Shows
Art DestinationsEp 10: Aurora Passero on textile art, atmosphere and heritage from Sicily to NorwayIn this episode of Art Destination Sicily, artist Aurora Passero joins us from her Oslo studio to reflect on her creative journey. Growing up in Norway, Aurora was immersed in textiles through her grandmother’s sewing and her mother’s costume design for film. Those early tactile encounters with wool, linen, velvet, and embroidery continue to shape her work today.
Aurora shares how her father’s Sicilian roots inspired her recent residency at SARP on Mount Etna, where she balanced family life with artistic deadlines. She describes weaving with nylon and local Sicilian wool, exploring the tension betwee...
2025-09-2223 min
Art DestinationsEp 9: Architect turned artist Alessandro Giorgi drawing SicilyAlessandro Giorgi joins Art Destinations Sicily to reflect on his childhood in a remote Sicilian fishing village Torretta Granitola which he describes as an island within an island. His childhood memories of migrant boats arriving from North Africa in the night and the unspoken presence of the Mafia have found their way into his art. Alessandro discusses his shift from architecture to art, and how drawing became both a meditative practice and a democratic tool.
Alessandro’s work flows across mediums—murals, stop-motion, and fluid drawings. His imagery responds to the rhythms of the sea, resis...
2025-09-0831 min
Art DestinationsEp 8: Claudio Gulli at Palazzo Butera on the art of curatingStep inside Palazzo Butera in Palermo with director Claudio Gulli, where the private collection of Francesca and Massimo Valsecchi transforms the historic palace into an experimental playground for drawing links between ancient art and contemporary culture.
Palazzo Butera displays art as if in a lived-in home, inviting you to feel comfortable and make unexpected connections between historic masterpieces, contemporary works and decorative arts.
In this episode, Claudio speaks about the Valsecchi vision, Palermo’s role as a cultural crossroad, and on how a collection can be viewed as an artwork in its own right.
2025-08-2521 min
Art DestinationsEp 7: Nomadic artist Hanna Burkart walking, sleeping and creating art in dialogue with placeVienna-born artist Hanna Burkart has spent over a decade without a permanent home, creating art through walking, sleeping and living in places across the world. In this conversation, she shares how site-specific works emerge from deep engagement in landscapes — from sleeping under the stars to transforming abandoned spaces — and how her nomadic life shapes her art.
2025-08-1141 min
Art DestinationsEp 6: Irene Coppola on fight-specific art in PalermoIn this episode of Art Destinations Sicily, Palermo-based artist Irene Coppola shares how her fight-specific art practice draws on walking to connect with the city's layered histories. Through observing, collecting, and moving through the streets, she reveals how Palermo’s fractured coastline continues to reflect the power of the past in shaping the present.
We discuss the legacy of WWII Allied bombings, the Mafia’s role in the Sack of Palermo, and the growing push to restore public access to the sea amid international investment and environmental clean-up efforts.
Irene also reflects on Mammelloni her poet...
2025-07-2838 min
Art DestinationsEp 5: Francesco Vullo on how rocks tell stories of place and selfIn this episode of Art Destinations Sicily, we speak with contemporary artist Francesco Vullo, whose sculptural practice explores the tension between permanence and ephemerality. Born in Caltanissetta in central Sicily and now based in Milan, Vullo reflects on his deep connection to the island’s geology, drawing on childhood memories of rock collecting with his geologist uncle and stories of sulphur miners from his family’s past.
Vullo shares how he works with materials like limestone, lava rock, and plastic bands to create poetic installations about environmental fragility, emotional states and deep time. From sculpting volca...
2025-07-1430 min
Art DestinationsEp 4: Vito Planeta on contemporary art, wine and SicilyIn this episode, we speak with Vito Planeta, who is shaping the cultural direction of Planeta Wineries by building on the vision of his late uncle, the winemaker and cultural advocate Vito Planeta (1966–2023). Together, they shared a belief in the connection between land, wine and contemporary art.
We discuss how the family’s estates across Sicily have become active sites for cultural engagement through the Culture for the Territory program, which commissions visual art, performance, music and literature. From a lakeside library dedicated to the late Vito to artworks embedded across five vineyard sites, Planeta Wineries is refr...
2025-06-3031 min
Art DestinationsEp 3: Elisa Giardina Papa on Sicilian myth and the Venice BiennaleWe are in conversation with Sicilian artist and scholar Elisa Giardina Papa whose practice explores subjects that resist definition.
Elisa lives and works between New York and Sant’Ignazio, Sicily, and teaches Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. She was one of the artists invited by curator Cecilia Alemani to exhibit in the main international exhibition of the 59th Venice Art Biennale in 2022, The Milk of Dreams.
