‘‘We’re in such a culture of favouring youth, in everything. The art world is a special place because it doesn’t’’
In the ArtReview Podcast, artists, thinkers and cultural figures are invited to choose three works as lenses through which to examine their practice and explore critical issues impacting the contemporary art world.
In our fifth episode, artist Rene Matić speaks to ArtReview editor Fi Churchman about polyamory, Shane Meadows’s This Is England and being the youngest nominee ever for the Turner Prize. Matić will unveil a new work as part of eight creative commissions for the opening of the V&A East Museum on 18 April 2026.
Listen now on Spotify and YouTube. New episodes drop every fortnight. All of the works referenced in this podcast can be viewed below.
About Rene Matić
Rene Matić is a London-based, Peterborough-born artist working across photography, film, installation and sound, exploring ideas of identity, intimacy, race, gender and belonging. Drawing on their heritage as a Brit, second-generation skinhead and third-generation St Lucian, their work captures everyday moments of community and selfhood and has been displayed at South London Gallery and Bradford Culture Contemporary for the Turner Prize 2025, among others.
Credits
Interviewer: Fi Churchman
Host and producer: Chiara Wilkinson @chiarawilkinson
Audio editor: Charlie Duffield
Music design: Iona Smith @ic_yonic
Works mentioned, in order of reference
Shane Meadows’s cult British film, This is England (2006), set in 1983 in an unnamed town in the English Midlands, follows Shaun, a lonely 12-year-old boy whose father has died in the Falklands War. Shaun falls in with a group of skinheads who initially offer him friendship, humour and belonging, though when an older member named Combo returns from prison, the group is pulled towards aggression, tied up with nationalism and racism.
Matić’s Many Rivers (2022) is an intimate 30-minute film created for Matić’s 2022 solo exhibition at the South London Gallery. Blending footage of family members with scenes from her hometown of Peterborough, including neglected housing developments and derelict churches, the film centres on her father, Paul, a Black skinhead, as he reflects on identity and his upbringing.
Set in New York and Paris during the late 1950s, James Baldwin’s Another Country (1962) follows a circle of friends living in the aftermath of the death of Rufus Scott, a Black jazz drummer. As they grapple with grief, they confront the complexities of race, sexuality and intimacy that shape their relationships.
Matić’s ‘New Work’ commission for the opening of V&A East this year features photographic works presented in lightboxes shaped like a sound system, created in response to the V&A East Museum’s The Music is Black: A British Story. The work will be unveiled on 18 April, when V&A East Museum opens to the public, alongside work by Tania Bruguera, Es Devlin, Lawrence Lek and others.
