SLOW BURN
4 December - 15 January 2022
Saelia Aparicio, Amba Sayal-Bennett, Laila Tara H,
Haroun Hayward, Harminder Judge, Shailee Mehta,
Anousha Payne, Anna Perach and Shaan Syed
Overbearing Grass, Weightless Gods, 2021, watercolour on paper, 56 x 76 cm
indigo+madder is pleased to present Slow Burn, a group exhibition that brings together watercolours by nine contemporary artists.
The enduring appeal, accessibility and adaptability of watercolour, has made it an especially apt medium for the pandemic era. Artists who have incorporated it into their practice, have been constantly pushing the boundaries of what it can be. The works in the exhibition are remarkably versatile, intimate and reveal how the age-old endeavour of watermedia painting, has responded to the times. The fluidity of this medium, means it cannot completely be controlled and manipulated, but this also opens up numerous layering possibilities and invites a certain spontaneity. The works in the exhibition play with depth, mood, intensity and showcase the changeability of this particularly unforgiving medium, whose use often involves as much flexibility as premeditation. Whether it’s the uncontrollable, unpredictable blending of wet-into-wet painting or the tension between structured, saturated inky lines and the ephemeral fluidity of the pigments, the paintings present a multiplicity of textures, washes, personal visions and styles.
Whilst bringing together a diverse selection of works that employ the immediacy, subtlety and energy of the medium, the exhibition also dwells on how, in many ways, these bodies of work have invariably ended up reflecting the hopefulness, resourcefulness and collective energies that have developed during this unique and disruptive moment in time.
Artists featured in this exhibition include Saelia Aparicio, Amba Sayal-Bennett, Laila Tara H, Haroun Hayward, Harminder Judge, Shailee Mehta, Anousha Payne, Anna Perach and Shaan Syed.
Slow Burn is now on view by appointment. Please get in touch over email: info@indigoplusmadder.com
SELECTED WORKS
INSTALLATION VIEWS
Saelia Aparicio (b. 1982, Spain) is a London-based Spanish artist. She received her MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, 2015 and BA in Fine Art at the Universidad de Castilla la Mancha, Cuenca, 2009. Aparicio explores the paradoxical spaces found inside the normal and the everyday. The terrifying is revealed with a sense of humour that destabilises our perception and invites us to journey into a space where other rules apply. Here we cross into a place in which we can be plants or concrete, spores or microplastics, a space which requires us to let ourselves go.
Aparicio won Generaciones (2019) and was commissioned by the Serpentine Gallery to make the film Green Shoots for their General Ecology symposium and research project, The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish with Plants in London. Selected solo exhibitions include: Planta, Alzado, Raiz, The Ryder, Madrid, 2019; Prótesis para invertebrados, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2019; The World of Craig Green and Saelia Aparicio, Matches Fashion and Frieze art fair, Carlos Place and Regents Park, London, 2019; and Cadena Atrofica, Murcia, Spain in collaboration with designer Attua Aparicio from Silo Studio, 2018. Recent exhibitions include In the Castle of my Skin, a participative show with Sonia Boyce, MIMA, Middlesbrough, 2021; Ferine, a collaborative exhibition with Paloma Proudfoot, TJ Boulting, London, 2021; and From Creators to Creators, Kunsthaus Hamburg, Germany, 2021.
Amba Sayal-Bennett (b. 1991, London) lives and works in London. She received her BFA from Oxford University and her MA in Sculpture from The Royal College of Art. She was awarded her PhD in Art Practice and Learning from Goldsmiths and has published her practice-based research with Tate Papers. She is a co-founder of Cypher Billboard, an artist- run public program of site-specific billboard artworks and off-site projects based in London.
Sayal-Bennett works across drawing, projection, and sculptural installation. Her practice explores performative dynamics within human and non-human assemblages, from our use of language to material encounters in the studio. She recently won the The Derek Hill Foundation Scholarship from The British School at Rome. Solo exhibitions include A Track to Bare, Carbon 12, Dubai, 2021; A Mechanised Thought, indigo+madder, London, 2020 and Every Line Makes a Cut, Carbon 12, Dubai, 2019. Her recent group exhibitions include Where Things Land Down, Fels, London, 2021; Tomorrow 2021, White Cube, London, 2021; 5th edition, Contemporary Sculpture Fulmer, Slough, 2021; A Plot for the Multiverse, indigo+madder, London, 2019; ABSINTHE §2, Spit and Sawdust, London, 2019; Espacio, Luz y Orden, José de la Fuente, Santander, 2019 amongst several others. Amba’s works are in the collections of the Ashmolean Museum, Art Jameel, and the Saatchi Collection.