Our conversation delves into the first two works in her trilogy set in Sicily—installations that blend myth, memory, and submerged histories, both literal and metaphorical.
I...
2025-06-1635 min
Art DestinationsEp 2: Alfio Puglisi on how SARP is transforming Sicily into a global hub for contemporary artAlfio Puglisi in conversation with podcast host Sarah Rhodes on how the Sicily Artist in Residence Program (SARP) is transforming Sicily into a global hub for contemporary art through site-specific residencies, local collaboration, and atmospheric place-making.
In this wide-ranging conversation, Sarah Rhodes speaks with the podcast’s co-producer Alfio Puglisi — founder of the Sicily Artist in Residence Program (SARP) — about returning to his ancestral home on the slopes of Mount Etna to forge a new vision for contemporary art in Sicily. Alfio shares his remarkable journey: from studying economics and the digital economy and society at King’s Colleg...
2025-06-0236 min
Art DestinationsEp 1: Sicily season premiereIn this premiere episode of Art Destinations Sicily, we introduce the artists and key themes that will be explored in season. We look at how artists engage with the layered geographies of Sicily — a place shaped by ancient myths, volcanic terrain, and a complex cultural inheritance. Through residencies and site-responsive projects, the artists featured in this season reveal how creative practice emerges from deep entanglements with land, memory, and material.
Our conversations begin with this podcast’s co-producer and Sicily Artist-in Residence Program (SARP) director Alfio Puglisi. And then we have the privilege of meeting Elisa Giardina Papa...
2025-05-1908 min
Art DestinationsEp 12: Reflecting on the Lutruwita Tasmania seasonWe reflect on the Art Destinations Lutruwita | Tasmania season in a wrap-up episode that draws links between the 10 artists and writers in conversationacross the episodes. We also draw parallels between season 1 Venice and season 2 Lutruwita | Tasmania.
World leading philosopher on place Jeff Malpas lays the foundation for the Lutruwita | Tasmania season as his conversation frames the role of place in thinking. We examine how artists’ practices are shaped by cultural memory and the natural environment.
In this episode we cover: :
examine art as activism from the perspectives of Matthew Newton, David Stephenson and Raym...
2025-01-2011 min
Art DestinationsEp 11: David Stephenson on time and the sublime in photographyWe are in conversation with US-born photographic artist David Stephenson, who received an MFA from the University of New Mexico in 1982 before taking a teaching position at the University of Tasmania’s School of Art. His work has consistently explored the sublime, in relation to his transcendental experience of place.
With an ongoing interest in human interventions in the landscape, David arrived in Tasmania in the lead-up to the Franklin Dam blockade and continues to document Tasmania’s contested places. He also experiments with the different ways the photographic image, and different subject matters, can represent time.
2025-01-061h 14
Art DestinationsEp 10: Part 2 - Raymond Arnold on revitalising a region through artThis is the second part of our two-part conversation with Raymond Arnold. Raymond talks about his printmaking and painting practice, and how he shares his art practice with his community in Queenstown with the aim of revitalising the region.
In part one, Raymond gave us some background on why Lutruwita | Tasmania is such an important landscape and how it became an environmental batttleground.
For the listeners who have never been to Queenstown, it is an extremely isolated town on Lutruwita's west coast, surrounded by forest and mountain ranges. It is now a landscape healing after...
2024-12-3048 min
Art DestinationsEp 9: Part 1 - Raymond Arnold on community in the environmental battlegrounds of TasmaniaWe are in conversation with the wonderful painter and printmaker Raymond Arnold, who has lived in Queenstown, on Lutruwita | Tasmania’s West Coast since the late 1990s with his wife Helena, Demczuk and their four whippets.
The conversation naturally shaped itself into two main themes: environmental activism and his art practice, so we have divided his podcast into two 35-minute parts.
In part one, Raymond explains his involvement in the Franklin Dam blockade. He had just taken a teaching position at the Tasmanian School of Art when he was invited to join the busload of ar...
2024-12-2335 min
Art DestinationsEp 8: Lisa Garland on photographing her communityWe are in conversation with Lisa Garland, a photographic artist who has been documenting her community on the North-West Coast for more than 20 years. Lisa makes portraits of people so deeply connected to where they live that often the portrait of their place tells more about them than the people themselves. As a new generation is emerging and another passing, Lisa reflects on what she looks for in her subjects and how her focus is changing.
In this episode we cover:
how Lisa’s photographic portraits of people and places are influenced by her upbringing and...
2024-12-0933 min
Art DestinationsEp 7: Pat Brassington on childhood, the familiar and the fantasticalWe are in conversation with Pat Brassington, one of Australia’s most significant and influential artists. Over four decades, Brassington has captivated audiences with her ability to transform the familiar into the fantastical through her enigmatic photomontages.
