Matthew Krishanu

The paintings of London-based artist Matthew Krishanu (b.1980, Bradford) explore subjects such as childhood, race, religion, art history, family, grief and love. This, his first trade monograph, presents work produced over the past sixteen years.

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Matthew Krishanu’s paintings explore topics including childhood, race, religion, art history, family, grief and love. His subjects – frequently Brown people, especially children – are realised with a shallow pictorial depth, delicate washes of colour, and with a sense of interior life. Through this, Krishanu questions the positions of his painterly subjects and depictions of landscapes in relation to the legacy of European colonialism and the art historical canon. Krishanu’s practice is heavily informed by his early childhood spent in Dhaka where his parents moved in order to work for the Church of Bangladesh.

This, his first trade monograph, presents a number of series of Krishanu’s works: Another Country, Expatriates, Mission, House of God, Religious Workers and In Sickness and In Health. The paintings included have been made in oil and/or acrylic on canvas, linen or board, with the earliest produced in 2007 and most recent completed in 2022.

The publication features essays by Mark Rappolt and Dorothy Price, alongside an interview with the artist by Ben Luke. Rappolt, Editor-in-Chief at ArtReview magazine, details the various worlds present within Krishanu’s paintings. He draws out key themes within Krishanu’s oeuvre such as power, religion, identity and memory, while highlighting its distance from didacticism, and at times, its carefully constructed ambivalence, through examination of key works such as Mission School (2017), Mountain Tent (Two Boys) (2020) and Playground (2020). Price, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and Visual Culture at The Courtauld, writes sensitively about solitude, memory and emotion which are palpable within Krishanu’s work. In particular, the series In Sickness and In Health, which traces a life path of Uschi Gatward, the artist’s late wife, over sixteen years to her untimely death from cancer in late 2021. The series is foregrounded as a significant and intimate body of work that subtly shifts over the time period it depicts. In a new interview with Luke, a critic and editor at The Art Newspaper, Krishanu discusses his practice in relation to ideas of religion, race, global art history, photography, health and personal experiences. Krishanu’s work explores, in the artist’s own words, ‘the puzzle of painting’.

The publication has been edited by Georgia Griffiths and Matt Price. It has been designed by Joe Gilmore, printed and bound by EBS, Verona, and produced by Anomie Publishing and Niru Ratnam, London. The publication has been supported by Guy Halamish; Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai; Niru Ratnam, London; Taimur Hassan; and Tanya Leighton, Berlin and Los Angeles.

Matthew Krishanu (b.1980) was born in Bradford and is based in London. He completed an MA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins in 2009. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Playground’, Niru Ratnam (2022), ‘Undercurrents’, LGDR, New York (2022), ‘Picture Plane’, Niru Ratnam, London (2020), ‘Arrow and Pulpit’, Tanya Leighton, Berlin (2021), ‘Corvus’, Iniva, London (2019), ‘House of Crows’, Matt’s Gallery, London (2019), ‘A Murder of Crows’, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2019), ‘The Sun Never Sets’, Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham, (2019) and ‘The Sun Never Sets’, Huddersfield Art Gallery, Huddersfield (2018). He has recently been in the group exhibitions ‘The Kingfisher’s Wing’, GRIMM, New York (2022), ‘Prophecy’, Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre (2022), ‘Mixing It Up: Painting Today’, Hayward Gallery, London (2021), ‘Coventry Biennial’, Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum, Leamington Spa and Herbert Art Gallery & Museum (2021), ‘John Moores Painting Prize’, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (2021), ‘Everyday Heroes’, Hayward Gallery/Southbank Centre (2020) and ‘A Rich Tapestry’, Lahore Biennale (2020).