Pearl Lam (林明珠): Hello, good morning. This is Pearl Lam Podcast. I’m back in London and we have another episode here in London. Now I want to introduce Ben Luke. Ben, can you give a very short description about yourself?

Ben Luke: Okay. I’m a critic and podcaster, broadcaster and writer and editor. Most of my work I do for The Art Newspaper. I present two podcasts, one called A Brush With…, which is an artist interview podcast, and one called The Week in Art, which is a typical news podcast. And I write very widely about contemporary, modern, historic art. I have a column at The Art Newspaper, and I’ve got a new book out which is called ‘What is art for?’ and it’s 25 interviews with contemporary artists from the A Brush With… series, but also with new texts.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Okay, let’s start. How did you become an art critic?

Ben Luke: I began my art life having studied art, fine art and art history, so studied making art as well as art history. I began at the Tate. I was at the Tate in the press office for eight years.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Excuse me. You learned fine art, and you ended up in a press office? Did you want to be an artist?

Ben Luke: Well, I learned by the end of my degree that I probably was not going to be an artist. So I became much more interested in the art history towards the end of my degree than the making, even though I loved painting to a degree. I think by the end of my third year of studies, I knew I wasn’t going to be an artist. So I did art history alongside it and majored in art history. And then by. By the time I was, you know, looking for careers, I was ultimately there and was really lucky enough to get a job at the Tate.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And you didn’t want to be a curator?

Ben Luke: I didn’t really know what I wanted to do at one point. I wanted to be a musician. I wanted to be.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): You know, of course, when you’re studying, it’s.

Ben Luke: Yeah.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I think in your 20s is really difficult.

Ben Luke: Yeah. And I think a lot of people seem to have these very clear ideas about how they want their career to go from early on. But I know I loved art, I love music, I love culture, widely. And so, I didn’t have a clear path laid out for me and I was lucky to get a job at the Tate and then ended up. Yeah, just kept going there for a number of years and then eventually started to write, and then started writing for art magazines and newspapers and so on.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): After eight years in Tate. At that point, do you want to be an art journalist? And. Or.

Ben Luke: I thought I could try. I didn’t know for certain.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So you just jump in to become an art journalist?

Ben Luke: Obviously, if you’ve been in a press office at a major national institution, you meet lots of editors and people like that. And, you know, one of them, Frank, frankly, took a punt on me and commissioned me to write a piece. I wrote. I did an interview with Anish Kapoor, and so that worked out, and then gradually built. Built up from there and eventually started writing for a magazine called Art World, which was based in London at that time and was deputy editor there, and then went on to be a critic at the London Evening Standard.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Hold on. Being an art journalist and an art critic is substantially different. All right, so how do you jump from an art journalist to an art critic? Being an art critic is not easy. First of all, you have to garner a lot of trust and you have to gain that popularity that people would read your your column and trust your column.

Ben Luke: Yeah, I mean, I think it was a steady process. So I think I’d built up a lot of kind of a body of work as an interviewer of artists and a writer of features and so on. And therefore my voice had been around as a journalistic voice for a number of years. And there was always an element of art criticism in that mix. I think I had a. I think I showed in that kind of interviews and things like that that I had a good grounding, a good knowledge of the material, and that I understood modern, historic, contemporary art and that I could find a way to write about it in an accessible way. But, yeah, I mean, I started writing for the Evening Standard as a critic, having not really done substantial critical work at that time, but I was the kind of junior art critic at the London Evening Standard. The major critic at the Evening Standard was Brian Sewell, who was a very famous art critic at that time. And I was writing about contemporary. And Brian was enormously critical of contemporary art, especially conceptual art and its legacies. And so I therefore had a really nice kind of scope in that. I was kind of a counterfoil to Brian’s position.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): This is the best. This is the best setup.

Ben Luke: And then, therefore, I was writing about loads of really quite varied contemporary art, and I had an element of control about the things that I could write about. My editor was really encouraging that I should seek out new things, you know, by younger artists in galleries and museums and so on, nonprofits. And therefore I was writing, you know, several reviews, you know, a couple of reviews a week, several reviews a month, and getting a really broad experience from there. So. Yeah, and then. Then I was at the standard for. Until 2024. So 15 years of criticism.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So, okay, let me ask you, being a critic, do you really need to learn about artistry?