This conversation is recorded as a radio play where a voice artist performs Brassington’s responses to my questions.
In this episode we cover:
how Brassington’s childhood in Hobart has influenced her practice. At a young age, Brassington contracted polio. She was confined to her bedroom for six weeks and experienced a heightened feeling...
2024-11-2518 min
Art DestinationsEp 6: Adam Thompson on writing and moonbirding on the islandsAdam Thompson, a Pakana writer, sources much of the inspiration for his stories from his experiences working across the archipelago of Furneaux islands between lutruwita | Tasmania and mainland Australia. These islands are not only the backdrop for his dark moral tales but they also hold his family history.
We talk about his work as a builder and ranger on Badger, Mount Chappell and Big Dog islands that inspired his collection of short stories Born Into This, as well as the TV series Moonbird to be screened on the SBS channel NITV in 2025.
Adam shares his...
2024-11-1152 min
Art DestinationsEp 5: Ellen Dahl on finding connections between the peripheries of Tasmania and SvalbardEllen Dahl is a visual artist who grew up in the Arctic North of Norway and is now living and working on Gadigal Country in Sydney. Her expanded photographic practice questions whether the landscapes in lutruwita | Tasmania, and Svalbard, north of the Arctic Circle share something in common. Do these two places on the peripheries offer another way of understanding how we see and feel about the world?
Our conversation follows her winning the National Photography Prize 2024 with MAMA Albury, showing at the contemporary photography art fair Unseen Amsterdam and her current Oct/Nov 2024 show with Melbourne g...
2024-10-2830 min
Art DestinationsEp 4: Troy Ruffels on making atmospheresWe are in conversation with Troy Ruffels, a photomedia artist drawing on the tradition of painting and drawing, to make works that are both immersive and atmospheric. Troy incorporates the elements of fire and water into his daily routine from pre-dawn ocean swims to evening fire pits, creating a discipline for his art practice.
As a country boy growing up in Forth on Tasmania’s north-west coast, Troy’s career was launched at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Primavera exhibition for emerging artists in 1997. Since then he has continued his exploration of boundaries: through the mediums he use...
2024-10-1438 min
Art DestinationsEp 3: Collaborating for Conservation with Matthew Newton
Matthew Newton, an accomplished photojournalist and cinematographer, has spent 25 years capturing Tasmania's rich environmental landscapes. Matt discusses his unique career path, starting as a whitewater kayaker before delving into photography and filmmaking. He shares insights into his collaborative projects, including documenting Tasmania's wilderness and history, and how his work with writers, artists and conservationists has brought stories of the natural world to life.
We also explore major projects working with the Tasmanian Land Conservancy and some of the nation's leading artists on arts project The Skullbone Plains Experiment and with scientists on Albatross Island, highlighting how visual storytelling and partnerships ha...
2024-09-3040 min
Art DestinationsEp 2: Jeff Malpas thinking on thinkingWe are thinking about thinking with one of the world leading philosophers on place Jeff Malpas in Hobart. We question where and how one can do their best thinking, the roles of centre and periphery in the evolution of ideas, how the zeitgeist actually works, and the highly influential role our childhood has on how we think as adults.
2024-09-1637 min
Art DestinationsEp 1: Zoe Grey's shifting perspectives on belongingIn the first episode of Art Destinations Tasmania, we sit down with 28-year-old abstract artist Zoe Grey, whose work is profoundly influenced by her upbringing in the remote town of Marrawah on Tasmania's wild west coast. Working in the field of painting, as well as drawing, collage and ceramics, Zoe uses abstraction to portray the rugged rocks, fierce winds and booming swell on the northwest edge of Tasmania.
Zoe shares her unique perspective on what it was like growing up surrounded by the powerful forces of nature, from the relentless Southern Ocean waves to the isolation of...
2024-09-0238 min
Art DestinationsEp 8: Challenging tradition in a changing climate with Lorenzo Barbasetti di PrunLorenzo Barbasetti di Prun is a chef who challenges Italy’s culinary traditions by responding to climate change. Lorenzo trained in Fine Arts, at IUAV University of Venice, and is now pursuing gastronomy with a focus on foraging in diverse landscapes like London, the Dolomites, and the Venetian lagoon.
In this last episode of the Venice season, Lorenzo discusses foraging's role in adapting to climate change by reintroducing edible, salt-loving plants to abandoned farmlands, as part of his project The Tidal Garden.
In this episode we cover:
The Tidal Garden: Lorenzo's ini...
2024-07-1535 min
Art DestinationsEp 7: Photographer Davide Degano questions what it means to be ItalianPhotographic artist Davide Degano started to question what it means to be Italian while studying photography at The Hague. Davide started a project focusing on the people living in Friuli, where he grew up in northern Italy, near the border of Slovenia.
