beauty, behaviour and sexuality… Cropping her images, and zooming in on...

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, we interview the acclaimed novelist, essayist and author of 18 books, SIRI HUSTVEDT! From memoir to poetry, non-fiction to fiction, Hustvedt’s writing has touched on the topics of psychoanalysis, philosophy, neuroscience, literature, and art. Long-listed for the Booker Prize and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, Hustvedt’s The Blazing World is a provocative novel about an artist, Harriet Burden, who after years of being ignored attempts...

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, we interview one of the most renowned artists working today, SARAH SZE! Working across sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, video, and installation – and the culmination of them – Sze’s creations often take the form of a planetarium, a colosseum, a work-in-progress laboratory. Often held up by precarious stick-like structures and formed around everyday objects (and, more recently, moving images), her works behave – for me – as the greatest visual microcosm...

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, we interview author, artist, writer, and academic, Pamela L Bannos on the very private yet supremely inquisitive street photographer who spent her days working as a nanny, VIVIAN MAIER!! Maier (1926–2009) was street photographer who has been compared to the likes of Helen Levitt or Diane Arbus. But here’s the thing: despite taking pictures incessantly and amassing more than 100,000 negatives, she never published or exhibited her work in her lifetime. This is one...

WELCOME BACK TO SEASON 9 of The GWA PODCAST! This week, we interview one of the most influential and groundbreaking artists alive, SONIA BOYCE! Born and raised in London, where she still lives today, Boyce has been taking the art world by storm since the 1980s when she and other trailblazing artists – such as Lubaina Himid and Claudette Johnston – emerged collectively onto the art scene as the Black Arts Movement. Putting images of women and their stories centre stage, they exhibited in...