Ben Luke: I think you do. I think. I think. Because if you have that background and you have that grounding, it allows you to, in a way, improvise much more because you have the base. If you don’t have that grounding and you’re just off the cuff responding, then how do you contextualise it for an audience? How do you structure?

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Hold on. But, you know, being a curator, I was always told, and I knew that a lot of. A lot of the critics is a curator should never have a history of art background, because if you have a history of art background, it would detour you from appreciating a concept. Would you agree to that? And I always have a criticism. I always have an argument with people about that because, I mean, many, many times, on many occasions, I was being told off because he said, why do you need history of art? Because we are doing conceptual art. We’re talking more. You know, modernism is cutting all and all the history. History is no longer important because it’s really a new thing. And so why was history of art important? Because it completely taken you away to. To appreciate concept.

Ben Luke: That’s. That’s insane.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I love. I love. Great.

Ben Luke: That’s completely mad.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I mean, because I thought this was completely ridiculous. It’s like, you know, good old days. I’m talking about two, three decades ago, two and a half decades ago, when we have all these international curators coming in and into China, telling all the Chinese this is good artists as a bad artist. Without. Without any appreciation about our history, our Chinese art history. So how can you just come in and tell me, tell us this is good and bad? Because they said it’s not important. I said, okay, I will argue with you. And on. That is okay, if you say that in the west because the root of the history is more similar than in China, I would tend to agree with you in a bit. But you come into China completely different. You know, the roots are so different. How can you come in and tell us what is good and what is bad? There was a whole argument.

Ben Luke: Yeah, I think it’s a really strange idea. The A Brush with… podcast and the book make really clear that artists working today are deeply invested and fantastically excited by art that was made 500 years ago. Yeah, because a thousand years…

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Exactly. So I had. I had a really bad time and a huge argument with quite a number of curators. Especially when you have beginning of the, you know, the beginning of the Chinese contemporary art, when we have some very arrogant curator coming in and telling us what is good and what is bad. And at the time when the Chinese are not so confident, they would just say, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And I was just. Why did you discuss with them? Oh, they wouldn’t understand. They wouldn’t understand.

Ben Luke: But to take an example of an artist who I know you’ve worked with, Zhang Huan, you know, his work doesn’t have the currency it has without looking at the history of Chinese making, art making, you know, without the history of Chinese scrolls and so on with a beautiful language of ink. So how on earth does one understand the history of contemporary Chinese art if one doesn’t have an awareness that it does ultimately update a legacy?

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I mean, this is one of the reasons why I established a Foundation in 2008, because I want to have this general. I mean, the communication between our Chinese academic world, Chinese art world with the international art world. So that was the first time we have. So I was always thinking that being art critic, do you think that artistry is important or are you like curators, all these curators thinking that that is no longer. It’s not important?

Ben Luke: I mean, there may be critic. I’ve never come across a critic yet in my whole time that I’ve been, you know, seeing shows alongside other critics who think that it is not worth having an awareness of history. Because I don’t think you can appreciate contemporary art in its fullest unless you have a rich understanding of, of a much broader culture.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): But how about, you know, when we talk about modernism. Modernism is just saying that they cut all the history, forget about it, we restart everything. I think, don’t you think that the, the movement of the art and artists are very different today?

Ben Luke: Of course, modernism, you know, especially in its extreme forms, like, like Futurism in Italy or whatever. Yes, of course, there was that sense in which it was like a total ground zero. Yeah, but, but also there was a, there was an, in essence and sort of a lie in that, which was that, yes, they, they believed profoundly that they wanted to create a new society which was often informed by the social and political realities they’d lived through. But at the same time, they did actually hark back to work from previous centuries and so on.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Right. You have to, you have to react against. You have to react.

Ben Luke: Yeah. And, and you know, you look at so many of the revolutionary modern artists, you know, Matisse was looking at Giotto, you know, even his last years, he was still, you know, fascinated by absorbing what Giotto had taught him and from, you know, 600 years earlier is really important. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think, I think it’s the same for artists, for critics, for curators, for everybody. And it’s also great. Right. Understanding how art came to be made in multiple different centres across multiple continents is fascinating and deeply informs why artists make the work they do today.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Okay, let’s talk about in UK. I read, I mean, one of your comments that you made was that in UK there’s lack in the school, there’s lack of art education. Can you, can you elaborate that and what is the impact of it and all that?

