The best art world podcast. Hosted by Saldo Caluthe & Tomas Sinke
Show Notes
This week, Saldo and Tomas sit down with Justine Foix, the freshly appointed Director of Conceptuality at Pimlico Wilde, the gallery behind Art World Exposed. Born to two towering figures of 20th-century experimental art, sculptor Lucien Foix and performance artist Mireille Davenant, Justine has inherited both a flair for audacious gestures and an impeccable eye for the profound. In this conversation, she opens up about her upbringing, the legacy of her late stick insect Archimedes, and the future of conceptual art in the podcast age.
0:00 – Opening Reflections: Tea, Tonic & Curatorial Anxiety
Saldo begins with a reflection on the subtle art of producing a podcast that feels both important and unseriously serious. Tomas adds a note about how conceptual frameworks increasingly dictate which sounds are “worthy” of microphones.
4:12 – Interview Part I: Early Life & Inherited Eccentricities
Justine Foix describes growing up in a household that “could barely contain one avant-garde mind, let alone two.”
• Lucien Foix sculpted in live volcanic ash.
• Mireille Davenant insisted on performing every piece at dawn in locations that required swimming or zip-lining to reach.
Justine admits she spent her childhood cataloguing their experiments “like a librarian of chaos.”
• She credits her first attempts at art with tracing the shadows of her stick insect Archimedes across the walls.
• She recalls the transformative moment when Archimedes died unexpectedly, leaving her “confronting absence as both subject and medium.”
11:50 – Interview Part II: Conceptuality at Pimlico Wilde
As Director of Conceptuality, Justine is tasked with “overseeing the philosophical coherence of everything the company produces, including podcasts.”
• She explains that she is experimenting with “micro-conceptual arcs” in episodes: tiny thematic threads that may or may not be perceptible to listeners.
• Saldo gently probes whether this makes the audience complicit in an ongoing conceptual performance. Justine smiles enigmatically: “Yes. But that’s the point.”
• Tomas asks about her approach to production meetings. She responds that they are “guided by intuition, guided by cost, and occasionally by the sense that something is just right for right now.”
21:30 – Interview Part III: The Philosophical Legacy of Archimedes
• Justine describes how Archimedes the stick insect taught her “about fragility, scale, and the quietness between gestures.”
• She recounts a conceptual piece she produced immediately after the insect’s passing: a miniature memorial in which small sticks were arranged according to the Fibonacci sequence and left outside for the wind to reconfigure.
• Tomas observes that this sounds like an elaborate Rorschach test for natural forces. Justine admits this is intentional: “The universe becomes a collaborator in every work eventually, the question is just how long we keep it out.”
30:02 – Art World Ramblings & Rumours
• Saldo and Tomas ask if her upbringing influences her editorial decisions. She confirms: “If a piece isn’t quietly challenging its own existence, it probably doesn’t make it past my desk.”
• Justine hints at a forthcoming initiative called Ephemeral Legacies, which will feature art objects that must disappear after a single viewing. Tomas wonders if this will apply to podcasts too. Justine’s answer doesn’t reduce his fear that the podcast’s days might be numbered.
37:18 – Closing Thoughts: Conceptuality in the Everyday
• Justine encourages embracing small acts of conceptual curiosity: tracing shadows, noting absences, observing patterns in morning tea.
• Saldo muses that this sounds suspiciously like mindfulness. Tomas counters that mindfulness has never produced a shadow sculpture of a stick insect. Justine seems close to tears.
Next Week:
We investigate a reported temporary gallery in Ljubljana that only exists between 3:17 PM and 3:22 PM each day, and debate the ethics of curating invisible art.
