Guest artists JENNET THOMAS and SALLY O'REILLY come together to discuss their work via the short story 'Critique' by Ben Marcus. Published in 2018 by Alfred A Knopf and Grant Books, it is one of 13 stories appearing in 'Notes from the Fog' which explore dysfunction, desolation and disconnection within a woundingly funny collision of art and reality.

'The Big Throw' at SET Social 23 April 2026

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"...narrative plot and how sticky and unpleasant it can be" JT

"The idea of just working in response to the infinity of the universe is appalling to me" SO'R

Sally and Jennet's conversation encompasses anti-plot, delirium, vertigo, maximalism, hermeticism, visitations and the grotesque. Yearning superpowers of persuasion, they go on and about carboot sales, ontological slippage, lemon sucking, deceptive loops, skewing language, twiddling knobs, automatic sterilisers, visually flamboyant, minor violences, constricting constraints, painting barcodes, slyly political, shifting rules, making knickerbockers, troubling reality, social reproductions, found objects, draped flesh and ecstatic technology talk. As well as working in a factory, the pleasure of difficulty, a taste in the head, reality from the inside out, audience participation as part of the materials, weirdness coming into the living room, jumping to the whip of the ref, being wary of simplification and elegance, well made in a brutal violent sense at gunpoint, and a seal in mud with a lion's head.

JENNET THOMAS

jennetthomas.com

@jennetthomas

'School of Change' 2012

'All Suffering SOON TO END!' 2010

'Return of the Black Tower (after John Smith)' 2007

SALLY O'REILLY

sallyoreilly.org.uk

@manfredopenarms

'The Money Laundering Service' 2025

'Dog Shelves' 2024

'Where They Gather' 2022

'Estee Lauder Factory' 2022

'The Annual Retrieval' 2016

'The Virtues of Things' 2015

"I can't breath"

Eric Garner

George Floyd

ARTISTS

John Smith

Kit Downes

Klara Kofen

Leo Chadburn

Matt Rogers

Maz Murray

Simeon Barclay

WRITERS + BOOKS

Christine Brooke-Rose

Frieze magazine

M John Harrison

Muriel Spark

Russell Hoborn 'Riddley Walker'

Sally O'Reilly 'Help in Cucumbers'

Will Self

William Empson

FILM + TELEVISION

'Bedknobs and Boomsticks'

'Brimstone and Treacle'

Dennis Potter

Michael Kitchen

'The Terminator'

GALLERIES + ORGANISATIONS

Bandcamp

Horse Hospital

Matts Gallery

ICA Institute Contemporary Art

October House Records

Opera North

Royal Opera House

SET Social

SLG South London Gallery

Guest artist CARRIE MOYER

joins JILLIAN KNIPE to discuss her work via 'Cassandra at the Wedding' by Dorothy Baker. Published in 1962 by Houghton Mifflin (US) and Victor Gollancz (UK), most recently Daunt Books, with sympathetic tenderness and acerbic wit, it follows twin sisters Cassandra and Judith as they navigate Judith’s wedding to a very pleasant and capable young doctor.

The other key characters are their father, a retired philosophy professor who fancies a Brandy soda tipple, the ghost of their dead mother and their maternal grandmother.

Get in touch with us via artfictionspodcast@gmail.com

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"it feels like all of the interesting innovations have been done by women painters in terms of abstraction"

Carrie and Jillian's conversation encompasses activism, wit, abandonment, confusion, family, ambivalence, agitpop, snarkiness, ambiguity, galaxy, queer, optical bliss, transitional places, menacing edge, geological time, mental illness, burying identity, utter distaste, ominous vibe and deadpan humour. They also talk about family as a cult, female body parts, destabilised vibration of colours, digging under conventions, being a lesbian in public, hard edge abstraction, vicious in a great beautiful smart way, wholesome hetro homemakers, abstract expressionism as a language and what the future is supposed to hold for you as a young woman.