Ben Luke: For some years now, particularly under the last government, which was a Conservative government, there was a massive emphasis on subjects beyond the arts. And so what you had was a systematic, basically replacement of art subjects in the curriculum or a complete lack of interest in the arts being part of the curriculum at school.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Is there a reason why?

Ben Luke: There was an emphasis on subjects that were seen that were deemed to be practical or vocational as opposed, so STEM subjects, you know, science, technology, engineering, maths, but that in some way art subjects were fluffy and not useful for progress? And of course, if so much of this is about economics and so much of it is about the, the, the idea that, that the art subjects don’t ultimately lead to a country being profitable and to, to practical application in the, in the wide world. But I would say, and I know many, many other suited arts and humanities degree would say it’s it’s fundamental to human life. It is fundamental that you learn these things because you learn, not just, this is about actually very brave, practical things and money-making ideas like graphic design, film. Even if we go completely outside of the art world, that, that you learn about human, vital human experiences, vital human qualities. So you learn about empathy, you learn about the ability to understand why somebody does something. They learn about human life, you learn about politics, environment, the wider society. You learn about; you do learn about economics because it’s fundamental to the creation of culture. So this sort of systematic disinterest, lack of interest in the arts is deeply troubling to me because I think it’s restricting our young people’s ability to, to become the fully formed humans in the same way.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): This is very funny because all the museums are complaining they don’t have young people visiting these young visitors. And your government is not helping to do so. If you, if you, if you’re actually not focusing on art education. So how do they expect that young people are going to visit museums?

Ben Luke: Well, this is true. This is absolutely true. That attitude. You’re, you’re. Yeah, exactly. The fun. Museums are fundamental to our society. And does the culture. Does, does, does taking culture out of a curriculum or making it less important within a curriculum actually restrict those people’s interests and therefore going to museums and spending their money in museums as well? You know, again, if you’re going to baseline it in economics. But no, I mean, I think to just say, thankfully, you know, if you go to Tate Modern on a Friday night, you will see a lot of young people and you know, one of the major aims of Tate Modern when it was created and I was there at the Tate at the time was to, was to cultivate an interest among different communities in the arts. And that was very broadly based. But one of the key constituencies was young people, you know, and the fact is, you know, sometimes when you go to those evenings at Tate Modern on Friday evening, you’ll see such a young audience, you think, you know, mission accomplished, actually.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So are you saying that or what, in general, what is the impact when you have a, when you have this, when the government is not focusing on art education and it’s ripping off from and from the general public on art education. What do you see the impact as of today? I mean, all I know is the museums have less young, young people. The whole aim of every museum is, is to get more young people visiting. That, that. Do you think that that is one of the impacts?

Ben Luke: It might well be I mean I, I haven’t seen any statistics so I can’t say that, but it might well be. You know, I think if you, if you don’t cultivate a curiosity and culture among young people then that is a possible outcome of that. But I also think, you know, Britain, like so many other countries, cultures at the moment is a deeply divided society.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yes.

Ben Luke: And I think if you emphasise the humanities in schools and you teach people about empathy and, and about understanding and one of the ways you can do that is through the, through the arts, then you create a culture which is less tolerant of division and wants to sow seeds of, of, of mutual understanding. And I, you know, that might sound fluffy, but I think that’s what art can do.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I think it’s absolutely right. I think art and culture which allow people is a cultural exchange and is to understanding the other. You know, having open minded or having open mindedness is very important and ready to listen. You don’t even expect people to understand, but the first step is to listen. Yeah, I think that’s, and that is the most important thing. So, so how are you or your friends or the art world going to do in order to address this problem?

Ben Luke: Well, I think, I think we need to be more active and we need, you know, I think we need our museum leaders, the people who run the arts institutions in this country to very actively make the point for, make the case for culture in schools but also just more widely in society. And you know, you know, for years and years we’ve been hearing, oh, there’s no money for culture because there’s no, there’s no money for anything else.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah, there’s no money.

