Beryl Cook

[laughs] But they're still available to buy if you're a cat person, and I admit I am not.

But there, there is, there is a picture in our new October issue that actually made me want a cat, and it is Beryl Cook, the artist, and her husband, a self-portrait, isn't it? You know this picture, Bex.

Yeah.

And it- he is snoozing, isn't he? And he's got these cats just curled up asleep on him.

... who wouldn't want that?

Yeah.

But actually, we're gonna talk about Beryl Cook and art later on, aren't we? But first, we've got time now for our read-aloud story.

Here we go.

Uh, what's, what was the show called?

Um, this last one, well, she did Beryl Cook, the artist.

She does an artist each year, and she does, like, she plays them.

She does a painting by them, and then she talks their story as them whilst painting.

We're going to revisit artists we love, like David Hockney and Giovanni Battista Moroni.

As well as meet some artists we haven't really dived into, dove into, I don't know what the correct term is, before dove into before, like Sylvia Slay, Paul Cadmus, and Beryl Cook.

All subverting the gays in their own way.

And that's G-A-Z-E.

With that one in particular, like clearly that resonated with lots and lots of people that went on to win some really prestigious art prizes over here in the UK and really launched his career.

So there's something really interesting about that almost like domestic, but also kind of voyeuristic gaze that really kind of resonates with everyone.

And I love that you kind of made a parallel about like, oh, maybe it's, bit cheeky like your partner while they're having a shower like there's a lovely little bit of flirtation there but in a kind of understandable way and with that kind of fun and flirty kind ofness that kind of comes through there's another British artist I wanted to mention her name's Beryl Cook and one of her pieces is in the book it's called Ladies Night and it's very much a ladies night they are out on the town there is a male dancer the women are having an absolute blast so even though there is a lot of gay male gaze in this because i'm a gay man i wrote the book it's kind of embedded within it there is some female gaze in there as well and i feel like beryl's version of the world is so much fun and really really captures the joy and like you can almost hear like the cheesy 70s disco blasting in the background you've got some people who are a little bit embarrassed they're covering their faces but clearly having a whale of a time and others just like yeah and like i i know those women i've been on nights So much fun.

Yeah, I'm really glad that you are able to kind of make connections and be like, yeah, I vibe with this.

Hello and welcome to Queer Folk Radio.

I'm Sophie Crawford and I'm very excited here to have with me today Rhys Morgan who's an amazing musician, artist and organiser and I'm going to let him introduce himself.

So Rhys, tell everyone a little bit about you and what you do.

So, yeah, I'm Rhys Morgan.

I am an artist, musician and curator based in Plymouth in Devon in the UK.

And I make various types of artwork.

And one of my more recent projects is It was a participatory project called See You in the Fruit Locker, which was basically where I brought together a LGBTQIA plus C shanty choir for a commission with a gallery in town.

dockside-y sort of area that everybody thinks of the cobbled streets.

But on to today.

The painter Beryl Cook divided the art world when she burst into the public consciousness in 1976.

As a self-taught woman in the snobby art world, she had a lot of detractors.

But she had a lot of fans too, from across society, as her biographer, Hilary Bracegirdle, discovered when she was given access to the Cook family archive.

Beryl would have been 100th this year, and there's been a lot of events celebrating her life and work.

And yesterday, Hilary's book, Beryl Cook, Life and Art, was released.

There's a link to it in the show notes.

So I was chuffed to grab some time with Hilary to talk about Beryl's life and legacy, and even more chuffed that she brought along Teresa Cook, Beryl's daughter-in-law.