CARRIE MOYER

'Always Venus, Never Mars' Pilar Corrias 23 Jan - 7 Mar 2026

carriemoyer.com

@carrie.moyer.studio

'Queer Abstraction' Des Moines Art Center by Curator Jared Ledesma 1 Jun - 8 Sep 2019

'Cave Dwellers who Paint Abstraction' 2025

'Radiant Granularity' 2025

'Art Glass' 2016

ARTISTS + CURATORS

Amy Sillman

Anish Kapoor

Béla Bartók

David Getsy

Dona Nelson

Elizabeth Murray

Frank Stella

Helen Frankenthaler

Jack Whitten '9.11.01' 2006 after Sep 11 2001

Judy Chicago

Laura Owens

Louise Fishman

Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley 'Best Femmes Forever'

Morris Louis

Pat Steir

Rebecca Byrne

Rochelle Feinstein

Sabine Moritz

Stephen Meuller

William Butler Yeats

BOOKS + AUTHORS + FILM

Anna Burns 'The Milkman' narrator Brid Brennan

Arundhati Roy 'Mother Mary Comes to Me'

Audible

'Carrie Moyer' 2021 with contributions by Lauren O'Neill-Butler, Katy Siegel, Joanna Dinah Fateman by Rizzoli Electa

Flann O'Brien 'The Third Policeman' narrator Jim Norton

J D Salinger 'Catcher in the Rye'

John Gray 'Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus'

'The Ice Tower'

Travis Jeppesen 'Queer Abstraction (Or How to Be a Pervert with No Body) Some Notes Toward a Probability' Mousse magazine 2019

'Young Man with a Horn' 1950

UNIVERSITIES + ORGANISATIONS

Boston University

Daunt Books

Hunter College, New York

London Film Festivals

MoMA, New York 'Jack Whitten: The Messenger' 2025

Pratt Institute

From Episode 9, ALICE BROWNE chats with JILLIAN KNIPE about what she's been doing, reading and seeing, as well as her hopes for the year ahead.

We delve into worship, floating, yellow, sainthood, caves, underwolds, pergatory, visceral visions, dark spaces, psychological potential, sharing dreams, self destruction, happy endings, vertical journeys, painting cracks, slapstick behaviour, maleable materials, early renaissance paintings and being a shit actress.

ALICE BROWNE

alicebrowne.com

@alicerbrowne

ARTISTS

Adam Hennessey

Ann Hamilton

Gabriela Giroletti

Giovanni de Paolo

Hannah Hughes

Hannah Tilson

Jennifer Caroline Campbell

Josephine Baker

Laura White

Lauren Godfrey

Lena Brazen

Lucy Mayes

Mikhail Karikis

Oona Grimes

Pia Pack

Zadie Xa

BOOKS + WRITERS

The Call of Cthulhu by H P Lovecraft

Cherry Smyth

The Divine Comedy by Dante

Drowned World by J G Ballard

Love Letter by George Saunders

The Natural Pigment Handbook by Lucy Mayes

Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy

ORGANISATIONS + COLLECTIVES

A P P E A R Artworks

Binder of Women

Bow Arts

Gillian Jason Gallery

Hypha Studios

National Gallery

Outpost Gallery

Pinnacle Climbing Club

Sainsbury Wing

Salts Mill

Turner Prize

Guest artist ALINE MOTTA

joins PELUMI ODUBANJO to discuss her work via 'Water is a Time Machine' by the artist herself. Originally published in Brazilian Portuguese by Fósforo Editora and Luna Parque Edições in 2022, the text reconfigures memories by using a non-linear perception of time and is part of a multi-layered project including video and performance. It includes personal documents that belong to the artist's mother, her calendars and journals from the 1970s and an account of her death in 2011, which is the central piece and backbone of the work.

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EMAIL US DIRECTLY! artfictionspodcast@gmail.com

Aline and Pelumi discuss the book's stories around the artist's family members and their lives in Rio de Janeiro at the turn of the 20th century, a time of political turmoil which immediately followed the abolition of slavery. Their conversation encompasses floating, bombs, bridges, tuberculosis, mistranslation, iconography, submerging, chemotherapy, prayer, breathing, stoicism, Catholicism, time machines, interracial marriage, film school, personal archives, double images, direct communication, permanent connections, exchanging cells, changing organs, fraught connections, Congolese traditions, disciplinarian mothers, avoiding sugarcoating, intentional disorientation, umbilical cords, oral histories, heavy heartedness, Yoruba influences, colonial erasure, speculative studies, layers of time, writing in fragments, metaphors of motherhood, constructing new narratives, sleeping in hammocks, foundations of thought, clothes being archives, abolition of slavery, lineage as language, contradictions in relationships, the beginning of the Republic, the way histories are told in (black) families, trying to find reasons for a person's death, the magic of making someone breath under water, using words to make maps, connecting personal history with collective history, envisioning new pasts to free us from old narratives and manifest new futures, plus a recipe to treat bruises.

