Podcast: Sam Leach with Andrew Frost

Throughout history, artists have always quoted and appropriated, synthesising the past and (hopefully) creating something new all their own. It is the modus operandi of award winning painter Sam Leach and is exemplified in his controversial Wynne Prize winning work based on a 17th century Dutch painting of an Italianate landscape.

The process raises serious questions about the future of art, culture and humanity — or what Sam calls the cultural singularity. Is it a new kind of collaboration between man and machine, giving us a new aesthetic beyond ourselves or has the artist been subjugated to become the machine’s apprentice?

No stranger to controversy, Sam Leach is now using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to generate new imagery based on his own catalogue of work, which he then painstakingly paints. It’s a kind of feedback loop, blending the mystical qualities of paint with digital technology.

Join Sam and art critic, lecturer and broadcaster Andrew Frost in this timely, thoughtprovoking conversation.

Sam Leach, Boucher x Fragonard x NASA, 2020, oil on wood, 50 x 50 cm (detail)