Laila Tara H (b. 1995, London) is a British-Iranian artist, based between London and Tehran. She received her MA in Persian and Indian Miniature painting from The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts in 2019. Raised across the world, she paints largely autobiographical reflections of a life navigating cultures. Her practice is rooted in traditional methods and materials.
Laila's exhibitions include a two-person presentation at Public Gallery, London 2022 (upcoming); Sky-Circles, indigo+madder, London, 2021; (solo) Am I?, V.O. Curations, London 2021; Legacy Series: FUTURE, Arteeast, 2021; Nourishment Projects, V.O. Curations, London, 2020; So Good So Close, Numeroventi, Florence, Italy, 2020; Dance First Think Later, General Practice Gallery, Lincoln, UK, 2020; To All Our Absent Dialogues, Warbling Collective, 145a Gallery, London, 2020; Royal Miniature Society, Mall Galleries, London 2019; Carpet Pages II: Roots, Mile End Pavilion, London, 2019, amongst others. Her residencies include Casa Balandra, Mallorca, Spain, 2020; Numeroventi, Florence, Italy, 2020 and Studio Escalier, Argenton, Chateau, France, 2016.
Haroun Hayward (b. 1983, London) lives and works in London. He received his MFA from Goldsmiths University and BA (Fine Art, Painting) from Brighton University. Exploring the visual possibilities of sound, textile traditions and landscape painting, Hayward’s works straddle the porous boundary between abstraction and representation. He is interested in the universality of the mystical and otherworldly states of flow achieved through various creative experiences, privately or communally, that help in ascending to a different mental plane.
Hayward’s solo exhibitions include Too Nice, Play It Twice at indigo+madder, London, 2021, and Dance Mania at the Wellington Club, London, 2020. Group exhibitions include Hawala, Paradise Row Projects, London, 2021; Urbanism, AORA, London, 2021; Drawing Room Biennial, Drawing Room, London, 2021; All the Days and Nights, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, 2020; Interference, Rivington Rooms, London, 2019; Gadfly, indigo+madder, London, 2019 and While Supplies Last, Mount Analogue, Seattle, USA, 2019 among others. Hayward is a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Brighton’s Painting Department, and a mentor at The New Art School. He has recently finished a residency at The Fores Project, London, and has been selected as an Artist in Residence for The India Art Fair 2022.
Harminder Judge (b. 1982, Rotherham, UK) lives and works in London. His practice – which spans object-making, performance and installation – engages with many subjects but frequently explores portals, be they spiritual, political or personal. Judge’s most recent body of work engages a history of Indian abstract painting related to tantric ritual.
In 2011, he won the Arts Foundation Fellowship Award in Performance Art and was recently awarded a five-year residency at the ACME Fire Station. Judge’s first European solo Mountain and Mercies opened in October 2021 at Galerie PCP in Paris. His other exhibitions include an upcoming solo at the Sunday Painter, London, UK, 2022, an upcoming solo at Humber Street Gallery, Hull, UK, 2022; Not Painting, Copperfield Gallery, London November, 2021; Hawala, Paradise Row Projects, London, 2021; Drawing Room Biennial, Drawing Room, London, 2021; Am I Human To You?, Jugendstilsenteret & Kube Museum, Norway, 2021; Tomorrow, London, White Cube, 2020; Our Ashes Make Great Fertilizer, Public Gallery, London, UK, 2020; At Home In The Universe, Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai, 2019 and A Plot for the Multiverse, indigo+madder, London, 2019.
Shailee Mehta (b. 1998, Indore, India) lives and works in Mumbai, India. She received her BFA in 2020 from Slade School of Fine Art. Mehta's images stem from an autobiographical lens on the female embodiment of agency. The settings and characters in her narratives are evocative of the Indian landscape, which is an integral part of her psyche, given her continual engagement with it. They have a theatrical quality to them in that they subvert patriarchal tropes by enacting an otherness associated with the female experience, embracing intimate ideas such as that of desire, solitude, idleness and care. Using tools of storytelling within the liminal spaces of the urban and the wild, her feminized gaze desexualises the body while acknowledging its vulnerability.