Ben Luke: But again, you know, just in crude economic terms, the creative industries make enormous amounts of money for Britain and any, you know, anywhere that has a healthy creative industries base, they make an enormous amount of money for that, for that culture and that, for that society. So I would say, you know, there needs to be a very active campaigning mindset from the people who run our cultural institutions about making sure that government recognises the importance of culture because it is fundamental to our, you know, maturity as humans. And, and so therefore, yeah, I think, I think the art world needs to be very actively promoting the importance.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Okay, now let’s talk about art critics. Art critics versus social media. I come to learn about many artists were discovered when, when galleries checking on and on their Instagram and especially those has a lot of followers. Okay. So that means that the younger generation is actually not reading any art critiques or art reviews. They just look at the thing. They just look at the Instagram, look at the picture. They like it, they follow or their videos or, and. Or different explanation. How do you think that the art critics or the art review would survive in the next 10, 20 years? And especially this whole group of younger generation, I mean, it’s, it’s not really reading and the reviews and they just flip and look, you know.

Ben Luke: But do they. I mean, I, I would say, I.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Mean, I mean, I, I actually know a lot of these young people. They do. They just look at it and they say, okay.

Ben Luke: I would say that there were, there are plural ways to experience art, and one of them, and it’s entirely valid, is via social media.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): But when you look at social media, then you don’t look at a review. I mean, all these.

Ben Luke: But don’t we, don’t we all consume multiple. Don’t. Don’t we consume social media?

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I’m looking.

Ben Luke: Newspapers.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): No, I’m looking, I’m looking. I don’t even read through other people’s social media. With me is I like reading newspaper, I like reading things. But I know the younger generation have no patience to read, right?

Ben Luke: I don’t know about that.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I mean, I mean, the younger generation that I met, they really don’t.

Ben Luke: Okay, well, in my experience, I, I think I, I mean, an older person, and therefore I don’t spend all my time hanging out with young people, you know, for them. But, and, but I would say that in my experience, the young people that I encounter are actually really much more broadly curious than just on their phones looking at social media. And they are. Well, I mean, yeah, young people in museums, young people are studying really interesting degrees. Well, I mean, in people in their 20s, people at university age, you know, I think, I think young people are deeply invested in different forms of culture. I think they’re often extremely creative and they have tools available to, you know, instantly available to them to make art and to create culture. And I would say that, you know, just from my experience, I would say that actually there’s. They are, they are like any generation, they are, they are using the tools available to them, but they’re also using a variety of tools. And you come. I come across young curators who are in their 20s.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yes.

Ben Luke: Or young artists.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Definitely.

Ben Luke: And they are some of the most widely ready, of course, definitely informed people I’ve ever encountered.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Definitely.

Ben Luke: And I wish that wider society was as informed as these young people.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I think artists of that, you know, with that art world people. Yes. Because you know, being curators, you have to read a lot and today’s artists are like intellectuals, you know, you have to sit down and you have to be able to, to speak to them. And these young people with that interest, definitely. I’m talking about a general, much wider public. Yeah, much wider. Probably not just in the art world. I’m looking at these kids who’s in their teenager to early twenties. They may not be in art world but they may not even be curious. But when everybody’s talking about art, they would just flip, they would just look at it because what we need is if we want to have a very strong, if we want to have an art world which is democratised, that means that we are including people from all over. So I’m talking in general about these people who’s in the early 20s, maybe they use TikTok, maybe they use different communication and getting knowledge and all that. But I find out that they, they have very least these curiosity, right, about reading or whatever. They just look at something all day like.

Ben Luke: Thing is, I’m, I’m not on TikTok, so I have no idea. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): But I know, but I understand those social medias.

Ben Luke: Right. But I don’t, I don’t know if there isn’t actually a form of very active art criticism happening on TikTok.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): There’s no art criticism, that’s what I’m saying because art criticism, that’s what I’m saying, that, that this whole group, I would say the Gen, the Gen Z, Gen Z group, overall group, they don’t read so much as my age or.

Ben Luke: Yeah, but okay, I, I genuinely feel that some Gen Z people that I have come across are so incredibly well read and they are reading, but they’re reading so widely and they’re reading, you know. You know, yes. Art history, they’re reading sociology, they’re reading, they’re reading history, they’re reading the history of politics. And so. And I find it really gratifying actually in my experience that so many young people are doing that. But I also think, like when I say that I think there may well be active criticism on TikTok, I’m not saying it’s a form of criticism that is like the kind of criticism that I grew up reading in newspapers and magazines. I’m saying it’s a new medium, it exists within a particular series of parameters. I feel certain that there are probably people, really intelligent people who are using it in really interesting ways, which could be regarded as a form of criticism. I don’t know if that’s art criticism or another form, but I reckon I’m not on it. I don’t know. But I, I know enough about humans to know that every, every, in every territory of technological invention, somebody finds a way to do what has been done in a different medium, in a different way, in a new way. And really interesting.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I agree.

