A brush with...

George Shaw talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Shaw, who was born in 1966 in Coventry, UK, makes paintings and drawings that are a response to a particular place but also a deeply personal engagement with memory. Although his paintings depict identifiable locations within Tile Hill, the postwar housing estate on which he grew up in the suburbs of Coventry in England’s Midlands region—from the houses and garages on the estate, to playing fields, community centres, pubs and shops and the woods beyond—they are steeped in recollection, potent with signs of human presence, including Shaw’s, but barely ever occupied by people, and even then only by the artist. As a result, these paintings have a curious relationship with time, a factor only enhanced by his use of his own photographs as the source image for his compositions. Tile Hill is the setting in which his identity was formed as a young person, in which he became himself, and the hundreds of paintings he has made of it since follow its changing face, moments of aging, destruction, dereliction and renewal. Over time, this lifelong magnum opus has come to tell a multi-volume story of Shaw’s life—a multifaceted self-portrait. He reflects on this idea of reflecting a person or body through place, with reference to one of his more enduring heroes, James Joyce. He also discusses the symbiosis of his subject matter and his use of enamel paint and the relationship between his photographs of Tile Hill and the paintings he makes from them. He reflects on the importance of music and the social and political culture around it in defining his identity and its legacy in his life and work today. He discusses the role of imagination in the extraordinary output of William Blake, his early response to fantasy artists like Chris Fosse, and a huge wealth of historic painters that have been important to him since, from John Everett Millais to John Constable, Mike Kelley, Titian and Rembrandt. He also reflects on the role of his father’s “curriculum” of films that he watched from his youth onwards, and its significance in relation to his paintings. Plus, he gives insight into his studio life and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?

George Shaw: Albion Groans—Part Two, Anthony Wilkinson Gallery, London, until 14 November; George Shaw: Living Room, curated by Jonathan Watkins, Apt Architects, London, until 18 December; George Shaw: My Haunts, Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, UK, 7 May-27 June 2027.
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Gabriel Orozco talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. You can also watch this conversation as a video on the YouTube channels of The Art Newspaper and Bloomberg Connects.

Gabriel Orozco was born in 1962, in Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico and lives today between Tokyo, Mexico City and New York. His work is grounded in a singular take on realism, using everyday objects and images and transforming them through complex forms of games or rigorous structural approaches. He has said that everything he does has to do with different forms of transportation, so that his materials become vehicles for thought and action. And the breadth of knowledge and physical expression that he employs mean that his projects are both consistent and disparate, taking the form of drawings and paintings, found objects and handmade sculptures, photography and installation. This wealth of modes and methods leads to a huge variety in the kinds of work he produces, from small objects to total environments, from subtle and spare gestures to spectacular productions. He discusses his fascination with games and sports, which feature in many of his works, he reflects on the breadth of language in the manifestations of his work, and the role of the audience in completing it. He discusses his early fascination with Pablo Picasso, his enduring passion for the work of Kurt Schwitter and Constantin Brancusi, his admiration of On Kawara and the importance of writers including Jorge Luis Borges and D.T. Suzuki to his work. Plus, he gives insight into life in the studio, and answer our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?

Gabriel Orozco: Chronotopic, curated by Briony Fer, White Cube Bermondsey, London, until 8 November.
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Cecilia Vicuña talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Born in 1948 in Santiago, Chile, Vicuña is both a poet and a visual artist and intertwines these two artforms to produce work across a range of media. Among much else, she has a singular narrative painting style, makes huge suspended installations using found materials and textiles, stages performances and makes ephemeral sculptures. From the start, she has been deeply embedded in politics and social concerns, including human rights abuses in Chile, conflicts in different parts of the world, Indigenous culture and colonialism, and the climate catastrophe. Her work is underpinned by a profound engagement with different forms of Indigenous language allied to a response to prominent developments in Modern and contemporary art, from Surrealism to Postminimalism and Conceptualism. She discusses the symbiosis of word and image in her work, the wordplay that underpins some of her key concepts and strands of work, and how art-making is a full-body experience. She reflects on her early fascination with pre-Renaissance painting, the influence of her aunt, the artist Rosa Vicuña, on her experience of pre-Columbian art and languages, her admiration of Doris Salcedo, and the visceral shock of seeing medieval sheela na gig sculptures in Ireland. Plus, she gives insight into studio life and daily rituals and answers our ultimate question: what is art for?

