Talk Art

New @TalkArt podcast episode! Season 27 finale!

Robert meets Matthew Slotover OBE, legendary publisher and entrepreneur. This episode was recorded live from Maison Estelle in London.

Matthew Slotover co-founded the art magazine Frieze in 1991 and grew into a major media and events company that has a focus on the art scene and since 2003 produces the annual Frieze Art Fair in London, later joined by fairs in New York, Los Angeles and Seoul.

In 2021 he opened Toklas, a Mediterranean restaurant in London, and in 2022, he launched Fort Road Hotel in Margate.

Matthew is currently chair of Turner Contemporary, Margate, and a board member of Sadlers Wells and the Walpole Group.

He is a founding member of the Gallery Climate Coalition, and a founding board member of Murmur, an environmental charity dedicated to using the Arts to combat climate change. Matthew served as a trustee of the Arts Foundation until 2024.

Follow @MSlotover

Thanks for listening to Season 27. I will return soon for a whole new series!!!!
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Robert meets Luis Felber, a London based South-American multi-instrumentalist best known as Attawalpa. His meticulous production, melodies and honest lyrics evoke the future as much as the past.

We explore his love of art and growing up with an artist mother Alma Laura de Felber, a prominent Peruvian painter and artist. The Lima-born painter makes colorful, emotionally resonant oil paintings often explore themes of identity, the feminine, and human connection.

Born in Winchester, England, Felber spent his earliest years in Peru and Chile before moving back to Britain at age 7. At 17, he skipped university and began pursuing a career in music, playing guitar with several different bands and co-founding influential club night and record label Young Turks.

Felber actively incorporates his creative roots into his projects. His mother's art has been featured in his work, and he frequently collaborates with his wife, Lena Dunham including on the soundtrack for her film Catherine Called Birdy and by co-creating and scoring the Netflix comedy series Too Much.

Recording and performing under the name Attawalpa (his middle name, after the 16th-century Incan ruler Atahualpa), his albums Experience and Presence are both available now on vinyl and at all streaming platforms.

Follow: @Attawalpa

Visit: https://attawalpa.com/
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Robert meets Belfast-born Kathryn Ferguson, an Emmy and BAFTA nominated, BIFA and IFTA winning director whose innovative and boundary-pushing documentary work has screened globally. We explore art as activism and how film has the power to reveal, and amplify, untold stories. Kathryn studied at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art, and in 2022 was awarded the inaugural BFI & Chanel Award for Creative Audacity.

In 2018, Kathryn's short documentary Taking the Waters about Margate’s open water swimming premiered at Sheffield Doc Fest, and was long-listed for a BAFTA. Then, in 2021, Kathryn worked with Passion Pictures on the short Space to Be for The Guardian's acclaimed documentary series.

After a decade of short-form work centred on identity, gender politics, and community, Kathryn recently completed her debut feature documentary Nothing Compares - which takes as its subject Sinéad O'Connor's artistry and activism. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2022 then toured the international festival circuit, where it picked up multiple awards, before hitting cinemas in October 2022. It has received over thirty award nominations internationally, including Emmy, Critics Choice, IDA, and PGA Awards, and was awarded winner of Best Feature Documentary at BIFA 2022 and IFTA 2023. Nothing Compares is now available to watch on Showtime and Sky.

Her second feature, Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes (Universal), was released in US cinemas in 2024.

In 2024 she also co-founded Tara Films with producer Eleanor Emptage; their latest, Blue Road - The Edna O'Brien Story, premiered at TIFF 2024, and the company is currently developing a slate of non-fiction and drama projects. Alongside her film work, Ferguson has directed campaigns for Nike, Selfridges, Amnesty International, and Air France, and collaborated with artists such as Lady Gaga and Neneh Cherry.