Ben Luke: And I think one of the issues about art criticism today is, I think, because the way that criticism is delivered now is much more plural. There aren’t the sort of, the voices of consensus in the same way that there were in the sense that you had a big figure who was a major writer on a magazine, a magazine or a newspaper, and they were reaching tens of thousands, possibly millions of people with every column and that work would then be discussed. I think there are very many more plural platforms in which people might encounter criticism today, but there, there might not be that same kind of community consensus or, or gathering around that, that critics work.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Agree.

Ben Luke: Now, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I don’t know. In terms of the way that artists work is received in the wider world, maybe it’s actually a better thing because it’s being received in different ways by different people in different, in different communities. So I think it’s, it’s. I think we’re in a really interesting moment for criticism. You know, as somebody who’s 52, I don’t feel able to judge how young people are experiencing culture because, because I’m not necessarily using those same platforms as them. But I also. One thing to say, as a podcaster, I do know that young people are listening to podcasts and that if you’re, if you’re listening to podcasts, you are, that that betrays a sense of being committed to long form cultural entities. You know, if you’re listening to podcasts, it’s because you want to engage very deeply with something. And that to me is really encouraging, you know, and I think that’s a reaction to TikTok, you know, sound bite culture, very, you know, Instagram reels and so on. I think people do want depth and I think lots of young people, when you go to talks, there are lots of young people there that want to engage with it.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I think those young people who’s in this industry, definitely, they have the patience and they are curious and they want to know more. I feel that a lot of those I met, they have less interest. They just want to see, oh, I Love it. Aesthetic is very important aesthetically. If they like something, they just go for it.

Ben Luke: Yeah. It’s generational shift, isn’t it?

Pearl Lam (林明珠): It is a generation.

Ben Luke: Like a lot of. A lot of experiences now seem to be dedicated, generated for people to experience via their phone. So to me, I’m not especially interested in those immersive experiences that people walk in with their phone on, already filming. They film it, they go around the experience, and then they stop the video on their phone, put it in their pocket or the bag and just. And then walk out. That isn’t something which I enjoy.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): We have a different. We have a different way of enjoyment.

Ben Luke: That is definitely happening.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Having said that, of course, you said your young people has all a lot of, you know, a lot of focus because you’re talking about the art world. The art world, artists, curators. Of course I’m talking about outside that world.

Ben Luke: Yeah.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): How are we going to cultivate these people who’s not in the art world to become our art lover?

Ben Luke: Yeah.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And who would appreciate what and what, the general Internet? What is the artist trying to say? This is my general thing, which is. I’m very eager.

Ben Luke: I think conceptual art will survive because it’s just. Just such an established tradition now that it will survive. And also, so many of the kind of tropes of installations that are immersive experiences are fundamentally based on the kind of grounding in contemporary art. Because, you know, where was. Where did video art emerge from? It was fundamentally a conceptual project. I think of cultural experiences as being stages on ladders or networks, you know, so every cultural experience you have is fundamentally a node in a kind of network of cultural experiences that ultimately coalesce into forming you as a cultural being, you know, and so that we are. We are, you know, in terms of our engagement with art experiences, we’re a kind of summary of all those experiences. Good, bad, indifferent, whatever. And all of those things add up to who, you know, into a kind of framework of art, of our cultural view, if you like, or our landscape or our imaginary, as lots of people would call it. And I think. I think that ultimately there will be loads of people that will want to read and find out more about these things that they experience. And I think. I believe in the. I believe that people, young people, old people across the world are fundamentally curious about visual, aural, experiential, haptic experience. And therefore, I think, yes, it will all survive. It just will take on different forms, it will transform, it will adjust, society will change and art will change. With it, as it always has. But there will also also be legacies of. Of great traditions that will always continue. And I think that’s one thing that we’ve learned from all of the kind of modernist dismissal, the end of painting. The fact is, each generation takes on the things which it finds problematic and reforms them and comes up with alternatives. And then another generation responds.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Okay, let’s talk about your book. Tell me something more about your book. You have 25 artists and then an interview. Explain.

