Talk Art

Robert meets Christian Levett, a British collector, philanthropist, and former investment fund manager. He is the founder of FAMM (Female Artists of Mougins Museum)(opens in a new tab), the first museum in the world outside of the USA to hold a permanent collection dedicated to A+ female artists from impressionism to contemporary art.

Opened in 2024, FAMM reflects his long-standing commitment to addressing structural gender imbalance in art history through exhibitions, research, and public programming.
Christian Levett began collecting at the age of seven, initially focusing on medals and coins. Christian Levett began collecting Old Master paintings and antiquities early in his life, developing a particular interest in Greek, Roman and Egyptian archaeology. In 2011, he founded the Mougins Museum of Classical Art (MACM), where antiquities were displayed in dialogue with modern and contemporary works.

Since 2016, his collecting has focused primarily on women artists. His collection today comprises nearly 2,000 artworks, including over 700 works by women artists, among them approximately 150 works by key figures of Abstract Expressionism, making it one of the most significant private holdings in this field.

Over the past decades, Levett moved towards the wider art market and began building an important collection of 20th and 21st century art. This includes, amongst others, post-war American art, Zero movement art and African contemporary art. In the last few years, he has built a significant collection of abstract works by female artists.

This is now displayed in his home in Florence, an Italian palazzo transformed into an inspiring gallery in its own right, having hosted private tours for museum patrons and university groups, including Harvard, Stanford, and New York University, the Palazzo Strozzi, the Bargello Museum, the Wallace Collection and the Tate.

His Florentine palazzo, hung exclusively with works by women artists, regularly hosts museum patrons and academic groups from institutions such as Harvard, Stanford, and NYU. He has commissioned three major scholarly books: Abstract Expressionists: The Women(2023), the FAMM museum catalogue Female Artists of Mougins Museum, France (2025), and In Their Own Words, which brings together the letters and writings of more than 100 women artists.

A committed philanthropist, Christian Levett has supported over 50 exhibitions at major institutions worldwide, including the British Museum, The Met, the Royal Academy, Tate, and Palazzo Strozzi, as well as archaeological excavations and restoration projects. He has served on the boards of the Ashmolean Museum and The Met, is currently a board member of Palazzo Strozzi, and is a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford.

Follow: @FAMM_Mougins
Visit: https://famm.com
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Robert meets Harold Offeh, an artist working in a range of media including performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice. Offeh is interested in the space created by the inhabiting or embodying of histories. He employs humour as a means to confront the viewer with historical narratives and contemporary culture.

We discuss Harold Offeh’s TRUSTFUL STRANGERS INDUCE FEARLESS WALKS, the third iteration of the Paddington Square x The Showroom annual billboard commission. The project developed from a series of workshops and conversations between Offeh and a group of young people from The Showroom’s Imagining Futures programme.

Through a process of gathering materials, collage, role-play and writing, they explored the idea of public space and the importance of building communities that care and look out for each other, fostering trust in strangers.
In generating the phrase ‘Trustful Strangers Induce Fearless Walks’ they created a statement that speaks to their hopeful desire to increase empathy and mutual trust between anonymous passers-by as they encounter each other in London’s streets and public spaces.

The work is presented on a giant billboard at Paddington Square on the corner of Tanner Lane and Praed Street, extending beyond the billboard’s physical borders via audio clips of spoken-word, poetry, streams of consciousness, reflections and song by the young collaborators. These are accessible via a QR code onsite.
The billboard stands in dialogue with Offeh’s exhibition at The Showroom TRUSTFUL STRANGERS INDUCE FEARLESS ALIENS which brings together a selection of works from Offeh’s 25-year practice; confronting dominant histories and present-day cultural norms. The exhibition runs until 15 August.
Together the two presentations look back and look forward, positioning imagination as a powerful tool for creating more hopeful futures.

He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally including Tate Britain and Tate Modern, South London Gallery, Turf Projects, London, Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, Wysing Art Centre, Studio Museum Harlem, New York, MAC VAL, France, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Denmark and Art Tower Mito.

He studied Critical Fine Art Practice at The University of Brighton, MA Fine Art Photography at the Royal College of Art and recently completed a PhD by practice exploring the activation of Black Album covers through durational performance. He lives in Cambridge and works in London, UK. He previously held the role of Reader in Fine Art at Leeds Beckett University and was a visiting tutor at Goldsmiths College and The Slade School of Art, UCL, London. He is currently the Head of Programme in MA Contemporary Art Practice and a visiting lecturer in MA Print at the Royal College of Art.

Follow: @Harold_Offeh
Visit: https://haroldoffeh.com
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Robert meet artist Emii Alrai to explore
her new exhibition Lures at Carl Freedman Gallery in Margate.

Emii Alrai is an artist whose work spans material investigation in relation to memory, critique of the western museological structure and the complexity of ruins.

Working primarily in sculpture and installation, her work operates as large-scale realms built in relation to bodies of research which concern archaeology and the natural environments objects are excavated from. Her practice weaves in oral histories, inherited nostalgia and the details of language to question the rigidity of Empire and the power of hierarchy to interpolate the static presence of history. The installations physically weave together hand built clay vessels which are patinated to look like ancient artefacts, steel braces and polystyrene hewn into amorphous landscapes.

