Start the Week

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Start the Week: Creating art; reflecting life

07/03/2022

Creating art; reflecting life

BBC Radio 4 - Start the Week, Creating art; reflecting life

Kirsty Wark with Kwame Kwei-Armah, Warsan Shire and Ralph Rugoff.

Kwame Kwei-Armah, Warsan Shire and Ralph Rugoff discuss artistic rivalry, collaboration and creativity with Kirsty Wark

New York, 1984: the iconic artist Andy Warhol meets the rising star Jean-Michel Basquiat. Their relationship as they work together on a landmark exhibition is at the heart of the world premiere of Anthony McCarten’s new drama, The Collaboration, at the Young Vic theatre. The director Kwame Kwei-Armah tells Kirsty Wark how the drama pulls apart the creative, racial and sexual tensions between the two, and explores artistic reputations and rivalries. 

The artist Louise Bourgeois was already in her 70s in the 1980s and slowly getting the attention she deserved. An exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London focuses on the decades that followed as she had a late burst of creativity using fabric and textiles. The curator of Woven Child Ralph Rugoff explains how the artist began to incorporate clothes from all stages of her life into her art, mining themes of personal trauma, memory, identity and reparation.

The Somali-British poet Warsan Shire has been hailed as the voice of a generation, who has collaborated with the superstar Beyoncé. Her debut collection, Bless The Daughter: Raised By A Voice In Her Head is full of sounds and smells, exploring the lives of refugees and the relationship between mothers and daughters. While she is celebrated as an exciting poet of our time, Shire says she looks to Somalia’s literary heritage for inspiration. 

Producer: Katy Hickman

Photo credit:  Jeremy Pope and Paul Bettany in 'Collaboration' (c) Marc Brenner. Concept and design by Émilie Chen.

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Creating art; reflecting life

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