In March 2022, Wales Arts International and the Arts Council of Wales awarded funding for DIPTYCH, my collaborative project with Pakistani printmaker, Muhammad Atif Khan.
Atif is a well-known and much-loved printmaker from Pakistan and an incredible ambassador of his craft. He was appointed artist in residence at Swansea Print Workshop in 2005 and contributed to the Festival of Muslim Cultures Print Project in Swansea as well as the Contemporary Pakistani Printmakers exhibition, which toured the UK in 2006. He is currently an associate professor at the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan. Our project, which started in 2022 enabled us to reconnect creatively after 17 years of online-only correspondence.
Throughout the year, we worked independently on a series of prints and exchanged them via courier for each other to complete. There was no particular theme, just a reference to something of personal interest.
Working on top of each other’s images was a daunting prospect, but we both found such joy in the process and some of the results were quite unexpected. The final outcome was a collection of 16 limited-edition prints. Each completed print tells its own story and is a unique combination of visual vocabulary with references drawn from our own cultures and heritage.
It was a privilege to visit him at the National College of Arts, Lahore in February 2023 and to attend the DIPTYCH opening event at O Art Space Gallery. It was also wonderful to host him in Swansea for the launch of the same exhibition at Studio Griffith, Swansea College of Art.
Please find the exhibition catalogue here
Please find the collection here to view and purchase.