We recorded this episode, the first in our new Enchantment season, live at Red Lion Books in Colchester as part of Sluice [Vernacular] - the latest interation of the artist led organisation's expo.

Our guest for the episode is Hayley Lock, an artist whose interests lie in the occult and its intersection with female otherness. Her chosen cultural artifact is a mystical mirror, reputedly owned by Elizabeth I's court astronomer John Dee, which is currently housed in the British Museum.

Hayley talks about working with and under hypnosis, the Essex witch trials, and finding witch marks in the windmill attached to her house on the Suffolk/Norfolk borders. Not quite coincidentally Witch Marks is also the name of Transition Gallery's exhibition at The Minories in Colchester which took part over Sluice weekend (14-16 June 2024) and featured Hayley's artworks alongside work by six other artists.

Cathy Lomax and Jennifer Caroline Campbell talk to Mississippi born actor/director Jaclyn Bethany about Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie.

This is the latest episode in our Biography series – The Glass Menagerie is inspired by Williams own life and he based the narrator, Tom, on himself. We discuss Jaclyn's experiences of playing Laura (a character inspired by Williams' sister Rose), her participation in a recent production of The Pretty Trap (an early version of The Glass Menagerie) and her new film Tell That to the Winter Sea. We also talk about the latest Tennessee Williams issue of Arty magazine which is edited by Jaclyn and Cathy, and the Transition Gallery exhibition Hard Candy which includes Williams inspired work by Cathy, Jennifer and five other artists.

Cathy Lomax and Jennifer Caroline Campbell talk to writer and artist Jennifer Higgie about her most recent book The Other Side: A Journey into Women Art and the Spirit World. 

This is the latest episode in our Biography series and we discuss the way the book is structured around elements of memoir. The conversation takes in The Dark Monarch, weaving, Emily Kam Kngwarray, Georgiana Houghton, conspiracy theories, Annie Besant, Ithell Colquhoun and much more!

The painting on the cover of The Other Side is by Donna Huddleston

For episode five of our first season we talk to artist Luke Burton. Our discussion is centred on Luke's chosen cultural artefact, the 2004 Philip Guston retrospective at the Royal Academy, an exhibition he saw as a student at Chelsea College of Art, which alongside the 2023-24 Guston show at Tate Modern, bookends Luke's career as an artist. Guston is of course a hugely influential painter and the stylistic switches in his career – from figurative to abstract to figurative – are just one of the subjects we discuss. Also on the table are painting's connections to other artforms, the language of painting, Guston's controversial subject matter, and how we as artists are influenced by the work we see. Please be aware that we do deal with some sensitive material around Guston’s paintings of KKK figures which some listeners may prefer to avoid. 

We end the episode with a podcast extra made up of Luke’s vox pops about Guston gathered from other artists. 

You can see Luke Burton’s work in his solo exhibition ‘Westminster Coastal’ at Bosse and Baum, London, at the beginning of February 2024. He is also showing at The Gerald Moore Gallery at Eltham College in April 2024. 

For episode four artist Kathy Bailey selects a significant episode of Star Trek for us to talk about. 'Rejoined' was first aired in 1995 and features one of the first lesbian kisses on mainstream television. Kathy tells us about the importance of queer representation on mainstream television and the resulting discussion takes in fandom, feminine multiplicity, science fiction, collecting and the paucity of working class students in UK art schools.

In episode three we talk to Jerome, a British artist raised in London to a Grenadian family, who is interested in the language of inner-city London. Jerome has chosen the 2018 song and video Praise the Lord (Da Shine) by American rapper ASAP Rocky featuring vocals and sole production from English rapper Skepta, as his biography related, cultural artefact. We chat to Jerome about community, hip hop, poker, showing his work at the Whitechapel Gallery, the EMA and much more...

For episode two of our Biography season we are joined by artist Henni Alftan who has chosen the 1978 Swedish-made absurdist comedy Picassos äventyr (The Adventures of Picasso) as her cultural artefact – a film she watched on repeat as a child. Our discussion takes in difficult men, stretching the truth, humorous paintings, silent comedy and Hitchcock’s close-ups.

For episode one of our Biography season we are joined by artist Alex Michon to talk about punk credentials, the Danny Boyle directed series Pistol and biopics, biographies and authenticity more generally. We end with our first Salon exclusive, excerpts from Michon’s 1976 punk diary.