ALINE MOTTA

alinemotta.com

@1alinemotta

'A água é uma máquina do tempo' / 'Water is a time machine'

'(Outros) Fundamentos' / '(Other) Foundations'

'Pontes sobre Abismos' / 'Bridges over the Abyss'

INSTITUTIONS

Bienal de São Paulo 2023 'Choreographies of the Impossible'

Buenos Aires, Palermo Buenos Aires, Argentina

Centre Pompidou, France

MALBA Museo de Arte Lanoamericano de Buenos Aires / Latin American Art Museum of Rietberg Museum, Zurich

ARTISTS + FILM + WRITERS

'BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions' 2025

John Akomfrah 'Vertigo Sea' 2015

Kathleen Collins 'Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?' 2016

Kahlil Joseph

'Losing Ground' 1982 Machado de Assis 'Father Against Mother' 1906

Professor Stuart Hall (1932-2014)

Rosana Paulino

Saidiya Hartman 'Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route' 2006

'The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy' 1980

PLACES

Angola

Australia

Bahia

Bahia

Brazil

Burma

Cachoeira

Congo

Germany

Ghana

Guanabara Bay

Myanmar

Niterói

Nigeria

Portugal

Rio de Janeiro

São Paulo

Sierra Leone

Torres Strait Islands

TERMS + CULTURAL GROUPS

ase/ashe

Bantu languages

capoeira martial art movement

Kimbundu/Mbundu language

maracatu dance

ori

orishas

oyinbo/oyibo

samba dance

Yoruba

Guest artist AYO AKINGBADE

joins ELIZABETH FULLERTON to discuss her work via 'In the Eye of the Wild' by Nastassja Martin. Published in 2021, the story follows the aftermath of a French anthropologist's gruesome attack by a bear, while she is living with the Evan people on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula.

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EMAIL US artfictionspodcast@gmail.com

Ayo and Elizabeth's conversation encompasses healing, hostility, joy, architecture, nepotism, romance, underdogs, irony, phobias, animism, neglect, transformation, swimming, analogue, memoir, disfigurement, hopefulness, multifaceted, strong women, self-centring, turning points, arthouse niche, tarot reading, anthropological study, defence mechanisms, shared fearlessness, spiritual guides, questioning society's expectations, power in names, thinking the worse, colonisation of microbes, French new wave and the rewards of positive thinking.

AYO AKINGBADE

ayoakingbade.com

'Keep Looking' 2024, 14 minute film

'Head of Idoani Girl' 2024, giclee print

'Show Me the World Mister' 2023, publication

'Faluyi' 2022, 14 minute film

'The Fist' 2022, 24 minute film

'Jitterbug' 2022, 24 minute film

'Dear Babylon' 2019, 21 minute film

'Tower XYZ' 2017 3 minute film

BOOKS WRITERS

Derek Walcott 'The First'

Franz Kafka 'The Trial'

Fred Moten

FILM ARTISTS

Agnès Varda

Alfred Hitchcock

Alice Rohrwacher 'La Chimera'

Chantal Akerman 'Family Business'

Chris Marker 'Sans Soleil'

David Lynch

Harun Farocki 'Workers Leaving the Factory' 1995

Mark Dion

Jacques Rivette

Jean-Luc Godard

Jim Jarmusch

Julian Schnabel 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly'

Lumière Brothers 'Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in Lyon' 1895

Roni Horn

Stanley Kubrick 'Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb'

Steve McQueen 'Caribs' Leap / Western Deep' 2002

Steven Spielberg

Quentin Tarantino 'Inglorious Bastards'

Werner Herzog 'Grizzly Man'

ARCHITECTURE

Dora Boatemah

Le Corbusier

ART INSTITUTIONS

Artangel London

Chisenhale Gallery

Cinereach

Institute of Contemporary Art

John Hansard Gallery

London Film Festival

London LCC

Spike Island

The Baltic Gateshead

The Whitworth

PERFORMERS

Ebenezer Obey 'The Only Condition to Save Nigeria'

Josh O'Connor

Kate Bush

Okwui Okpokwasili

Sade Adu

ART FICTIONS MUSIC Griffin Knipe

ART FICTIONS LOGO Joanna Quinn

Guest artist LAUREN GODFREY

joins JILLIAN KNIPE to discuss her work via 'Heartburn' by Nora Ephron. Published in 1983, it tells a recipe rich story of Rachel Samstat and her husband Mark's marriage breakdown as a result of his affair with Thelma Rice.

