Art Destinations

Ep 12: Reflecting on the Lutruwita Tasmania season

We reflect on the Art Destinations Lutruwita | Tasmania season in a wrap-up episode that draws links between the 10 artists and writers in conversationacross the episodes. We also draw parallels between season 1 Venice and season 2 Lutruwita | Tasmania.
World leading philosopher on place Jeff Malpas lays the foundation for the Lutruwita | Tasmania season as his conversation frames the role of place in thinking. We examine how artists’ practices are shaped by cultural memory and the natural environment.
In this episode we cover: :
examine art as activism from the perspectives of Matthew Newton, David Stephenson and Raymond Arnold,
the role of isolation in forming a connection with nature, building community and finding resonances interationally as shared through the work of Troy Ruffels, Zoe Grey and Ellen Dahl,
imagination and place through Pat Brassington’s surreal works explore feminist themes while reflecting an imagined sense of place,
stories that give access to isolated worlds through Adam Thompson’s short stories based on his Indigenous culture and Lisa Garland’s stories behind the portraits of her North-West Coast community, and
we draw parallels between the Venice and Lutruwita | Tasmania seasons. In Venice, artists embrace marginality as a strength, collaborating on smaller islands in the lagoon to reimagine shared spaces. In Tasmania, geographical isolation inspires self-reflection and deep connection with the natural world.
In summary, being on the edge—geographically, culturally, or conceptually—offers unique opportunities for reflection, innovation, and meaningful engagement with place and environment. We explore how art thrives in these peripheral spaces.

Ep 11: David Stephenson on time and the sublime in photography

We are in conversation with US-born photographic artist David Stephenson, who received an MFA from the University of New Mexico in 1982 before taking a teaching position at the University of Tasmania’s School of Art. His work has consistently explored the sublime, in relation to his transcendental experience of place.
With an ongoing interest in human interventions in the landscape, David arrived in Tasmania in the lead-up to the Franklin Dam blockade and continues to document Tasmania’s contested places. He also experiments with the different ways the photographic image, and different subject matters, can represent time.
His work is in many permanent collections including the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and both the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
David Stephenson is represented by Bett Gallery, Hobart, Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta and Boutwell Schabrowsky, Munich.
You can see David’s work on our instagram page @artdestinations.podcast

Ep 10: Part 2 - Raymond Arnold on revitalising a region through art

This is the second part of our two-part conversation with Raymond Arnold. Raymond talks about his printmaking and painting practice, and how he shares his art practice with his community in Queenstown with the aim of revitalising the region.
In part one, Raymond gave us some background on why Lutruwita | Tasmania is such an important landscape and how it became an environmental batttleground.
For the listeners who have never been to Queenstown, it is an extremely isolated town on Lutruwita's west coast, surrounded by forest and mountain ranges. It is now a landscape healing after bearing scars from an energetic copper extraction and smelter operation starting at the turn of the 20th Century; which left the surrounding mountains bare and the rivers polluted.
In the late 1990s Raymond left teaching at the Tasmanian School of Art, and moved to Queenstown with his partner Helena Demczuk. Since then they have focused on their art practises and use art to revitalise the town.

Ep 9: Part 1 - Raymond Arnold on community in the environmental battlegrounds of Tasmania

We are in conversation with the wonderful painter and printmaker Raymond Arnold, who has lived in Queenstown, on Lutruwita | Tasmania’s West Coast since the late 1990s with his wife Helena, Demczuk and their four whippets.
The conversation naturally shaped itself into two main themes: environmental activism and his art practice, so we have divided his podcast into two 35-minute parts.
In part one, Raymond explains his involvement in the Franklin Dam blockade. He had just taken a teaching position at the Tasmanian School of Art when he was invited to join the busload of artists travelling to protest against the damming of one of Tasmania’s last wild rivers. They were all among the 1300 arrested.
This formative experience contributed to Raymond’s intimate understanding of Tasmania as a social, political and environmental battleground.

Ep 8: Lisa Garland on photographing her community

We are in conversation with Lisa Garland, a photographic artist who has been documenting her community on the North-West Coast for more than 20 years. Lisa makes portraits of people so deeply connected to where they live that often the portrait of their place tells more about them than the people themselves. As a new generation is emerging and another passing, Lisa reflects on what she looks for in her subjects and how her focus is changing.
In this episode we cover: 
how Lisa’s photographic portraits of people and places are influenced by her upbringing and community,
how Lisa’s early career as a newspaper photographer made her value her own personal projects, particularly portraits of her family and community members,
documenting generational changes occuring in Lutruwita | Tasmania, particularly during residencies in Queenstown and King Island,
how the intimate relationship between artist and subject comes through in her images and the extent the stories shared are conveyed through image and text,
the changes in Tasmania's cultural and physical landscapes and the loss of traditional craftsmanship,
her shift from portraiture to photographing symbolic spaces, and
the value of storytelling and the significance of preserving the authenticity of her subjects and their environments.

Ep 7: Pat Brassington on childhood, the familiar and the fantastical

We are in conversation with Pat Brassington, one of Australia’s most significant and influential artists. Over four decades, Brassington has captivated audiences with her ability to transform the familiar into the fantastical through her enigmatic photomontages. 
This conversation is recorded as a radio play where a voice artist performs Brassington’s responses to my questions.
 
In this episode we cover:
how Brassington’s childhood in Hobart has influenced her practice. At a young age, Brassington contracted polio. She was confined to her bedroom for six weeks and experienced a heightened feeling of isolation. This experience, in combination with catching tadpoles with her brother and playing in suburban backyards, sparked her artistic imagination.
how Tasmania and the concept of isolation influenced her artistic imagination,
Brassington’s exploration of contradictions, inspired by dialectics, surrealism and psychoanalysis,
her use of distortion, symbolism, and the provocative use of pink, and
insights into her lens-based practice, blending straight photography with manipulated images to evoke unsettling yet captivating emotions.
 

Ep 6: Adam Thompson on writing and moonbirding on the islands

Adam Thompson, a Pakana writer, sources much of the inspiration for his stories from his experiences working across the archipelago of Furneaux islands between lutruwita | Tasmania and mainland Australia. These islands are not only the backdrop for his dark moral tales but they also hold his family history.
We talk about his work as a builder and ranger on Badger, Mount Chappell and Big Dog islands that inspired his collection of short stories Born Into This, as well as the TV series Moonbird to be screened on the SBS channel NITV in 2025.
Adam shares his writing process and how he sees his role as a father imparting his cultural knowledge to his son.
 
I acknowledge, with deep respect, the traditional owners of Lutruwita (Tasmania) Aboriginal land, sea and waterways. For many years the Palawa people referred to this land as Palanwina Lurini Kanamaluka meaning ‘the town near river Tamar’. I respectfully acknowledge their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.

Ep 5: Ellen Dahl on finding connections between the peripheries of Tasmania and Svalbard

Ellen Dahl is a visual artist who grew up in the Arctic North of Norway and is now living and working on Gadigal Country in Sydney. Her expanded photographic practice questions whether the landscapes in lutruwita | Tasmania, and Svalbard, north of the Arctic Circle share something in common. Do these two places on the peripheries offer another way of understanding how we see and feel about the world? 
Our conversation follows her winning the National Photography Prize 2024 with MAMA Albury, showing at the contemporary photography art fair Unseen Amsterdam and her current Oct/Nov 2024 show with Melbourne gallery, This is No Fantasy.