SUTAPA BISWAS: LUMEN
SUTAPA BISWAS: BIOGRAPHY
Born in India and educated in the UK, Sutapa Biswas graduated with a BA in Fine Art with Art History from Leeds University in 1985. She has a postgraduate degree from the Slade School of Art and was a research student at the Royal College of Art.
Biswas is an inter-disciplinary artist working across a range of media including painting, drawing, film, photography and installation. A conceptual artist, Biswas first came to prominence in the mid 1980s when she exhibited following graduation in the landmark exhibition ‘Thin Black Line’ curated by the artist Lubaina Himid (Turner Prize winner 2017). Biswas’ works are shaped by her observations about the relationships between people and the places they live in. She is especially interested in how larger historical narratives collide with personal narratives. Underpinned by an interest in colonial histories and how this relates to gender, race and class, her art is nuanced by the ways in which oral narratives reveal the human condition and their relationship to our collective histories and to questions of time and space.
Her artworks are represented in collections including: TATE; Arts Council England; Reed Gallery, USA; Graves Gallery, Sheffield Museums and Galleries, UK; Cartwright Hall, Bradford Museum and Art Gallery; Oldham Art Gallery; Rochdale Art Gallery; Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds, UK.
Showing across both The Exchange in Penzance, and Newlyn Art Gallery, Lumen is a major solo exhibition that reflects the vital contribution Sutapa Biswas, along with artists such as Lubaina Himid and Joy Gregory, made to the Black Arts Movement in Britain from the 1980s onward, and to shifting understandings of post-war British art, and the ongoing re-evaluation of Britain’s colonial past. Biswas’s work addresses questions of identity, and ideas of dislocation and belonging, through drawing, painting, photography, neon, and the moving image, all of which are represented in the exhibition.
Lumen is at Newlyn Art Gallery and The Exchange, 8 Oct – 7 Jan 2023.