In the project 'Sclavanie' (2021), Davide started to investigate how people living in this border town see themselves and how they are perceived. The word sclavanie is a derogatory term for Italian people with Slovenian descent. His work expanded into the project 'Romanzo Meticcio' (2024) which means ‘mixed novel’ to look at what does it mean to be It...
2024-07-0149 min
Art DestinationsEp 6: Psychotherapy between Venice and Nuvola RaveraNuvola Ravera examines how human emotions can influence the environment through her project, If I Cry A Lot, Will the Lagoon Become a Sea?' (2016). In this project, Nuvola collaborates with gestalt psychotherapist Laura Castellani to view Venice as a patient in a psychotherapy session. Nuvola uses 3D sculptures, frottages, and sound recordings to capture the essence of Venice, alongside the verbatim transcript between Laura, Nuvola and the city.
In this episode of Art Destinations, Sarah and Nuvola discuss the themes of collaboration, fluid boundaries, and site-specific work, emphasising the importance of listening as we m...
2024-06-1745 min
Art DestinationsEp 5: Washer women in the Venice rivulets with Carolina MazzolariCarolina Mazzolari, an acclaimed Italian textile and video artist, honours the legacy of women who ran public laundries in the project Alone Together. Collaborating with Royal Ballet dancer and choreographer Kristen McNally and Royal Opera House senior costume manager Ilaria Martello, Carolina connects viewers to the invisible world of domestic labour through stunning video projections and tapestries on Venice's streets and in the Domus Civica Gallery, San Polo.
Growing up as the youngest daughter of a Milanese perfumer, Carolina's art is deeply influenced by the magic of illusion and connection, to make her artwork a sensory experience.
2024-06-0450 min
Art DestinationsEp 4: Publishing in Venice with Enrico BettinelloJoin us as we dive into a fascinating conversation with Enrico, the mastermind behind Wetlands Books, a publishing house in Venice that is redefining storytelling. From commissioning African writers to exploring the intersection of theatre and books, Enrico shares his unique perspective on the cultural landscape of Venice.
In this episode, we explore Enrico's vision for Wetlands Books, and the importance of addressing contemporary issues such as over-tourism and climate change through storytelling. We also delve into the Afterwords project, which invites African writers to reflect on Venice, and discuss the impact of theatre on audience engagement.
2024-05-2150 min
Art DestinationsEp 3: Re-imagining islands at Biennale Architettura 2023Mary Laheen was one of five creative directors of the Ireland pavilion exhibition, at the 18th Venice Architettura Biennale 2023, titled In Search of Hy-Brasil.
In this episode, we discuss the significance of islands as we re-imagine the future. This idea is of particular interest to me as I continue my research, after completing my PhD on how the atmosphere of islandness can be conveyed through the photographic image.
Mary and I met in Venice during the finissage period when Australia and Ireland co-hosted an event with Scotland, titled Wanderlands. It was during this period, we...
2024-05-0621 min
Art DestinationsEp 2: Cosimo Ferrigolo on fluid boundaries
Cosimo Ferrigolo dissolves boundaries to challenge us to live in a more inclusive and inter-connected way. He speaks to us from his home-studio in Venice about how fluidity permeates his work.
We met when I visited the Venice Biennale Architecturra last year. I was in Venice as one of five creative directors of the Australia Pavilion 2023 exhibition unsettling Queenstown.
In this episode we cover:
how living in Venice takes on a political meaning
how Cosimo’s passion for architectural spaces shifted his career from theatre set design to performance art...
2024-04-2234 min
Art DestinationsEp 1: Collaboration in the Venetian LagoonIndependent curator Alice Ongaro Sartori collaborates with artists across the archipelago in the Venetian lagoon to develop site specific projects that focus on how art, ecology and the public sphere intersect.
In this first episode we cover:
TBA21s Ocean Space, an arts foundation advocating for ocean literacy through art. With an international focus, it has found its home in Venice, and tries to find a balance between the global and local by working with Veneto artists, alongside those further afield,
examples of site-specific arts projects in the lagoon; such as The Garden of th...
2024-04-0943 min
Art DestinationsIntroduction: Art Destinations VeniceWelcome to the first season of Art Destinations. Artists, curators and publishers reveal something special about Venice and the surrounding islands in the Venezia Lagoon.
In this introduction, we spend time sharing the connections between those interviewed, including: curator Alice Ongaro Sartori, performance artist Cosimo Ferrigolo, one of the 2023 Venice Biennale's Ireland Pavilion creative directors Mary Laheen, publisher Enrico Bettinello of Wetlands Books, and multi-disciplinary artists Nuvola Ravera and Carolina Mazzolari.
For show notes and transcripts, please go to artdestinations.org.
2024-04-0306 min