Recent exhibitions include a solo show titled In The Belly of A Slovenly Crow, at the Residence Gallery (London, 2020), Run With The Wolves, Lawrie-Shabibi, Dubai, 2021; Les Danses Nocturnes, East Contemporary, France, 2021; A Small Dent in the Air, Grove Collective, London, 2021 and All Is Not Lost 20:20:20, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, 2020.
Anna Perach (b. 1985, USSR) lives and works in London, UK. She holds an MFA in Fine Art (distinction) from Goldsmiths, University of London (2020). Perach’s artistic practice explores the dynamic between personal and cultural myths, finding the specific interest in how our private narratives are deeply rooted in ancient folklore and storytelling. In the past two years she has been exploring working with watercolours alongside her main practice of installation and performance with tufted, wearable pieces.
Perach’s recent work will be on view as part of a two-person exhibition As She Laughs at Cooke Latham Gallery, London, December 2021. She has exhibited internationally at galleries including: White Cube gallery, London, UK; Saatchi Gallery, London, UK; ADA gallery, Rome, Italy, and Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Herzliya, Israel. In 2021 Anna took part in Arco Madrid 2021 with The Ryder gallery. In 2020 she received a studio award with Sarabande, The Lee Alexander McQueen foundation as well as the Gilbert Bayes award. In the same year, Anna was awarded a grant for the production of new work from Procreate Project via the Arts Council England. Recent publications include Calvert Journal and Artforum.
Anousha Payne (b. 1991, Southampton) lives and works in London. She graduated from Camberwell College of Arts with a BFA in 2014. Mainly working with sculpture and painting, her preferred materials are ceramics, textile, plaster, epoxy and watercolour. Payne's work explores the human pursuit of spirituality in object form, as a mode of cultural expression that is distinct from religious symbolism. Her work is inspired by artifacts from the ancient world, myth-making and Tamil folklore. Through the process of psychic automatism and free-association, she is interested in the possibilities of imbuing spirituality into an object and in the material qualities of religious or spiritual objects and spaces.
Payne’s recent work will be on view as part of a two-person exhibition As She Laughs at Cooke Latham Gallery, London, December 2021. Her solo exhibitions include and here she dwells, indigo+madder, London August 2020, Imaginary Artefacts, AG Projects, London, 2017; Drawing into Space, 71a Gallery, London, 2017 and Love Objects, Annin Arts via 5th Base Gallery, London, 2016. Payne’s recent residencies and group exhibitions include the Fores Project, London 2021, Villa Lena, Tuscany, 2019; Fibra, Oaxaca, 2019; Hawala, Paradise Row Projects, London, 2021; Vessels II: On Bodily Fluids, Alkinois Athens, 2021; Beyond Skin, Tube Culture Hall, Milan 2021; Disir, Kristian Day, London, 2019; Into the Soft, C4 Projects, Copenhagen, 2019; Something Else, Victoria Gallery, Samara, Russia, 2018 and HOT MILK, Post_Institute, London, 2018 amongst others.
Shaan Syed (b. 1975, Toronto) lives and works in London. He holds an MFA from Goldsmiths College in London and a diploma in Fine Arts from OCAD in Toronto, ON. Syed’s conceptual practice plays with various modes of painting, speaking to both abstract and expressionist traditions. In trying to “objectify a flat surface,” his paintings both illustrate depth and use tricks of colour to defy it.
Recent solo exhibitions include Nuno Centeno, Porto, 2021 (forthcoming), Common Eras, Bradley Ertaskiran, Montreal, 2021, FREEHOUSE (London UK), Parisian Laundry (Montreal, CA), Kunsthalle Winterthur (Switzerland), noshowspace (London, UK), and Michael Janssen Gallery (Berlin, DE). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions in venues such as the Power Plant (Toronto, CA), Aga Khan Museum (Toronto, CA), Patrick De Brock (Knokke-Heist, BE), Herrmann Germann Contemporary (Zurich) and David Roberts Art Foundation (London). Syed has received awards and scholarships from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Elephant Trust UK, Arts Council England, the Canada Council for the Arts, and Jerwood Contemporary Painters UK. In 2018/19, Syed founded and ran Aqbar, a temporary gallery space in East London where he invited his peers to show one painting per exhibition. Shaan Syed’s work is found in permanent collections including The National Gallery of Canada, Modern Forms, London, UK, National Bank, Canada, UBS Art Collection, London, Royal Bank of Canada, TD Canada Trust, Toronto and private collections in the US, Canada, the U.K, Europe and Asia.
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