Written and hosted by Jo Baring and Sarah Turner, this podcast series explores the lives and careers of five women who worked (and are still working) against the preconception that sculpture was not suitable for women artists.

Each 45-minute episode takes a woman sculptor as its subject, exploring the art works, networks, connections and relationships of these artists. The work of all five artists from the series is featured in Breaking the Mould.

Listen to the complete podcast series here

In the May issue of its quarterly newsletter, FOCUS, the Freelands Foundation interviews artist Veronica Ryan about her Freelands Award exhibition Along a Spectrum, currently on show at Spike Island in Bristol, until 5 September 2021.

Ryan is best known for her sculpture that is evocative of shapes, forms and objects from the natural world. Over the years, she has experimented with scale, material and technique while remaining focused on the interplay between conflicting opposites: revelation and concealment, container and contained, absence and presence.

Read the issue here

In the latest series of her topical arts programme, Mary Beard looks at how we remember - not just as individuals, but as a society and a nation.

In the first episode, Arts Council Collection artist Cornelia Parker is at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park with a preview of the new exhibition Breaking The Mould, remembering the work of female sculptors in Britain since the Second World War and thinking about how we reconfigure our landscape as an act of remembrance.

Watch on BBC iPlayer

Art UK’s learning resources now feature new lesson plan ideas focused on sculptors Dora Gordine and Lorna Graves, which include child-presented films and clay-based activities.

They have also added new 'Sculptors' techniques' videos featuring Christine Kowal Post, who sculpts large pieces from wood inspired by strong women, and Fiona Campbell, whose installations created from found materials focus on the cycles of nature.

Access them here: 

• Lorna Graves and sculpture in relief
• Sculptors' techniques: Christine Kowal Post
• Sculpture near you: 'Calendula's Cloak'
• Dora Gordine and portraiture
• Sculptors' techniques: Fiona Campbell

This British Council produced film, available via the BFI Player, documents Barbara Hepworth’s 1968 Tate retrospective, accompanied by a beguiling and crisply enunciated narration by Hepworth herself, in which she describes her techniques and the aims of her work.

The exhibition illustrates a broad range of Hepworth’s output, from early wood carvings to her abstract stringed figures of the 1930s and the monumental grandeur of her 1960s pieces.

Watch for free via the BFI Player

In this episode of the Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange podcast Art Pod, artists Young In Hong and Michelle Williams Gamaker are in conversation about their artistic practices and respective works in Newlyn Art Gallery’s 2020 exhibition Go On Being So. The work was selected from the Arts Council Collection by The MBA Collective, a group of art, photography and graphics students from Mounts Bay Academy.

Click the triangle icon on the image to the left to listen to the podcast.

Sunderland Culture's Public Engagement and Learning Officer, Posy Jowett, presents a series of films looking closely at works featured in the National Partners Programme Exhibition, Received Wisdom, which challenged the notion that creativity, boundary-breaking and dynamism are the preserve of youth.

Join Posy as she takes a look at the artwork Received Wisdom by Amikam Toren, from which the exhibition takes its title.

Civic leaders, community organisers, artists, designers, politicians, mothers and Colchester business owners worked with Firstsite to present Tell me the story of all these things which examined the role of emotion and soft power in our society and how this can be used positively to connect and empower us. This artwork was one of the Arts Council Collection chosen by women of Colchester to feature in this National Partners Programme Exhibition.

Listen to Emma Howe, Programme Manager, Communities at Firstsite, Colchester, describe Hilary Cartmel’s Sprawling Red Woman, 1984. 

For Received Wisdom, Sunderland Culture developed creative challenges inspired by Arts Council Collection works in the exhibition. Girl on Liner, 1996 is a painting by British artist Rose Wylie who is known for making large paintings featuring things she sees in films, news stories and magazine pin-ups.

Download the creative challenge to make a paper doll chain of the girl on liner and her friends, dressed for a party on the ship!

My name is not Refugee at Firstsite was curated by a group of refugees and asylum seekers, working with Firstsite staff and Refugee Action Colchester, and explored what it means to find new connections in a different place, and ponder questions about our purpose, choices and morality as human beings. The group of curators worked with poet Laila Sumpton to write poetry in response to the Arts Council Collection works chosen.

Read the poems here about Prayer Meeting in Windermere, 1992 by John Kippin.

Made in collaboration with V21 Artspace, Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange and Arts Council Collection, the virtual exhibition Palace of Culture offers a virtual set to discover the 10 artworks selected by children at Newlyn School. 11, artist-led workshops were commissioned alongside the exhibition to stimulate both body and mind.

Attending Stass Paraskos' art school in Cyprus was pivotal in encouraging a young Naomi Frears to pursue a career as an artist. In her workshop 'Painting, Drawing & Offsetting' she recounts the warmth and generosity of Stass as she employs various creative responses to a selection of his work. 

Join Naomi Frears in her artist-led workshop [video on the left] to create your own work of art. You can find more videos and the virtual exhibition here.

House Share was curated by Firstsite's Young Art Kommunity (YAK) and explored the changing relationship to our homes during lockdown and the COVID-19 pandemic. The YAK members, all aged 16-25 years old, used the exhibition to examine how their home took on a dual role as a creative and safe space, but also encompassed feelings of being confined. As part of the interpretation, YAK members of wrote letters to the Arts Council Collection works on view, creating an imagined conversation between themselves and the art.

Click the play icon to listen to Alicia's letter to Five Heads, 1981 by Jean-Luc Vilmouth. Discover all the young people’s letters here and choose your own artwork from the Arts Council Collection to write a letter to.

Paint the Town in Sound at Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens, curated in collaboration with the Sunderland band Field Music, explored the relationship between art and music. Though  it was never opened to the public because of lockdowns in the UK, you can still visit the exhibition virtually through a 360° walkthrough created by V21 Artspace.

Enter the exhibition here to discover the works that offer a fascinating insight into the musical heritage of the region and provide a route to examine our own cultural identity and its relationship to class, politics and place, such as Evan Ifekoya's The Gender Song, 2014.

Seen at The Exchange in Penzance is co-curated by young LGBTQIA+ people from Cornwall aged between 11 - 19 working in partnership with The Intercom Trust and SHARP, Programme Producer at Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange.

This learning resource by DECODER is aimed at educators to support learning that is inclusive of LGBTQIA+ experience, individuals, and families via the Seen exhibition. 

Download a free copy here or view the publication online via ISSU to learn more about LGBTQIA+ history, artists, terminology and organisations.

What Lies Behind at the Newlyn Art Gallery is an exhibition featuring works from the Arts Council Collection selected by a core group of 10 participants, referred to the project through social prescribing initiatives in local GP practices in Cornwall. In a series of online meetings, the group chose pieces that reflected their personal responses to the pandemic and their hopes and dreams for the future.

Click the triangle play button on the image to the left watch the video and learn more about social prescribing, the participants and their process curating the exhibition.