Mimicry and theatricality are at the heart of the work, with forms covered in gypsum, sand, tar and various pigments to create monumental environments that replicate the ideas of a romanticised past and the histories of archaeological excavation. In this material exploration in relation to bodies of research, Alrai’s practice allows for conversations around memory, nostalgia and language to surface critiquing current structures of rigidity and how these may stem from the lasting shadow of imperialism.

Beyond merely critiquing or reproducing these structures, the work’s bending of time and space imagines ways in which to go forward in our understanding of history, its retelling and its romanticism and opens dialogue with the ways we engage history in our construction of the future.

In 2026, Alrai completed residencies at the Tracey Emin Foundation, Margate and the Pilchuck Glass School, Tacoma (founded by Dale Chihuly).

Lures, a solo exhibition by Emii Alrai, runs @CarlFreedmanGallery from 27th September until 8th November 2026. Open from Wednesday - Sunday, 12-5 pm

🔗 Follow @EmiiAlrai

#EmiiAlrai
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Robert meets legendary musician Johnny Marr to celebrate the launch day of his brand new album The Age Of Everything, out today!!!

Johnny Marr is one of the most creative, singular and influential guitar players in the history of pop music. He created a shimmering sonic framework for 1980s indie in his visionary work in The Smiths that continues to be foundational and endlessly emulated to this day.

He’s been a member of The The, teamed up with New Order’s Bernard Sumner to form the electronic pop outfit, Electronic, and has also had stints in bands such as Modest Mouse, The Pretenders, The Cribs as well as contributing guitar for Pet Shop Boys. But despite a lifetime of collaborations, Marr is in something of a new chapter of his career as a solo artist. In the last 13 years he has released five albums, with the latest undoubtedly his best yet: The Age of Everything.

The Age Of Everything is Johnny Marr's fifth full length studio record. 10 new songs that he describes as the most cathartic songwriting of his career. Written in London, developed live on the road across the East Coast of North America and recorded in Manchester, The Age Of Everything captures the energy and tensions of the city. Sharp, fast and dynamic, filled with ideas and possibilities.

Introducing the album, Johnny Marr said: “This is the record that’s been the most cathartic. The title came to me early in the process and became an inescapable idea.It seemed to sum up the way I think a lot of people are feeling. It’s all encompassing, but it's not necessarily a negative statement. There’s a sense of overwhelm in the culture brought about by technology, but looking at it with a different light, there could also be a sense of possibility.”

It is the unique dialogue that exists between Johnny Marr and his audience that has turbo-charged the sound of The Age Of Everything. Whilst touring the East Coast of North America in late 2025, more than half of the set consisted of brand new and unheard music. This research and development in the field brought a new energy to the songs, something inspired by what Johnny describes as a preoccupation with perception. How we perceive things as we move through life. Considering the possibility of everything: good and bad. Choosing the promise of the future, with defiance and resistance.

Few artists remain as relentlessly creative as Johnny Marr. Since launching his solo career he has scored five UK Top 10 albums, released a Sunday Times bestselling autobiography Set The Boy Free, recorded the James Bond theme for No Time To Die with Billie Eilish, received the Ivor Novello Inspiration Award, an Academy Award nomination for his work with Hans Zimmer on Inception, NME's Godlike Genius honour, and played sold-out tours and major festivals across the world. The years that have elapsed since the release of 2022's Fever Dreams Pts 1-4 album signalled a new era, bringing the career-spanning collection Spirit Power: The Best Of Johnny Marr, the acclaimed photobook Marr's Guitars, full orchestral concert A Night With The Johnny Marr Orchestra, the Look Out Live! album, as well as writing and recording with Gorillaz, Franz Ferdinand, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds and performing on the HELP(2) album with Grian Chatten (Fontaines DC) and Kae Tempest - the latest in a long line of exciting and unexpected collaborations.

Listen to The Age Of Everything here. The new album is available on CD, black vinyl and limited edition red vinyl.

Follow @JohnnyMarrGram
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New Talk Art podcast episode! Robert meets artist Lewis Hammond to explore his first museum presentation in the UK, featuring a new body of paintings developed specifically for The Hepworth Wakefield.

A graduate of the Royal Academy School in 2017, Hammond’s practice reflects a fascination with the materiality of oil paint and the evocative power of dark, earthy tones. His charged, fantastical paintings interweave mythological elements with contemporary themes and explore the interplay between personal relationships and global socio-political events. Drawing inspiration from Old Masters like Caravaggio, Velåzquez, and Goya, he creates haunting, statuesque figures that traverse boundaries between the individual and the archetypal.

At The Hepworth Wakefield, Hammond explores the theme of home and what defines a place of belonging. He examines how various states of existence can strip us of this sense, leaving us to confront the dislocation and alienation that arise from being without a place to call home. Hammond’s paintings serve as love letters to both notions of home and to those who are without one.

As an artist who has spent several years based in Berlin – and is now returning to the UK to establish his studio – this exhibition serves as both a homecoming and a reflection on themes of disconnection and ways of coming together.

🔗 Follow @LewisLHammond

🖼️ Lewis Hammond: Crystal in the Shade is open now at The @HepworthWakefield, running until 1st November 2026.

Visit: https://hepworthwakefield.org/whats-on/lewis-hammond/

Special thanks to Rozsa and the team at @ArcadiaMissa, who represent Lewis in London.

📻 Listen to @TalkArt podcast, stream now: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts! Hosted by @RobertDiament.
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