Ben Luke: A Brush with… is the podcast, which I do, where I interview artists. And we chose 25 of those interviews. And what it does is it works. There are 12 standard questions that I ask everybody in each of the podcast. Podcast interviews, A Brush with… interviews. And it takes those questions and answers for each of these 25 artists. And they range from who was the first artist whose work you loved? To, the name of the book, which is What is art for? So the. Through those 12 questions, I ask them about their influences and cultural experiences. I ask them about which historical artists they turn to the most today, which contemporary artists they most admire, what cultural experience changed the way they see the world. But I also ask about, you know, is there a discipline in their daily working life that they see as an essential ritual? So I want to also find out about what life is like as an artist, what it’s. What it. What the experience of being an artist is, and also sort of get to the heart of it being quite a strange existence. You know, there are very multiple ways of being an artist today. There’s some who have an army of assistants. There are some who just go to the studio alone every single day and turn up and do whatever they’re doing, whether that’s sculpture or painting or video editing or whatever. So you get a big range of experience. But I’m really interested in what it is to be an artist, because I genuinely feel that they are extraordinary people, you know, and, you know, in the way that they are producing amazing things, but also in the way that they are helping us all, I think, navigate this world. And. And calling the book What is art for? is partly about that. You know, these people. These 25 interviews, I think, show you that artists have a take on the world that helps us see the world differently and in greater nuance and greater depth. And so I think that’s the point of the book. And the wonderful thing is that what. What we can do with a book is we can have illustrations as well as the words. And I believe powerfully in books, as physical objects.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): You love artists. I can see how I do love artists and how excited you are.

Ben Luke: You love, you love get carried away about. Yeah, yeah, I love them. Yeah.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So you know your podcast. How many artists have you done?

Ben Luke: 130 on the A Brush with…

Pearl Lam (林明珠): When you do like 130 artists, I mean, there, there must be artists that you don’t like.

Ben Luke: Well, you know what one of the things is, is that fundamentally there has to be a certain base level of enthusiasm that I have for the work. And you know what? There are dozens, hundreds of artists I still want to talk to, so that must mean I have a, a grand passion for, for art in its broadest senses. But honestly.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): But I think you like their personality. You like the artist’s personality?

Ben Luke: Yeah, I mean, I, I like, I like creative people, you know, and I’ve always, ever since I was a kid, I surrounded myself with creative people. I went to drama groups and so on, you know, and, And I really also think it’s a. I think it’s really courageous that somebody, somebody goes through life as, and, and decides, you know, I’m gonna become an artist or, you know, of course not always like that. It can be really tough even for really successful artists. There were really bad days.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yes, of course.

Ben Luke: And, and, and really bad weeks in the studio or months even, you know, so I think it is a really curious existence. And you know that better than you work with artists every day. And, you know, it’s, it’s odd and it’s, and it’s wonderful that they go to their studios or go and sit at their kitchen table and they think, okay, so how am I going to evolve this idea? Or how can I take, take that painting to the next stage? Or how can I do something with that sculpture because it’s not sitting right? Or how can I make that video somehow hit me on an emotional level that it doesn’t right now, or, you know, so, so that idea that, that prompting to go and think and do and make, to me is an extraordinary drive. And it’s. And that’s why I say, you know, I think they’re the best.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I think, I think you miss being an artist. This is the honest truth. So you have to interview the artist and live and live their life.

Ben Luke: Well, yeah, maybe I, maybe that’s true. I feel psychoanalysed. But I mean, you know, I genuinely loved being in the studio when I was an art student with other artists. I don’t really envy artists that, that thing of turning up with a blank slate, you know, of course, it’s not always a blank state, but this idea that, you know, okay, you know, you’ve got a show on the horizon, and you’ve got to create a body of work for that show, and you’ve got a. You’ve got your own history, and you want to live up to that, and you want to also progress. You want to try new ideas, you want to try new materials. You’ve been working with the same materials for three years. You want to work with something else, and you’re going to take a leap or. Hang on a sec. Should I do more of the same? Because, you know, there was an audience for that. You know, all the kind of considerations of, of being an artist. I am, you know, really fascinated by. I’m fascinated by what they surround themselves with as well, you know.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah.