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Lauren and Jillian's conversation encompasses misogyny, kreploch soup, fat phobia, hot sass, slaying haters, brilliant naivety, acerbic wit, catching glimpses, high drama and potatoes as a signpost for the progress and decline of relationships. Also: losing the plot, aubergine as icon, minutiae of life, mid pregnancy betrayal, magnifying tiny moments, passing on recipes through generations, mapping of time and place through food, flood of linguistic lyricism, the power of choosing clothes, menu choice as an identity market and distilling culture into a witty sentence.

LAUREN GODFREY

@laurengodfreystudio

laurengodfrey.co.uk

'Pattern Portraits podcast'

'Group Hat'

'What We Wore'

GET IN TOUCH with us by EMAIL artfictionspodcast@gmail.com

ARTISTS CURATORS

Adam Boyd

Anni Albers

Anthea Hamilton

Bethan Laura Wood

Bruce MacLean

Capability Brown

Cinzia Ruggeri

Dr George Vasey 'Harrow March 31st 2005...'

George Richardson

Gunta Stöltzl

Holly Graham

JB Blunk

Jennie Moncur

Luke Burton

Marcus Coates 'Nature Calendar'

Maria Zahle

Martin Parr

Mary Godfrey

Nadia Hebson

Patrick Heron

Rosalind Nashashibi

Rosie Gibbens

Tacita Dean 'Kodak 2006'

BOOKS AUTHORS WRITERS

AA Gill

Asako Yuzuki 'Butter'

Bob Woodwood

Carl Bernstein

Carmen Callil

David Batchelor

David Sedaris

JD Salinger 'The Catcher in the Rye' 'Franny and Zooey'

John Updike

Lena Dunham

Lennie Goodings 'Virago founder Carmen Callil was a powerhouse who changed the publishing world for the better' The Guardian 18 Oct 2022

Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast 'Crying in H Mart'

Miranda July 'All Fours'

Nora Ephron 'Forget the Hamsters' The Guardian 6 Nov 2004

Phillip Roth

Raven Smith 'Men' 'Trivial Pursuits'

Salena Barry

Tank Magazine 'Pancake Day'

Vanessa Murrell

Virago Books Modern Classics

ART INSTITUTIONS

Bauhaus

Coal Drops Yard

De La Warr Pavillion

Design Museum

Gasworks

Goldsmiths CCA

Harewood House Trust

ICA

Kingsgate Project Space

Krupa Gallery

The Memphis Group

New Contemporaries

Vital Arts at Newham Hospital

FILM

Anijam animation initiative

Cher

'Ghostbusters'

'Julie and Julia'

Meg Ryan

Meryl Streep

'Sex and the City'

Silkwood

Stanley Tucci 'Taste: My Life Through Food'

When Harry Met Sally

Woody Allen

CHEFS

Elizabeth David

Julia Childs

ORGANISATIONS

Taylors of Harrogate

Selfridges

NOTED PEOPLE

James Callaghan

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Ann Jay, Baroness Jay of Paddington

Maria Montessori

Melanie Klein

CREDITS

Griffin Knipe - music

Joanna Quinn of Beryl Productions - logo

Guest artist MARCUS COATES

joins JILLIAN KNIPE to discuss his work via 'Welsh Incident' by Robert Graves. Published in 1929, this short poem is a retelling of an overhead conversation about "un-Welsh" creatures emerging from the sea.

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Marcus and Jillian's conversation encompasses longing, empathy, humour, grasping, death, wolves, psychosis, parenting, migration, birds, badgers, unknowability, parenting, morality, predators, blindfolding, eagles, immigration and a willingness to be uplifted. Also: feeling inadequate, religious conformity, instinctive behaviours, war experiences, emptying yourself, the mundane, sounding pathetic, false destinations, exploitation of care, limitations of language, modes of relating, suspension of disbelief, de-centring of humanity, failure of the imagination, the ripple effect of artworks, plaster on a broken leg, stark realities of survival, travelling in the mind, proliferation of domestic cats, and the human need to buy in, to belong, to believe.

