In 2020, I joined the Essential School of Painting in London on their year-long Fundamentals of Painting course.

At the end of the academic year I went through the hundreds of paintings I'd produced, and submitted a handful for the end-of-year exhibition. 

Enter the exhibition: http://alturl.com/bcxqm

Fundamentals of Painting

While I was at Preet Nagar Residency in Punjab, India, I began collecting the enormous leaves that dropped from the trees around the house. After two weeks, I pinned them all onto a balaclava and onesie to create Leaf Monster. 

This was great timing: 14 January was Lohri festival, which marks the end of winter, and a crowd of local people were gathered around the bonfire. 

As I began my hurriedly-choreographed performance, the audience began clapping, singing and dancing. The dance took on a life of its own - and when I finally ran out of energy, others took my leafy headpiece and continued the performance.

Leaf Monster

In times like this, the monsters come, to guide us through the change.
They come from all around the world whenever things get strange.

With fright’ning heads and clanging bells and furs and branches too,
they say goodbye to things gone past, and beckon in the new.

And this November, if you dare (no need to be afraid)
please join the friendly monsters on their winter-time parade!

-  -  -  -  -  -
Across the world, we humans have created masquerade traditions that are both beautiful and startling. Whenever there’s the need for communities to process and incorporate a significant change, we turn ourselves into monsters, animals and spirits.

In 2019, as Britain was poised to transform its relationship with Europe and the rest of the world, I created a masquerade parade - 300 people marching through the streets of Deptford, witnessed by hundreds of local people watching agog. It was a whirlwind of masks, fur, dancers, drums, pompoms, lions, sequins, leather and bells.

This was the closing event for Deptford X 2019, and was funded by an Arts Council National Lottery Project Grant. We worked with IRIE! Dance Theatre, Goldsmiths’ Confucius Institute, Horniman Museum, Artmongers, Heart n Soul, Deptford’s VietSchool, Bear Cubs and Les Zoings, with invaluable support from Anja Lubach and We Do Good Disco. 

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