Maximillian William, London presents a conversation between Bhajan Hunjan and Roshini Kempadoo moderated by writer and editor Allie Biswas on the late artist Gurminder Sikand.
This panel discussion celebrates the launch of the exhibition catalogue, Gurminder Sikand: Early Paintings. Hunjan and Kempadoo knew Sikand and exhibited alongside her. The artists speak to the Midlands context in which they were all making or exhibiting work in the 80s and 90s. The exhibition catalogue features a commissioned essay by art historian Nicholas Alfrey and a foreword by Nathaniel Sikand-Youngs.
This talk was recorded on 22 June 2024 and programmed in conjunction with 'Gurminder Sikand: Early Paintings' at Maximillian William, London 16 May - 29 June 2024.
--
Bhajan Hunjan arrived in the UK to train as a painter and printmaker and after graduation from Reading University and the Slade School of Art, became associated with the politics and figurative work of the emerging Black British Art Movement. Since then she has developed a very individual visual language of free-floating lines, symbolic colours and shapes, repetition and script motifs that draw upon both her Sikh heritage and fine art abstraction to encourage viewers to reflect on social, spiritual and emotional environments. She works on public art commissions and as an artist educator working with young people and families to create site specific, temporary, and permanent installations. Hunjan was nominated for the Max Mara Prize for Women Artists (2022 - 24) with the Whitechapel Gallery and Maramotti foundation. Currently she is exhibiting in ‘Women in revolt’ - Art and Activism in UK 1970 - 1990 Tate touring exhibition, at the National Galleries Scotland.
Roshini Kempadoo is a media artist, photographer and scholar. Her research, multimedia and photographic projects combine factual and fictional re-imaginings of contemporary experiences, histories and memories. Roshini has been active in documenting Caribbean communities, events, rights issues, and individuals in the UK and the Caribbean. She was instrumental in setting up Autograph, the Association of Black Photographers in the late 1980s, and worked as a documentary photographer for Format Picture Agency (1983 - 2003).
Allie Biswas is a writer and editor based in London. Her most recent publication is a collection of essays by the critic Larry Neal, ‘Any Day Now: Toward a Black Aesthetic’ (2024), which she edited. In 2021 she co-edited ‘The Soul of a Nation Reader: Writings by and about Black American Artists, 1960-1980’. She is currently working on the first comprehensive monograph on the artist Hew Locke, which will be published by Yale University Press in 2025.
28 авг 2024
