25 November 2005
Friday 25 November 2005 21:30-22:15 (Radio 3)
Why Picasso is making headlines in Turkey ; how the great African writer Chinua Achebe turned to poetry; and can the Palestinian-Israeli film Atash be seen as apolitical?
Programme details
Picasso is making headlines in Turkey - with the first major exhibition of a Western artist opening in Istanbul . It's all part of the political change and posturing, as Turkey becomes part of the European Union. Picasso's famed biographer, John Richardson, who has also co-curated the show, explains how Picasso would have approved of this marriage of politics and culture - and talks too, about some of the paintings and sketches which have gone on public show for the first time. What light do they shed on this colossus of 20 th century art?
There was a writer named Chinua Achebe, in whose company the prison walls fell down - so wrote Nelson Mandela about the founding father of African literature in English. With the publication of Chinua Achebe's Collected poems in Britain, the poet Nii Parkes talks about how Chinua's poetry was an inspiration to him, and Professor Lyn Innes reveals how the horrors of Biafran war made him turn to poetry - rather than to prose.
Whilst Chinua's work is ostensibly political, Tawfik Abu Wael, the director of the Palestinian-Israeli co production, Atash, which won the 2004 International Critics prize at the Cannes Film Festival, denies it is. Yet how can a native of Umm al-Fahm - an arab town in the state of Israel - make a film and not be political. The film maker Omar Al Qattan delivers his verdict on this extraordinary film.
Conrad Shawcross is one of Britain 's leading emerging artists. His sculptures in a new show opening in Liverpool have turned to cosmology, quantum mechanis and musical theory to create new sensory works. From a Space Trumpet which looks like a shed on stilts to Loop System Quintet - a line of five interconnected oak machines embraced ina loop of light. He talks to Mathew Sweet about Einstein and inspiration.
Finally, in the last in our series looking at the work of this year's turner Prize nominees, the writer Michele Roberts talks about the bare faced cheek and exuberance of the work by Gillian Carnegie - the only painter in this year's shortlist.
Further Information
Atash - opens this Friday at the Institute of Contemporary Art , London
Chinua Achebe - Collected Poems - Carcanet Press £8.95
The winner of the Turner Prize 2005 is announced on Monday December 5th 2005 and the nominees can be seen at Tate Britain , London .
Conrad Shawcross - The Steady States - is at the Walker Art Gallery , Liverpool 26th November to 26th February 2006 .
Picasso in Istanbul is on at the Sakip Sabanci Museum Istanbul 24th November - 26th March 2006 .
