BBC Radio 4 Front Row appearances
I’ ve been a freelance guest critic for this national, live arts and culture debate programme since 2018, and I absolutely love it. Front Row is on air from Monday to Thursday, 45 minutes, 7:15pm.
On Liverpool Biennial
7 June 2023
Duration: 43 minutes
Duration: 43 minutes
The Liverpool Biennial, the UK’s largest contemporary visual arts festival, begins this weekend. Arts journalist Laura Robertson reviews, and the curator of the biennial, Khanyisile Mbongwa, discuss coming up with this year’s theme – uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost things – which reflects on Liverpool’s history as a slave port but also provides a sense of hope and joy.
Presenter: Nick Ahad
Presenter: Ekene Akalawu
Maxine Peake discusses playing Betty Boothroyd, former Speaker of the House of Commons in Betty! A Sort of Musical, which is about to open at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre.
Turner Prize nominated artist Heather Phillipson, best known for her sculpture of a giant cherry topped ice cream on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth, discusses her exhibition 'RUPTURE NO 1: blowtorching the bitten peach', using recycled materials, video, sculpture, music and poetry, currently on display at Tate Liverpool.
Laura Robertson visits Signal Film and Media in Barrow in Furness to hear about how the charity has benefited from the latest Arts Council funding announcement and to find out what they have planned for the future.
The artist Tom Phillips has died at the age of 85. In a Front Row interview from 2012, he discusses his long running artistic projects as a painter, printmaker and collagist.
Presenter: Shahidha Bari
Producer: Olivia Skinner
On the Turner Prize 2022 exhibition
26 October 2022
Duration: 42 minutes
26 October 2022
Duration: 42 minutes
Art critic Laura Robertson reviews this year's Turner Prize show at Tate Liverpool. Presenter Nick Ahad pays a visit to the immersive exhibition, Turn It Up: The Power of Music at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester. Laura Robertson brings us up to date on the latest arts news, from the delayed funding announcement by Arts Council England, to Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof gallery's response to rising energy costs. Plus Nick Ahad speaks to the pioneering dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson about his new collection, Selected Poems.
Presenter: Nick Ahad
Producer: Ekene Akalawu
Singer songwriter PJ Harvey tells us about Orlam, her narrative poem set in a magic realist version of the West Country - a rural, and at times gothic, coming-of-age story and the first full-length book written in the Dorset dialect for many decades.Radical Landscapes is the name of a new exhibition exploring human connections with the landscape, at Tate Liverpool. The Terror-Infamy is a drama on BBC2 depicting the internment camps in the US where those of Japanese heritage were kept after Pearl Harbour - and a strange spirit is abroad. Writers and critics Tahmima Anam and Laura Robertson join Front Row to review both.
Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Kirsty McQuire.
On the Turner Prize 2022 shortlist
12 April 2022
Duration: 42 minutes
After being announced as the recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to Photography award at the Sony World Photography Awards 2022, the Canadian photographer and artist Edward Burtynsky talks to Tom about his 40-year career as a landscape photographer. This year’s Turner Prize is returning to Liverpool for the first time in 15 years. Laura Robertson, a writer, critic and editor based in the city gives us a rundown of the shortlisted artists announced today at Tate Liverpool: Heather Phillipson, Ingrid Pollard, Veronica Ryan and Sin Wai Kin. Award-winning and twice Booker shorted listed author of The Butcher Boy Patrick McCabe talks to Tom Sutcliffe about his new novel Poguemahone. Described as this century’s Ulysses, the novel takes the form of a free verse monologue set in Margate in the mind and memories of Dan Fogarty and his sister Una. Rafaella Covino, the founder and director of Applause for Thought, which offers free and low cost mental health assistance for people working in theatre, and Wabriya King, Associate Drama Therapist at the Bush Theatre, join Tom to discuss the growing need for wellbeing support across the theatre industry.
Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Nicki Paxman.
12 April 2022
Duration: 42 minutes
After being announced as the recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to Photography award at the Sony World Photography Awards 2022, the Canadian photographer and artist Edward Burtynsky talks to Tom about his 40-year career as a landscape photographer. This year’s Turner Prize is returning to Liverpool for the first time in 15 years. Laura Robertson, a writer, critic and editor based in the city gives us a rundown of the shortlisted artists announced today at Tate Liverpool: Heather Phillipson, Ingrid Pollard, Veronica Ryan and Sin Wai Kin. Award-winning and twice Booker shorted listed author of The Butcher Boy Patrick McCabe talks to Tom Sutcliffe about his new novel Poguemahone. Described as this century’s Ulysses, the novel takes the form of a free verse monologue set in Margate in the mind and memories of Dan Fogarty and his sister Una. Rafaella Covino, the founder and director of Applause for Thought, which offers free and low cost mental health assistance for people working in theatre, and Wabriya King, Associate Drama Therapist at the Bush Theatre, join Tom to discuss the growing need for wellbeing support across the theatre industry.
Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Nicki Paxman.
On Art B&B
15 November 2019
Duration: 28 minutes
15 November 2019
Duration: 28 minutes
As Northern Ballet reaches its half century, the company's Artistic Director David Nixon discusses his love of telling stories through Dance.
Ever fancied sleeping in an artwork? Soon you’ll be able to do exactly that at the Art B&B – a new hotel in Blackpool which has commissioned 30 artists to turns its rooms into works of art. Michael Trainor, Creative Director of the Art B&B explains the vision for the hotel, and Arts journalist Laura Robertson shares her thoughts on the new establishment after getting an early preview.
