Palestinian artists after the ceasefire, Robert Ryman, Katherine Hubbard

Ben Luke (0:21)

Hello, it's The Week in Art, I'm Ben Luke. This week, we hear about the lives of Palestinian artists a year after the ceasefire. Robert Ryman at the Barbican and Katherine Hubbard at Studio Voltaire.

The 10th of October marks the first anniversary of the ceasefire in Gaza. It's not put an end to the bloodshed with figures released in August by the United Nations Human Rights Office stating that more than 1200 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since last October. Our reporter, Sarvy Geranpayeh, has been reporting on the lives of Palestinian artists since soon after the first Israeli bombings in Gaza in October 2023, following the Hamas attacks in Israel. And she joins me to discuss her latest conversations with four Gaza artists who have all experienced different levels of trauma, grief and displacement. A new survey exhibition of the work of the US painter Robert Ryman opened this week at the Barbican Art Gallery in London, and I went to the gallery to talk to Wells Fray-Smith, the exhibition's curator. And this episode's Work of the Week is The Great Room by the US artist Katherine Hubbard, the latest iteration of which was unveiled at Studio Voltaire in London this week. The Great Room responds through different forms of photographic works to the effects of late, a progressive brain disease on Hubbard's mother, Antonette Berger, and the emotional experience of packing up a home in preparation for a move into residential care. I talked to Katherine about the work.

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Now, it's a year since a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect in Gaza, but Palestinians are still facing daily attacks from the Israeli military, and the latest figures released by the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations, say that hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israel since the 10th of October 2025 Our reporter, Sarvy Geranpayeh's front-page story for the October edition of The Art Newspaper, which is also available online or on the app, features the testimonies of four Palestinian artists about their lives one year on. I spoke to her about these conversations. And just to warn you, this conversation includes some harrowing details. Sarvy, we're marking a year of the ceasefire of the 10th of October 2025

But for many people, it seems like there has not been a ceasefire. Can you tell us where we're at in terms of the geopolitics of this?

Sarvy Geranpayeh (3:16)

So, I think speaking to people in Gaza, although the bombardments are not as intense as they once were for two years, there was intense bombardments in Gaza. We all saw the images. They're not getting that, but the attacks haven't stopped. And in terms of the humanitarian issues, those problems still exist. Food is still an issue for many people. Prices are still high.

UN would say that they're still limited with what they can bring in to Gaza.

Ben Luke (3:48)

That's right. Aid agencies are consistently saying they are not being given the access that they need to help people.

Sarvy Geranpayeh (3:53)

Absolutely. Absolutely. Water is still an issue.

Electricity is still an issue. So people have electricity just for charging their phones, laptops, very limited.

Life is still very difficult. Access to clean water is difficult.

So those aspects of life haven't changed. So when you speak to people, they say, we haven't gone back to normal. This life is still very hard. They can't leave easily. Very few people can leave. I don't want to say people are not leaving at all, but it's limited. So there are people who receive scholarships or we see them here, for example, in the UK or across Europe, where there are scholarships set up for Palestinian students from Gaza specifically. But they are very limited. The numbers are high. So yeah, as far as they're concerned, if you speak to people in Gaza, they say this is not normal life.

And some call it a fake ceasefire. There's still, I spoke to someone who mentioned they'd gone to the hospital and there was an attack near the hospital. This was just back in July.

Ben Luke (4:53)

And the cold reality of the statistics is that 1,200 people have died since the ceasefire, 1,200 Palestinians.