ACCA Podcast · ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art)

Artist Talks: with Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Megan Cope, Khaled Sabsabi and Ali Tahayori

August 4, 2025·45 min·2 clips

Abdul-Rahman Abdullah connects Pretty Beach to his grandfather’s death, stingrays, and grief that strangers recognize.

The talk opens with care. Shelley Maxburn names the Wurundjeri people, acknowledges that the land was never ceded, and places ACCA on ground with a long creative life. The gallery never disappears from the conversation. Artists have come to Melbourne for Five Acts of Love, and the introduction keeps things warm, a little ceremonial, and tied to the exhibition. A personal memory then takes over. The speaker remembers a beach as a placeholder image before the news in 2009 that his granddad had committed suicide changed what that image meant. The grief stays plain. He does not make the death easy to explain. He sets it beside illness, age, independence, and the fear of becoming a burden. The hard details remain hard. Photos and letters found with his granddad still stay with him, even when the family can understand parts of the decision in practical terms. Memory becomes the way in. From that private loss, the speaker talks about wanting to think of death as part of life, not only as rupture. Faith enters, but it does not tidy the answer. As a Muslim, he names his own sense of death and the afterlife, while admitting that the question is finally answered by experience. The work keeps reaching toward continuation. He suggests that life, essence, or whatever name fits may carry on in some form. The ending comes back to balance. A speaker brings in khair, barakah, and shar, explaining that goodness, blessing, and harm can live inside the same thing. Collective meaning matters here. Collective 11 and the number itself turn the final answer toward acknowledgement, unity, and shared intention. ACCA gives the artists room to speak slowly. The conversation leaves artwork, grief, spirituality, and the gallery gathering tangled together, which feels right.

As heard by us

A live artist panel where grief, faith, and material practice stay closely entwined.

ACCA's gathering of four artists from Five Acts of Love reads less like a polished interview and more like a public conversation, with work, grief, memory, belief, and care all kept in view.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want art talk where grief, faith, and making sit in the same room.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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