Nostalgie, Kathryn's first drama short starring Aiden Gillen, about a faded 80's pop star, has recently been nominated for a BAFTA and won Best Short Film at the IFTAs 2026. The film is available to watch on Channel 4.
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Robert meets Mariane Ibrahim, leading gallerist and curator, whose mission is dedicated to the elevation and advocacy of diverse global artistic practices, with a particular spotlight on Africa and the diaspora. We explore her galleries in three cities: Mexico City, Paris and Chicago, and the artists she has championed over the past 15 years.

Currently representing artists from across the world, Ibrrahim is driven towards expanding the confines of the creative landscape. Ibrahim’s program compels her to act as something of an ambassador for nuance and complexity in an art world still prone to generalisation. While several of the emerging artists she represents hail from African countries or are members of the African diaspora, Ibrahim emphasises that they – and by extension, her gallery – have much more to offer than simplistic regional or heritage based labels could ever contain.

Mariane Ibrahim Gallery is a highly influential contemporary art gallery that focuses on supporting and championing artists from the African diaspora and diverse global backgrounds. Founded in 2012 by Somali-French art dealer Mariane Ibrahim, the gallery has experienced a phenomenal international expansion, establishing a presence across three different continents.

Follow @MarianeIbrahimGallery

Visit: https://marianeibrahim.com/
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Robert meets legendary photographer ANTON CORBIJN to discuss his major retrospective opening this weekend in Berlin at Fotografiska museum.

The story of Anton Corbijn begins in the quiet corners of a small Dutch island, where he grew up as the son of a vicar. For a young Corbijn, music was an escape, a passion that consumed him. His camera soon became both a tool and a companion, a way to channel his fascination with music and, perhaps more importantly, a means to navigate his own shyness.

When Corbijn moved to London in 1979, the city was electric with the energy of bands like The Clash, The Jam, and Joy Division. Within ten days of arriving in England, he managed to photograph Joy Division claiming he was on assignment for a major Dutch magazine, even though he hadn’t been officially commissioned.

Now, having celebrated his 70th birthday last year, Corbijn looks back on over five decades of work that spans photography, music videos, and film. Corbijn, Anton celebrates his 50-year career and revisits his extensive body of work. Here, you will encounter nearly 150 pieces: iconic portraits of legends like Depeche Mode, Tom Waits, U2, the Rolling Stones, Martin Scorsese, and Marlene Dumas, as well as German icons Nina Hagen, Herbert Grönemeyer, Einstürzende Neubauten and Wim Wenders. His signature black-and-white grainy aesthetic became a defining visual language in his work.

A polymath in photography, music videos, feature films, graphic design, and commercials, Dutchman Anton Corbijn is perhaps best known for immortalizing some of the greatest artists of our time. His iconic portraits of musicians, directors, and artists, such as Joy Division, Depeche Mode, Tom Waits, U2, the Rolling Stones, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, Gerhard Richter, Ai Weiwei, Marlene Dumas among others, are praised for the way they capture the soul and charisma of his subjects.

Effortlessly moving in the early 80s from photography into music videos, Corbijn has since made over 80 promos for people like U2, Johnny Cash, Arcade Fire, Depeche Mode, Nirvana, Metallica, Nick Cave, Coldplay, and The Killers. He is the Artistic Director behind the visual output of Depeche Mode. For U2 he has done the principal promotion and sleeve photography for four decades.

In 2006 Corbijn started working on his first feature film Control about the life, and death, of Ian Curtis, Joy Division’s lead singer. The film won many awards worldwide, including 5 BIFAs and the Camera d’Or Special Mention at Cannes Film Festival 2007. Corbijn has since made The American starring George Clooney (2010), A Most Wanted Man, based on the novel by John Le Carré and featuring the late Philip Seymour Hoffman (2014), and Life, about James Dean and photographer Dennis Stock, which stars Robert Pattinson and Dane DeHaan (2015).

In 2023, Corbijn released his first feature documentary Squaring The Circle about the iconic album art design studio Hipgnosis. In 2025, he directed his fifth feature film titled Switzerland starring Helen Mirren.

Follow: @AntonCorbijn4Real

Visit the exhibition: @Fotografiska.Berlin
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