Rana returns to reopen region’s premier gallery
Mead welcomes an artist who’s been making waves, writes DAVID VINCENT
WARWICK Arts Centre’s Mead Gallery returned this week with a major exhibition featuring the work of artist Rana Begum.
The Coventry venue has been a centre of visual arts within the region, and nationally, since 1986, when it opened with a programme that spanned contributions from Wassily Kandinsky, LS Lowry, Andy Goldsworthy and Fernand Leger.
Going on to highlight the work of countless other contemporary and modern masters, among those who later graced the space include Antony Gormley, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Richard Deacon, Peter Lanyon, photographer Bill Brandt, Oscar-winning filmmaker Steve McQueen, Tracey Emin, and potter-turned-broadcaster Grayson Perry.
After major exhibitions dedicated to painter Clare Woods and 20th century British artist/designer John Piper, the gallery closed in 2018 as part of the £25m wider redevelopment of the arts centre (which started to reopen for events in October 2021).
The new space retains the familiar L-shape of the old Mead, but is now situated on the ground floor of the centre, making it more accessible (and visible) to visitors. With a floor area of 605 square metres (6,458 square feet), it’s the largest single dedicated contemporary exhibition space in the region.
Based in London, but hailing from Bangladesh, Rana Begum has been slowly making waves since the early-2000s, with a 2005 project at Coventry Hospital her first major commission. She’s since completed residencies and commissions in London, France, Bangkok, Beirut, Taiwan, USA, Turkey and India, and is currently working on major projects in London, Boston and New York.
Her work varies in scale and approach – from expansive outdoor sculptures to smaller, wall-based paintings and 3D pieces – but a connecting thread that runs throughout is her ongoing fascination with form, light and colour.
“That’s been consistent,” says Rana. “Although sometimes one element will take priority or be more visible than the other.”
The Mead’s exhibition, entitled
Dappled Light, features several new commissions created especially for the gallery, alongside other new and recent pieces – all framed by two linked works.
“As you walk into the gallery the first thing that you see is a large canvas which is 10m wide by 4.5m tall,” says Rana. “It’s a painting that almost looks like a drape of some kind; it is covered in spray paint, and this work is significant in that it ties the show together.
“By the time you’ve walked through the space, to the end of the gallery, that painting kind of makes sense,” she continues, “because the installation at the end of the gallery is the result of the painting – where the painting comes alive – and is three dimensional.”
Described by Rana as a “large cloud-like installation”, the final piece is triple the size of previous similar works. “You can walk
around it, and the experience of that really changes as you walk around – it’s actually quite incredible if you go around the back, you can feel the movement.”
Other works include pieces and series seen or developed in Istanbul, St Ives, Dhaka and London, and work produced over lockdown: her first video installation, which documents the changing seasons and changing light on a cemetery in Stoke Newington, adjacent to her studio, and a new series inspired by watercolour painting.
“It’s based on reflection and light and the image that is kind of fragmented, if you like,” she says of the series. “I was doing watercolours during lockdown as a way to kind of keep myself calm, and manage home schooling, and work, and all of this. And those watercolours have now become physical works.”
Whereas many artists may focus on a specific series almost exclusively before moving onto the next body of work, Rana prefers to dart back-and-forth between serieses, styles and mediums, relishing the variety.
“I work on different series at the same time because for me, one work answers certain questions and I’d have another body of work that answers another question,” she says. “There are questions that come up that are not answered by that particular series of work.
“I am so excited to be sharing this body of work,” Rana continues, discussing Dappled Light as a whole. “It stems from new explorations in the studio that I have had the opportunity to push and develop in response to the architecture and the natural light of the renovated Mead space.
“The show is a dialogue between my earlier work and these new ventures – between the areas of my practice that feel more resolved and the areas that I am only just discovering.”
I did watercolours during lockdown to keep calm and manage home schooling
Rana Begum: Dappled Light, is open Tuesday to Sunday 11am-8pm, until March 13, at Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL. Admission free. For more details, see: warwickartscentre.co.uk