Exhibition: Rana Begum - Dappled Light

Pitzhanger’s new exhibition by Rana Begum RA explores the perception of light, colour and form within sculpture, painting and installation.

Visitors will immediately encounter a newly-created, ethereal cloud installation of diffused light and veils of colour dramatically suspended within the Gallery. Dappled Light blurs the boundaries between sculpture, architecture, design and painting. It is the first solo show in a London public gallery by Academician Rana Begum: Co-Curator of the architecture room at this year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

Dappled Light sets up a dynamic dialogue with the architecture of Sir John Soane at Pitzhanger. The works respond to the Manor’s architecture, sightlines, and intricate interior decorative schemes, including his play of light through tinted glass. Several works will be displayed beyond the Gallery around the Manor including a bright neon installation of fluid form that zig-zags across the Georgian stairwell. Begum’s architectural cityscape of reflector towers interplays with Soane’s own use of columns of brightly coloured stained glass in the Conservatory.

On display will be a monumental canvas of colourful dots that appear random with no underlying structural pattern. This faces a tile grid of vividly coloured undulating surfaces of shifting hue. Throughout the exhibition, paintings, sculpture and installation are juxtaposed playing with how light touches the material: filtering, glancing, reflecting and blending.

A new piece, Begum’s first video work, captures the fugitive and dappled light as it cascades through a tree canopy in a woodland cemetery outside the artist’s city home. The time-lapse video cycles through the seasons during a year of lockdown. This piece will be displayed in Pitzhanger’s atmospheric Monk’s Dining Room designed by Soane, evoking the Gothic environs of the cemetery.

Rana Begum is working in collaboration with a group of local young artists to create a monochromatic wall drawing, composed with thumb prints, that will welcome the visitor as they arrive in the Gallery.