Ben Luke: I ask a question, what do you have pinned to the studio wall? Because I want to know the environment they surround themselves with as they make, you know, so. Yeah.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Oh, this is great. I. I can see how lively and how excited you are. Okay, last question. I mean, now everybody’s talking about AI, AI, AI. And I’ve always thought that now we have AI. So. So AI can create conceptual art. So, you know, I just. One day I just type in something and I said, create a piece of work with ChatGPT. They did. They create different ideas, different things. So with that, don’t you think that, you know, because for a long time we have completely discriminate about craft. Whoever can paint well, we was. Oh, so decorative paint well. Or people who can sculpt. Because in. When you go to school, art school, you don’t learn about painting. You don’t learn about actually using your hands.

Ben Luke: Hold on. Some. Some places you still.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Some, some. I’m. I’m. I’m talking in general. Okay. I’m not talking about particular. Don’t you think that in next 10, 20 years, all these craft you can paint, you can sculpt yourself would become more. I mean, people will focus on that, will become more important, more prominent.

Ben Luke: Because as a reaction to AI?

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yes, a reaction to AI.

Ben Luke: AI creates really, really bad art. It creates humans with six fingers and six toes. You know, it doesn’t actually understand what a human. But I think this is fundamental. Yeah, I’m sure they’re ironing it out. I’m sure they’re now producing images of people with.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Exactly.

Ben Luke: But one of the things. I think it’s. It’s fun that’s fundamental about AI is for all the vaunted claims that people are making that it will be somehow sentient. It doesn’t have that fundamental thing that makes all great art great for me, which is human connection. Somehow, we feel a connection, and that can be through digital art. Let’s be absolutely clear. We can have a human using digital art to make digital platforms to make art. And it can be just as affecting as something made using oil on canvas or, or bronze or clay or plaster or whatever or, you know, the fundamental thing is that a human makes it because humans have feelings. Humans respond to societies. Humans feel angry about politics. Humans want to respond to their communities and want to respond to a different community. So I think, think fundamentally I’m not worried about one of the few industries that I think should be least worried about AI taking over is at the actual process of making art. Because I think that human connection is absolutely fundamental. Even if, as I say, it’s a human with the most advanced digital technology making objects that don’t betray any notion of human touch. Because I think, think human intelligence and human emotional sensibility and critical thinking is fundamental to the creation of a work of art.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So do you think the digital art would become mainstream?

Ben Luke: I think that digital art is mainstream.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Mainstream in a way that it would take over paintings and, and all that. Do you think.

Ben Luke: But I think one of the things we’ve learned every time somebody tries to kill off a medium, it never dies. So no, I don’t think. I think that digital art will become, and is already a very important platform for the creation of work.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Creation of work, yes. But for collection is a problem because I used to collect digital art. I. But then, now I took everything down because every year it needs to be maintained. Your technology is always evolving. The software is not working. This is a nightmare.

Ben Luke: Yeah. I mean, there were amazing conservators who are out there in the world keeping digital art that was made 40 years ago alive.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Really. I mean, every year you need to be updated.

Ben Luke: Yeah.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah. It’s not easy.

Ben Luke: No, it’s not. But I. But the thing is that that’s, that’s proof positive that artists are always going to work with new technologies. They always will. And we want them to.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I think digital art is, is important in a way is when we talk about contemporary art, we are, we are talking about our contemporary culture and technology is our contemporary culture. So digital art is important to reflect that.

Ben Luke: Yeah.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And then it evolved with the technology.

Ben Luke: That’s right. And, and also actually the fact that digital art sometimes is in a format which is not particularly salable, is quite interesting and important because then it can exist outside of the market. And actually a lot of the most interesting work that was done around NFTs was critical work, work that was undermining the whole, you know, the whole idea of NFTs and that obsession with making money and, you know, the idiotic work that was produced purely as a means of making money in that boom. But there was a lot of interesting work that was happening around it and had existed before it, in fact, which was. Which was a critique of capitalism and using crypto as a means of criticising network capitalism. And so therefore, always artists will find ways into these kind of technologies which. Which. Which actually survive far longer than any crazy boons and actually offer us a view of that society which is fundamentally a conceptual art tradition.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): It is, it is. You’re absolutely right on this point. I think with the time’s up. Thank you so much.

Ben Luke: Thank you.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And what is wonderful, an interesting conversation.

Ben Luke: It was great. Thank you very much.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Thank you.