Cecilia Vicuña: Living Threads, Whitechapel Gallery, 7 October-14 February 2027; Cecilia Vicuña: Quipu of Encounters: The Dream of Water, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 15 November–6 June 2027.
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Sunil Gupta talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to film-makers, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Across more than half a century Gupta has explored queer identity, migration and race through photography. Born in New Delhi in 1953, but based in Canada and the UK as well as India since he became an artist, he has reflected on his personal background and autobiography to explore a wealth of social and political themes, from queer desire and relationships, to the social and geographical environments in which LGBTQ life and love happens, to political violence and the oppression of queer people, and the HIV/Aids crisis and its legacy. He has said that he “couldn’t separate the living from the art-making”. Working in series that often have novel conceptual structures and explore different modes of presentation and expression in the photographic space, Gupta is both an artist and activist, with a long-held conviction to represent his own experience and that of people and communities like him in cultural fields where they have largely been absent. In this podcast, he reflects on his discovery of photography and his early experiments, the politics around photographic depiction and his alignment with community and political subjects versus a more commercial or reportage approach. He discusses great photographers including George Platt Lynes, Duane Michals and Paul Strand, expresses his admiration for Shilpa Gupta, his early passion for the tragicomedy of Bollywood and his enjoyment of writers including Flannery O’Connor, and his response to Chris Marker’s La Jétee in his work Sun City. Plus, he gives insight into his life in the studio, as well as answering our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?

The conversation is also available as a video. Visit the YouTube channels of The Art Newspaper and Bloomberg Connects.

Sunil Gupta: Life with a Camera, 1970-Now, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 19 September-31 January 2027
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Richard Tuttle talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Tuttle, who was born in 1941 in Rahway, New Jersey and grew up in nearby Roselle, lives today in New York, Abiquiú, New Mexico, and Mount Desert, Maine. He combines elements of drawing, painting, sculpture, artist books, printmaking and textiles, often arranged in lyrical installations, yet does not settle in any one discipline or medium. Pushing and pulling between different forms and modes, and between two and three dimensions, he has developed a singular response to architecture, which is often activated in unexpected ways by the placement of the objects he makes and their arrangement in spatial compositions. And while the meaning of the works is often as elusive as their form, they offer poetic enticement for their audience through a delight in broad and often humble materiality and a fertile relationship with different forms of language. Tuttle is seen as a leading figure in Post-Minimalism and certainly contributed to the liberating approach to form, matter and content unleashed by that tendency from the 1960s. But any attempt to neatly categorise his output is profoundly inadequate and limiting. Experiencing his exhibitions, one feels part of a philosophical response to the world, a questioning of what it is to inhabit it and what it might mean to make art in it. As Richard himself said in 1975, “if the artist does a piece of real work and we see it, it’s as though we ourselves are doing it”.

He discusses the fundamental importance of drawing to all his work and how the line he uses “is not a pure line like most people would think. It’s actually the edge of something.” He reflects on art’s relationship with the viewer and community, and art’s role as a positive force in the world. He expresses his admiration for Van Eyck, for Nam June Paik, for his friend and mentor Agnes Martin, and for Philipp Otto Runge, the German colour-theorist and Romantic painter. He also discusses reading great works of literature in their original language and his love of architecture. He gives insight into life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?

Richard Tuttle: Half Light, now open and on long term view at Dia Beacon, Beacon, US; Richard Tuttle: Small Sculptures of the 1970s, Modern Art, Bennet Street, London, 3 September-3 October
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