When the African-American cellist Seth Parker Woods came across a photograph taken in the 1970s of the avant-garde cellist Charlotte Moorman - nude and playing a cello made from ice, the image stayed with him. Charlotte’s performance was in part a feminist statement but Seth and his partner in this project, Spencer Topel, have reimagined the work as a statement on race. As they prepare Iced Bodies for its UK premiere at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival they discuss fusing art with activism.
Presenter: Keisha Thompson
Producer: Ekene Akalawu.
On The British Ceramics Biennial
10 September 2019
Duration: 28 minutes
US author Nell Zink's new novel Doxology features two generations of an American family coming of age, one before 9/11, one after. She tells Kirsty about her decision to broaden the scope of her writing to tell a story of modern America and the stark differences between Baby Boomers and 'Generation Z'.
Tamsin Grey is one of the five authors shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. The writer discusses her story My Beautiful Millennial, which is about a lone young woman living in London and her complicated relationship with an older man.
And The Jumper Factory, a prison drama developed by the Young Vic Theatre with the help of eight serving prisoners. It's performed by actors with little or no stage experience, though all of them have been affected in some way by the criminal justice system. The play was intended for performance within prisons, but has been such a hit that it is now touring for the public.
Presenter Kirsty Lang
Producer Olive Clancy.
On Ren Hang
11 December 2018
11 December 2018
Duration: 28 minutes
Mortal Engines is a new sci-fi fantasy film co-written and produced by Peter Jackson, based on the first in a series of young adult steampunk novels by Philip Reeve. In a post-apocalyptic future, mobile cities on huge caterpillar tracks roam the landscape, consuming smaller towns for their resources. Starring Hera Hilmar as Hester Shaw, the film is the directorial debut of long-time Jackson collaborator Christian Rivers. Katie Popperwell reviews.
In a year when housing has risen up the political agenda, Richard Gregory, artistic director of Quarantine theatre company, and performance artist Grace Surman discuss Tenancy, part of a Manchester-led international project which explores the changing nature of cities by artists taking over a residential home for a year.
The work of the Chinese photographer Ren Hang found admirers worldwide and was championed by Ai Weiwei, though the Chinese authorities were less enamoured. Almost two years after his death at the age of 29 and with the first show of his work in the UK premiering at Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool, Laura Robertson, critical writer-in-residence at the gallery discusses Ren Hang’s significance.
When Martin Jenkinson was made redundant from the Sheffield steel industry in 1979, it was the start of a four decade-long career as a professional photographer whose first subject was his adopted city. His pictures of the 1984 – 85 miners’ strike were widely published in the national press. Years later they would catch the eye of Turner-prizewinning artist Jeremy Deller who worked with Jenkinson on his recreation of The Battle of Orgreave. Art critic Orla Foster reviews the new retrospective of Jenkinson’s photographs at Weston Park Museum in Sheffield.
Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Ekene Akalawu.
Mortal Engines is a new sci-fi fantasy film co-written and produced by Peter Jackson, based on the first in a series of young adult steampunk novels by Philip Reeve. In a post-apocalyptic future, mobile cities on huge caterpillar tracks roam the landscape, consuming smaller towns for their resources. Starring Hera Hilmar as Hester Shaw, the film is the directorial debut of long-time Jackson collaborator Christian Rivers. Katie Popperwell reviews.
In a year when housing has risen up the political agenda, Richard Gregory, artistic director of Quarantine theatre company, and performance artist Grace Surman discuss Tenancy, part of a Manchester-led international project which explores the changing nature of cities by artists taking over a residential home for a year.
The work of the Chinese photographer Ren Hang found admirers worldwide and was championed by Ai Weiwei, though the Chinese authorities were less enamoured. Almost two years after his death at the age of 29 and with the first show of his work in the UK premiering at Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool, Laura Robertson, critical writer-in-residence at the gallery discusses Ren Hang’s significance.
When Martin Jenkinson was made redundant from the Sheffield steel industry in 1979, it was the start of a four decade-long career as a professional photographer whose first subject was his adopted city. His pictures of the 1984 – 85 miners’ strike were widely published in the national press. Years later they would catch the eye of Turner-prizewinning artist Jeremy Deller who worked with Jenkinson on his recreation of The Battle of Orgreave. Art critic Orla Foster reviews the new retrospective of Jenkinson’s photographs at Weston Park Museum in Sheffield.
Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Ekene Akalawu.
On Fernand Léger
13 November 2018
Duration: 28 minutes
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is the second in the Fantastic Beasts film franchise from JK Rowling which explores the Wizarding World before Harry Potter. Eddie Redmayne and Johnny Depp star, and Jude Law joins the cast as a young Dumbledore. James Walters, Head of the Department of Film at the University of Birmingham reviews.
As CAPSID, a new exhibition which explores how viruses behave, opens in Manchester, Front Row brought together the artist behind it, John Walter, and scientist turned artist, Dr Lizzie Burns to discuss the appeal of making art inspired by the microbiological world.
Fernand Léger is the subject of a new exhibition at Tate Liverpool. Leger's work moved between many of the great art movements of the 20th century - Cubism, Surrealism, Futurism - but retained his own distinctive style. Fernand Léger: New Times, New Pleasures is the first major exhibition dedicated to the artist in the UK in 30 years. Art Critic Laura Robertson explains his significance.
Adapting 1902 novel Heart Of Darkness for the stage in 2018 - theatre company Imitating The Dog has turned Joseph Conrad's famous story on its head, swapping the African Congo for war-torn Europe, narrator Charles Marlow for a black female private detective, and using digital film and a dual narrative on stage. To discuss this creative reimaging and how it tackles the novel’s issues with race and colonialism, John is joined by Co-Artistic Director Andrew Quick, and Keicha Greenidge, who plays the lead role.
Presenter: John Wilson
Producer: Ekene Akala.