Hypha Studios: Rinse & Repeat

‘Rinse & Repeat’ showcases the works of eight Indian women artists based in London: Alamelu Annamalai, Meghana Gavireddygari, Shivangi Ladha, Smriti Mehra, Vasundhara Sellamuthu, Divya Sharma, Asha Vaidyanath, and Darshana Vora. This exhibition features a diverse array of media, including sculpture, print, painting, installation, fibre, video, and performance art.

Delving into broader themes of place and belonging, the space is used as a site for collective reflection and reinterpretation. Recurring motifs of repetition and labour resonate throughout the works and the public programme overall, inviting visitors to reflect on the rhythms and cycles of everyday life.

The artists draw on their physical and temporal distances from their homeland to explore layered and intersectional aspects of identity. One of the featured works, You Never Enter the Same River Twice, is an acrylic yarn tufted on hemp with a vintage piece. This artwork responds to the theme underpinning 'Rinse and Repeat,' reflecting the ‘inescapable mundane.’

The laborious process of tufting yarn onto fabric taps into something primal, with the tapestries manifesting 'imaginal travels’. The vintage teak clock case at the centre serves as a threshold to explore time. As the artist describes, ‘It is a portal where I can go into a field of timelessness to envision a communion with my ancestors’. While Western linear time views time as moving only forward, Diasporan traditions see the past, present, and future as interwoven. ‘Like a constantly flowing river, time is the only constant’.

Supported by Hypha Studios, ‘Rinse and Repeat’ is currently on show at Sugar House Island, a new canal-side neighbourhood in Stratford, East London.

VISITING INFO:

GALLERY NAME: Sugar House Island

ADDRESS: E15 2RB Corner of Hunt’s Lane London E15 2RB

DATES: 29th June – 3rd August 2024, Thursday – Sunday, 12 – 6PM

ENTRY: Free