The Art Show

One of the most influential artists in the world, Cao Fei has documented China's rapid urbanisation and digital revolutions for over two decades. In a new exhibition at AGNSW, My City is Yours, she traces the connections between major cities like Beijing and Sydney, and explores how the digital and physical worlds connect.And Karen Rogers and Sean Richard Smith share the collaborative process behind printmaking. How does this act of translation change or expand a work of art, and what is the relationship between artist and printmaker?

The histories our families share can be in the stories we tell, the food we eat, the objects that are passed down from one generation to the next. Finding our own place in those histories can be difficult, but it can also be exciting and crucial. How are Australian artists from the Asian diaspora creating their own stories? And how are they reckoning with the charged history of museum collections?Leyla Stevens uses her camera as a tool to engage with interconnected webs of song, performance, and environmental reverence. In her work, deeply beautiful sequences of Balinese jungles are punctuated with the sonic intensity of cicadas and visions of shadow puppetry.While referencing objects and materials specific to his Chinese heritage, Remy Faint considers big questions: What are the limits of painterly abstraction? How can painting be used to gesture towards cultural multiplicity? And how can you learn about yourself and your family through creating artworks?The music in this episode is taken from Leyla Stevens' video work, PAHIT MANIS, night forest, which is on display at the Art Gallery of NSW

A time-travelling, multi-regional journey through the histories of ceramics that explores how contemporary artists are politicising this elemental medium.Nell has said that “all my life is a practice", but what does that mean for the work she creates? And how has her latest piece, a quilt featuring work by 400 people, changed her perspective on collaboration?Glenn Barkley looks back at the many histories of ceramics, shares his favourite skewer, and discusses the impact of the “Anglosphere mind virus.”

The self-portrait is perhaps the most ubiquitous image of the modern era, but how do contemporary artists use the portrait, not just to reflect themselves or their subject, but to shift our understanding of who we are and who we can be?Atong Atem takes us into her practice of self-portraiture, exploring how the history of beautification has inspired her images, and why a love for interior design has been an important influence.And acclaimed contemporary artist Joan Ross explains why fluorescent yellow became central to her work, and how she is reframing the colonial context of the portrait.Those trees came back to me in my dreams is on at the National Portrait Gallery until February 2025