Endurance:
A Vision of Resilience in a Precarious World
Shanti Panchal, 'Endurance', 2022.
Brixton Underground station.
Commissioned by Art on the Underground.
Photo: Thierry Bal, 2022
ONLINE LECTURES EVERY TUESDAY
26 September - 24 October
6:30pm - 7:45pm (GMT)
An inspiring new 4-week course from Black Blossoms and Art on the Underground expanding from the work of artist Shanti Panchal and his work for Brixton Underground Station.
Endurance: A Vision of Resilience in a Precarious World is a four-week course that will explore ideas of resilience in today's ever-changing world. The sessions discuss how images of resilient communities can intersect with hostile political landscapes. In this course, we will learn about artist Shanti Panchal’s painting practice and the key themes of interdependency and exile which underpin his work.
The course will also discuss Shanti Panchal’s mural in Shadwell from 1984, commissioned by the Greater London Council (GLC) as part of its Anti-Racist Mural Programme. Thinking through the history and context for mural making, particularly in London.
Curator and Writer Amrita Dhallu teach this course and responds to Shanti Panchal’s 2022 Art on the Underground commission, ‘Endurance’, a community portrait which observes our continued resilience and reliance on each other.
Lecturer:
Amrita Dhallu
Amrita Dhallu is a curator and researcher based in London. She provides support structures for emerging British artists through commissioning, editorial projects, creating artistic networks and intergenerational learning spaces. Her current research examines ‘care’, spatial politics and ethno-futurist discourse within exhibition-making. She is Assistant Curator, International Art at Tate Modern, London, where she co-curated Lubaina Himid’s monographic exhibition (2021-2) and worked on projects such as Rasheed Araeen’s Zero to Infinity (2023) and Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life (2023).
Course Outline
Week 1:
Exploring Shanti Panchal’s Artistic Journey
Shanti Panchal at work creating his mural, ‘Across the Barrier’, in Shadwell, London, 1985.
This week, we will explore the distinctive style of Shanti Panchal and the artistic journey that has led to the artwork at Brixton Underground station, Endurance. We will look at Panchal’s wide range of artistic influences from classical fresco painting, Indian miniature painting to his childhood in the rural village of Mesar, North Gujarat.
Endurance is the sixth in a series of commissions at Brixton Tube station – the programme which nvites artists to respond to the diverse narratives of the local murals painted in the 1980s. A reproduction of a large-scale watercolour artwork, Endurance depicts a series of three scenes, within which we observe the quiet isolation of figures set against the monumental urban landscape of London.
Week 2:
Connecting with Shanti Panchal’s Roots
Shanti Panchal and Dushka Ahmad, ‘Across the Barrier’, 1985, Shadwell, London.
In this session, we will begin with exploring Panchal’s creative connection to his childhood experiences in the rural village of Mesar, North Gujarat. We will uncover the cyclical relationship between rural and urban experiences which run throughout his work. We will also look to the transnational nature of this experience, as explored by other South Asian artists like Prafulla Mohanti and Rasheed Araeen.
Week 3:
Unveiling the GLC Anti-Racist
Mural Project
Information leaflet for Shanti Panchal, 'Endurance', 2022. Brixton Underground station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo: Benedict Johnson, 2022
In this lecture, we will delve into the history of the Greater London Council's (GLC) ‘London Against Racism’ publicity campaign. During the 1980s, this campaign intersected with the Black British Art Movement. Discover how in 1984, the GLC's Ethnic Minorities Unit committed to informing the public about the daily experiences of diasporic communities facing racism. As a result, four murals were commissioned to capture these experiences in relation to their location: Keith Piper and Chila Kumari Burman in Southall, Shanti Panchal and Dushka Ahmad in Tower Hamlets, Lubaina Himid and Simone Alexander in Meanwhile Gardens, Notting Hill – and a fourth, acknowledging the vitality of Brixton, was by Gavin Jantjes assisted by Tam Joseph.
Week 4:
In Conversation with Shanti Panchal
This week, artist Shanti Panchal joins us for a special conversation with course convenor Amrita Dhallu. Together, we will explore Panchal's artistic practice and explore how the embodiment of spirituality and the fragility of human relationships are intertwined within his work. We will also trace Panchal’s long-term mural painting practice, starting from his involvement in the GLC Anti-Racist Mural Project to his current Art on the Underground commission, Endurance, at Brixton Underground station.
About Shanti Panchal
Shanti Panchal was born in Mesar, a village in Gujarat, India, and studied at the Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai. He came to England on a British Council scholarship to study at the Byam Shaw School of Art, London from 1978-80, and has lived and worked in London since. He has been artist-in-residence at the British Museum, the Harris Museum in Preston and the Winsor & Newton Art Factory in London. He has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions in Britain and abroad.
He is renowned for his watercolour paintings, and has received awards at the John Moores Painting Prize, Liverpool and the BP Portrait Award, at the National Portrait Gallery, London, and won first prize in The Sunday Times Watercolour Competition in 2001, and in 2012 won the second. He won the prestigious Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Prize in 2015 and in May 2016 was awarded Eastern Eye ACTA for the arts.
His work is in many private and public collections, including the Arts Council of England, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, The British Museum, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. In 1989 The Imperial War Museum commissioned his painting The Scissors, The Cotton and the Uniform, and in 2012 also acquired his painting The Boys Returned from Helmand for their Collection and recently The Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Collection, London.
The unveiling of Shanti Panchal’s anti-racist mural, ‘Across the Barrier’ as featured in Asian Times, Friday 13 September, 1985.