MARCUS COATES

@marcus_coates_

'Conference of the Birds'

katemacgarry.com/artworks/9111-marcus-coates-conference-for-the-birds-2019/

'The Trip'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEAuRv0xv8M

'The Directors'

artangel.org.uk/project/the-directors/

whatsgoingon.org.uk

'Sunbird for Palestine'

bookworks.org.uk/publishing/shop/palestine-sunbird/

'Dawn Chorous'

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zF1uihdcZmY

'The Last of its Kind'

workplace.art/exhibitions/the-last-of-its-kind

'Nature Calendar'

katemacgarry.com/artworks/10446-marcus-coates-nature-calendar-2022/

'Finfolk'

COLLABORATORS

Helen Macdonald 'H is for Hawk'

Jeff Samples

ARTISTS & PERFORMERS

Brian Catling

Fiona Curran 'Your Sweetest Empire is to Please'

Helen Chadwick

Marylin Munroe

Richard Ayodeji Ikhide

Richard Burton

Thomas Bewick

AUTHORS & BOOKS

Anna Burns 'The Milkman'

Flann O'Brien 'The Third Policeman'

Robert Graves 'Welsh Incident'

GALLERIES & ART ORGS

Artangel

Freize Art Fair

Kate MacGarry

Royal Academy

The Serpentine

FILM

'The Boy and the Heron' Hayao Miyazake for Studio Ghibli

RESEARCH ARTICLE

theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/12/why-birdsong-matters-more-than-you-think

.

Guest artist HELEN JOHNSON

joins JILLIAN KNIPE for this final episode of Series 5, to discuss her work via 'The Birds' by Tarjei Vesaas. Published originally in 1957, then by Penguin Random House in 2019, this short novel describes the relationship between Hege and her younger, mentally challenged brother Mattis. With a sense of non-judgemental simplicity and acute sensitivity, we join the siblings as they negotiate everyday life in partial isolation and on the edge of something happening.

HELEN and Jillian's conversation encompasses lightning, tenderness, siblings, gullibility, hiding, tapestry, holding, frustration, anguish, excavation, metaphors, equality, masking, knitting needles, dream worlds, shattered trees, portals, body punctures, art therapy, white supremacy, honest thieves, cartography lines, blinding flies, Oedipus complex, intergenerational privilege, psychotic structure, architectural blueprints, birthing shit, monetising colonialisation, not being othered, the weight of the work, creating a space for healing, writing being like a drawing, and a lot of Lacanian psychotherapy - a real learning experience !

HELEN JOHNSON

helenjohnson.net

'Opening' Pilar Corrias Savile Row til 6 Jan 2024

'Agency' Pilar Corrias 2019

'Warm Ties' ICA 2017

ARTISTS

Aleksandra Waliszewska

Aliza Nisenbaum

Bridget Riley

Christina Quarles

Denzil Forrester

Fred Williams

Georgiana Houghton

Joy Labinjo

Judy Watson

Katie Pratt

Laura Owens

Maja Ruznic

Marcus Coates 'The Directors' Artangel

Melanie Jackson

Nicole Eisenman

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Paola Balla

Rosie Mullan

Shanti Panchal

Yhonnie Scarce

AUTHORS + BOOKS

Darian Leader 'The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression' 2008

Jackie Wullschläger 'Monet: The Resless Vision' 2023

Jennifer Higgie 'The Other Side: A Journey into Women, Art and the Spirit World' 2023

Karl Ove Knausgaard

National Gallery of Australia 'Know My Name: Australian Women Artists Since 1900' 2021 Part 1 2022 Part 2

CURATORS + ART HISTORIANS

Helen Molesworth 'Dialogues' David Zwirner

Sarah McCrory

THEORISTS + ANALYSTS + ACTIVISTS

Anna Freud

Donald Winnicott

Jacques Lacan

Joy Shaverien

Melanie Klein

Meriki Onus

Sigmund Freud

Shirley Sharon-Zisser 'What Would a Lacanian Art Therapy Look Like'

Walter Benjamin

Wilfred Bion

GALLERIES + ART INSTITUTIONS

Glasgow International

ICA Institute of Contemporary Art

Kunstverein in Hamburg

Kingsgate Project Space

Latrobe University

MCA NSW Museum of Contemporary Art Australia

NGV National Gallery of Victoria

Pilar Corrias

SeMA Seoul Museum of Art

Tate Galleries