Newsletter #5 // MELTING LANDS / IN BEAUTY, POWER, SENSE AND TOUCH
Wellcome Trust x UCL x HG, climate art, paintings, new project, Anthology, My year's highlight!
An exciting collaboration with a Wellcome funded x UCL led project is hot off the press and I’m chuffed to share it with all of you!
“The Work of Art in the Age of Planetary Destruction” is an Anthology- a collection of ideas from 32 contributors around the world — artists, curators, photographers, writers — about engaging with a world in environmental crisis.
I was invited to participate by the UCL project CUSSH team last year and after some exciting exchanges, I planned my studio work and photo essay tailored to their very generous and open brief for the book.
The anthology will take two forms: a single printed book, which will be archived in the Wellcome Library in 2024 and a free electronic version for global access:
I might be a bit biased, but I haven’t been able to put down the book! It has been so insightful to read chapters by the Artists I have long admired, and to learn about practitioners whose work I have been introduced to through this collaboration.
From studio to the book..
My contribution to the project consists of 3 bodies of work, ranging from drawings, prints, paintings and an installation. (See pages 96-109 for my chapter in the e-book)
Visual notes made in Karura forest, Nairobi (2020); Fungi and network inspired etchings (2022) called “Morphologies” (2022), and "Melting Lands" (2023) - my large scale tapestry-painting, feature in the book.
Melting lands is a cartographic and painterly enquiry into the state of our planet. For this work, I sourced the material from grassroot level upcycling enterprises and generations worth of discarded/ forgotten textiles and keepsakes in my family storage in Delhi.
For installation spaces, I went on to dreaming about the derelict railway arches by Latimer Road, London - part of my walking route from the bike stand to my studio doors.
The 11 feet high work took me about 6 months to conceptualise and produce. I intended for it to be a living, moving painting - both as a stationary object in controlled environments and an installation in shifting spaces and places.
On a blustery day in February this year, we shot the completed Melting Lands right under the railway arches (fuelled by a big pub lunch as a reward!)
Exploring forests, fungi and image-making methods..
I first started making sound and visual notes of Karura Forest when I was an artist-in-residence at Kuona Trust, Nairobi in 2018. It was then that I learnt of the brilliant Kenyan activist Prof. Wangari Maathai and her groundbreaking work at the forest.
In 2022, I developed a new interest in printmaking and incorporating methods of etching and engraving into my wider artistic practice. Morphologies was born from a 6 week exercise of reworking a zinc plate with marks, found material and intuitive mapping.
I do hope you enjoy reading the “The Work of Art in the Age of Planetary Destruction”.
Please feel free to get in touch with me for any questions, press engagements and interviews about this project and my contribution to it.
Leaving this here with a quote I love from the book-
In other news..
This October, while I was visiting Delhi, I had the chance to organise and facilitate a workshop with Khoj studios and four artists-alumni of the Royal Drawing School. We collaborated to run a walk-draw-map workshop led by 30 children.
Among the highlights was a chance to draw atop an ancient dam, walking through bylanes of Khirkee an urban village in Delhi and looking at the drawings made by the participants - kids of Khirkee village and the Simurgh centre.
A big welcome to all the new subscribers - this newsletter is a drip-feed of my work, references and perspectives.