The exhibition presents photographs by John Pheasant, oils paintings by Suchi Chidambaram, and jointly produced mixed media works which combine photography and oil painting to create a single image. The exhibited works, both figurative and abstract, are of India, London and Italy, places to which Suchi and John both have strong attachments.
Suchi is a painter who was born and raised in southern India and now lives and works in London. Fascinated by perspective and initially self-taught, Suchi’s interpretations of urban landscapes are typically not painted in situ but from memory: fragments of visual data mingling with subjective, emotional responses. Suchi’s urban landscape series, both figurative and abstract, narrates her experiences of places and people.
John is a photographer with a particular interest in land- and cityscapes and portraits. John relishes the technical and artistic challenge of using only natural light, often in testing conditions (for example in rural Rajasthan where he works with a local NGO, Seva Mandir), to capture his experiences of the places he visits and the people he meets.
Mixed media (Suchi and John work with a variety of surfaces: fine art paper, canvas, metallic bases like aluminium and dibond) creates exciting opportunities to combine contrasting approaches and styles: traditionally, the approaches of photographer and painter are very different as are their techniques for capturing light. The blending together of these approaches and techniques creates a new dynamic which draws the viewer into the image and challenges the imagination.
