Artist Shanti Panchal will join the class for a special conversation with course convenor Amrita Dhallu. Together, we will discuss 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 delve into 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 an 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 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 the 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, and 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.

About 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 the Assistant Curator of International Art at the 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).