Blog
Indo-Anglian Conversations
27/04/2018
Visual experiments based on Instagram conversations between Stephanie Douet and Roshan Chhabria
Background
Following my first visit to India in 2015 I became fascinated and horrified by the British Raj, and wanted to find out how modern Indians felt about the Empire. I searched on Instagram for an Indian artist with whom to correspond, and Roshan Chhabria’s drawings appealed to me for their liveliness and truthfulness. We started chatting and swapping images, comments and ideas and gradually this formed into a wish to work together formally.
Though Roshan is half my age and lives in tumultuously busy Baroda and I live in a sleepy market town in Norfolk, our work has much in common. We are both fascinated by blackness as a physical presence in drawing and painting; abstract geometric forms appear alongside natural bodies as though inhabiting the same lives; we use collage as a means of introducing different spaces in our work; and we both have a taste for the same kinds of material objects that appear as personalities in our work.
We also like to work in mononchome, to draw from life, to make kinetic marks, and humour is a core to both our practises.
We brought in all the things that interested us - Roshan’s sketches, pages torn from books, handwritten notes, large-scale photo cutouts, even my black paint-spattered studio shoes, and played around with different arrangements. It was an exhilarating process and we produced work that neither would have made independently.
Collaboration
Last summer we began experimenting with working together in our separate studios in England and India, through our Instagram chats. I used my studio wall to play with forms that represent Instagram text boxes and used collage, painting and assemblage to represent our conversations. We brought in all the things that interested us - Roshan’s sketches, pages torn from books, handwritten notes, large-scale photo cutouts, even my black paint-spattered studio shoes, and played around with different arrangements.
It was an exhilarating process and we produced work that neither would have made independently.
The work culminated in the two large digital prints we exhibited at the India Club in London - chosen for its history of Indi-Anglian friendship, it was founded in the 1950s by Krishna Menon and a symbol of Anglo-indian friendship.
Development
It became clear to us that working in the same space would be interesting and fruitful for us both. We are exploring ways of doing this through residency, live event and exhibition, and have been joined by a writer-curator in Delhi who is working with us. Such a project has a naturally inclusive potential, bringing in the public both to contribute text and actual objects.
http://www.gallerymaskara.com/artist/roshan-chhabria/selected
Background
Following my first visit to India in 2015 I became fascinated and horrified by the British Raj, and wanted to find out how modern Indians felt about the Empire. I searched on Instagram for an Indian artist with whom to correspond, and Roshan Chhabria’s drawings appealed to me for their liveliness and truthfulness. We started chatting and swapping images, comments and ideas and gradually this formed into a wish to work together formally.
Though Roshan is half my age and lives in tumultuously busy Baroda and I live in a sleepy market town in Norfolk, our work has much in common. We are both fascinated by blackness as a physical presence in drawing and painting; abstract geometric forms appear alongside natural bodies as though inhabiting the same lives; we use collage as a means of introducing different spaces in our work; and we both have a taste for the same kinds of material objects that appear as personalities in our work.
We also like to work in mononchome, to draw from life, to make kinetic marks, and humour is a core to both our practises.
We brought in all the things that interested us - Roshan’s sketches, pages torn from books, handwritten notes, large-scale photo cutouts, even my black paint-spattered studio shoes, and played around with different arrangements. It was an exhilarating process and we produced work that neither would have made independently.
Collaboration
Last summer we began experimenting with working together in our separate studios in England and India, through our Instagram chats. I used my studio wall to play with forms that represent Instagram text boxes and used collage, painting and assemblage to represent our conversations. We brought in all the things that interested us - Roshan’s sketches, pages torn from books, handwritten notes, large-scale photo cutouts, even my black paint-spattered studio shoes, and played around with different arrangements.
It was an exhilarating process and we produced work that neither would have made independently.
The work culminated in the two large digital prints we exhibited at the India Club in London - chosen for its history of Indi-Anglian friendship, it was founded in the 1950s by Krishna Menon and a symbol of Anglo-indian friendship.
Development
It became clear to us that working in the same space would be interesting and fruitful for us both. We are exploring ways of doing this through residency, live event and exhibition, and have been joined by a writer-curator in Delhi who is working with us. Such a project has a naturally inclusive potential, bringing in the public both to contribute text and actual objects.
http://www.gallerymaskara.com/artist/roshan-chhabria/selected
