Always On My Mind (Part 2) opens Thursday 31st of August 2023 and features the work of 16 artists including:
The National Brain Appeal provide much-needed funds to support The National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery and the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology – together known as Queen Square. This is one of the world’s leading centres for the diagnosis, treatment and care of patients with neurological and neuromuscular conditions. These include stroke, multiple sclerosis, brain cancer, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, and dementia. Have you or your loved ones ever suffered with any of these things?
"I once woke up and was unable to see. I tried not to panic but I could only make things out through gaps in a milky white saturate. I cried and managed to get to an optician who told me that it was to do with migraines and that in the next few weeks I would be getting dull nasty headaches. When I was a little my dad once fell at work, banged his head on a concrete floor and had a brain hemorage. I remember visiting him in hospital and giving him a drawing. He didn't know who I was. Both experiences were very scary but otherwise I have been lucky."
What’s always on your mind these days and is it having an impact on your art work?
"Sexism and also the lack of visability of people of colour. I would like to see more work by British Asian artists on display at the Tate. This is because I believe that the history of the Asian Diaspora to Britain is under-represented in the visual arts especially within mainstream platforms and collections. Below is a j-peg of my painting, 'Landowner'
Can you tell me more about this work? Do you have an artist's statement?
"Yes. A reclining woman gazes at a landscape, her body, confident yet relaxed obscures our view to the rural idyll as she occupies the span of the composition, closing us off. The luxuriant cloth she adorns, with its bejewelled imperial silks is seductive, and although a glimmer of underwear is revealed there is also an understanding that her triumphant stance is for us to keep distance. The landscape in view depicts 17th century Hounslow, now home to a large community of South-Asians due to its proximity to Heathrow. Back then this land belonged to wealthy merchants whose mansions lined the Thames due to their trade that was entwined with East India Company. The old oak bench the woman rests upon, with the parquet floor beneath makes the space she inhabits ambiguous, is this landscape real or fictional? Are we led to question whether the woman is a gallery visitor, a collector, or an artist gazing at her own work? The ambiguity of her identity is undefined and nuanced making the reading of this painting layered and complex, hoping to defy the traditions of painted recumbent women in landscapes. The painting asks us to revisit what has been painted in the past and by whom in relation to our varying positionalities today."
The opening party for Always on my Mind Part 2 is Thursday 31st August 6pm till 9pm at Fitzrovia Gallery, 139 Whitfield Street W1T 5EN
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