Olivia Laing (Live at Hay Festival)

TALK ART SEASON TEN!!!!! We're back... and what a WONDERFUL guest we have to kick start this new series!!! Russell & Robert meet Olivia Laing, acclaimed writer and critic!!!!! Recorded live from the Hay Festival 2021 with R&R on stage in Hay on Wye, Wales and Olivia on satellite link-up from her home in London.

We discuss Olivia's extraordinary book Funny Weather. In this remarkable, inspiring collection of essays, Olivia Laing makes a brilliant case for why art matters, especially in the turbulent political weather of the 21st century. Funny Weather brings together a career’s worth of Laing’s writing about art and culture, examining its role in our political and emotional lives. She profiles Jean-Michel Basquiat and Georgia O’Keefe, interviews Hilary Mantel and Ali Smith, writes love letters to David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, and explores loneliness and technology, women and alcohol, sex and the body. 

With characteristic originality and compassion, she celebrates art as a force of resistance and repair, an antidote to a frightening political time.We’re often told art can’t change anything. Laing argues that it can. It changes how we see the world. It makes plain inequalities and it offers fertile new ways of living.

Follow @OliviaLanguage on Instagram! Visit Olivia's official website at https://www.OliviaLaing.com/ and buy her many books from The Margate Bookshop! Please support your local bookshop. BIG THANKS to the team at Hay Festival, learn more about their genius festival at https://www.HayFestival.org/

We are SO excited to be back for series 10!! We decided to start it sooner because so many of you have been messaging us and we didn't want to leave you without new episodes!!! We will be with you for the rest of the summer and beyond!!! Also, don't forget to catch up on over 130 one-hour earlier episodes from the Talk Art podcast Seasons 1-9, our treasured archive of creative thinking.

TALK ART BOOK is OUT NOW! Visit Waterstone's or The Margate Bookshop to buy our brand new book in the UK or Amazon or Bookshop.org in USA & Canada. Full list of links in our Linktree: https://linktr.ee/TalkArt

For images of all artworks discussed in this episode visit @TalkArt. Talk Art theme music by Jack Northover @JackNorthoverMusic courtesy of HowlTown.com We've just joined Twitter too @TalkArt. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. For all requests, please email [email protected]

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