Ferha Farooqui’s work is informed by life in east London where she has lived since 1969 and attempts to reflect the changing character and mood of this part of the capital.

This exhibition of recent work comprises a series of ‘timescapes’ which aim to convey the shifting communities and disappearing landmarks of a particular part of east London.

The figures populating many of the paintings reflect communities in East Ham, past and present, who have co-existed in this part of Newham for generations. Alongside living characters, and those from the recent past, circulate ghostly former residents – blue shadowy reminders that London has always been an ebb and flow of new social groupings, who have built communities and then moved on to be replaced by others with the same ambition.

These figures mingle under the looming presence of other cast ‘characters’ – former local landmarks such as libraries, churches, pubs, shops and other important markers and emblems of commerce and past civic pride, they throw their remembered shadows across illuminated streets.

Ferha’s paintings are constructed using many layers of highly coloured acrylic glaze on wood panel to produce a jewel-like finish, informed by the paintings of the Flemish Masters. She also produces small-scale miniature paintings on vellum, paper and ceramic to convey a sense of the timeless nature of human experience. She uses the velvety blackness and somber ambience offered by linocut, etching and other relief or intaglio printmaking techniques to explore the fragile nature of shifting communities, disappearing landmarks and family bonds.

Ferha trained as a painter and printmaker at Winchester School of Arts.

Exhibitions
Barbican Library Foyer, Barbican Centre
The Art Pavilion, Mile End, London
Dulwich Picture Gallery Open Exhibition, London – Prize winner
Freud Museum, Hampstead, London
Pushkin House, Bloomsbury, London
V&A Museum of Childhood, Bethnal Green, London
Bankside Gallery, London
Brueder Grimm Museum, Kassel, Germany
Museum to Fairytale, Bad Oeynhausen, Germany
City Hall, Bankside, London