Grosvenor Gallery is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition 'Inner Weaves, Recent paintings by Angeli Sowani.' The exhibition is held in association with the UK based charity Pratham UK, and a portion of the sales will benefit the charity. Pratham UK raises funds to provide education to children in India, and along with their partners have helped over 35 million children since 1995.
The exhibition will open with an invitation only private view on Tuesday, 6th December 2016 from 6-8pm. It will be open to the public from the 7th to the 23rd December.
Angeli Sowani trained as an illustrator and graphic designer at the prestigious National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. After leaving India in 1988, Angeli travelled extensively, living and working in Nepal, Thailand, Hong Kong and finally in England, each place presenting her with new sources of inspiration, whether it was the blood sacrifices to Hindu idols in Kathmandu; the Buddhist imagery and use of gold leaf in Thailand; the votive papers burnt in offering to the Gods in Hong Kong or the play of warm autumn sunlight pouring down through the stained glass windows on the flagstones of British Cathedrals, offering areas of abstract colour which subsequently found space in her paintings.
A keen sensitivity to current affairs is also consistently apparent in works that make reference to the Boxing Day Tsunami, the London Bombings and the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, highlighting human reactions to these tragic events.
This multitude of influences and inspiration imbibed from her upbringing and her exposure to ritual and religion in different cultures and countries are pulled together in her works into a harmonious construct of expression and meaning. This harmony runs like a scarlet thread through the body of works in Seraphim (2012) and Vaahan (2010) tying it together through the medium of fire. The repetitive use of symbols, char marks and patterns becoming a meditative and thoughtful exploration of impermanence, change and fragility, and its mystical ability to transform earthly materials into the immaterial … in that sense, it is a continuation of her earlier show Inner Weaves(2007) in which she explored the complex interplay of thought and emotion, and the desire to keep in touch with your roots in the context of constant displacement.
"Painting to me is a bit of a metaphor for life itself. You start with an idea of where you want to go, using colours and palettes that are familiar but then as you work it links to your state of mind, and the moment in time and to events that influence you, and you end up somewhere you had not imagined when you started."
Angeli Sowani, London, 2015