Ferren Gipson, Art Matters
Art Matters is a podcast that explores the interesting ways art meets popular culture and non-traditional art topics, hosted by the brilliant Ferren Gipson. As well as hosting the Art Matters podcast Ferren is the Social Media Marketer for Art UK and her research areas are modern Chinese art history, women artists and the crossover between pop culture and art.
I live in London and I still don’t go to as many galleries and exhibitions as I want to, and so I appreciate the way in which this podcast makes art accessible to me on my commute or on a lunch break. But making art accessible isn’t just about making a podcast, it’s about how it’s presented to the audience and Ferren is an expert at taking a wealth of traditional Art History knowledge and condensing it into engaging and relevant contemporary themes and topics.
Check out Ferren’s website here.
The Art Matters podcast episodes are usually about 20 minutes long, which is perfect, because it is the sort of podcast where you don’t want to zone out in case you miss something important. I find myself writing notes on my phone and googling artists as I listen. Art Matters also has a write up of each episode on their website so you can look at images of the art they are referring to as you listen.
The episodes which revolved around pop culture were my introduction to the podcast, starting with ‘When Beyoncé goes APES**T’ featuring Bee Tajudeen and making my way through the episodes which covered Ru Paul’s Drag Race, The Simpsons, Art References in Recent Hip Hop and more. These episodes encourage the listener to interrogate the visual world around them; from cartoons to music videos and notice the constant references and homages to art in them. This year Ferren got us ready for the Met Gala with a dedicated episode ‘An Introduction to the Camp Aesthetic’ which featured Zorian Clayton, maybe if some of the attendees had listened to it they would have turned up on theme, we’re looking at you Shawn Mendes, Kanye and Liam Hemsworth.
Once I had made my way through the pop culture and art crossover episodes I started to rapidly make my way through all of the others. One episode I particularly enjoyed was ‘How blind and partially sighted people engage with art’. In this episode, Ferren speaks to Anna Fineman, who is the Museums, Galleries and Heritage Programme Manager for VocalEyes. They discuss the importance of understanding that levels of sight vary, and sculpture and tactile drawings as mediums which facilitate interesting tactile engagement with works. The episode also explores the work of partially sighted artists including, Sally Booth, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Sargy Mann.
This week while you enjoy the early summer sunshine we recommend listening to (and subscribing to!) the Art Matters podcast. Find it wherever you listen to your podcasts, and you can follow Ferren on Instagram and Twitter.