Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1964 Tanzania

Year of Migration to the UK: 1970

Biography

Lubna Chowdhary was born to parents, from what is now Pakistan, in Dodoma, Tanzania on 1 February 1964. Leaving Tanzania in 1970, her family settled in Rochdale, England and established a business in the local textile trade. Having enrolled in a course of wood, metal and ceramics at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), Chowdharywas initially uninterested in ceramics, stating that she ‘rather disdainfully saw it as a feminine pursuit, associated with the domestic,’ and that she wanted to distance herself from this framing. She eventually became ‘seduced by the immediacy of clay’, however, enjoying the way it ‘responded directly to your hands, allowing you to create forms almost as you conceived them’ (India Art Fair, 2020). She received her BA from MMU in 1988 and her MA from the Royal College of Art, London in 1991, during which time she travelled to India on a Paolozzi Foundation Travel Award in 1990. Chowdhary was subsequently the recipient of prestigious awards and residencies, including the 1996 London Arts Board Award, several Arts Council England Awards, and the Camden Arts Centre residency in 1994.

Chowdhary has exhibited widely since the 1990s. In 1993 her ceramics were shown alongside Fahmida Shah’s painted silk and Siripan Kidd’s quilting at the Midland Art Centre’s Foyle Gallery in Birmingham, as part of Juginder Lamba’s South Asian Contemporary Visual Arts Festival held in gallery spaces across the West Midlands between September and November. Between 1991 and 2019 she created Metropolis, a multi-object work comprising over 1000 handmade clay sculptures, charting the material culture of our urban environment and reflecting the complexity of the man-made world and human production (Artist’s website). The work was shortlisted for the Jerwood Ceramics Prize in 2001 and has been displayed in several locations over the years, including City Art Gallery, Leicester (1994), Millais Gallery, Southampton (1999) and the V&A, London (2017), where she held a coveted residency. In the same year, she produced a limited edition ceramic to accompany the Whitechapel Gallery's exhibition Eduardo Paolozzi. Chowdhary has also held solo shows at Oldham Art Gallery, Oldham (1998) and the Phillips Gallery, Walton-on-Thames (2003), among others.

It has been remarked that Chowdhary’s ‘primary concern is the relationship between East and West, an area where her questions about her own identity merge with her interest in culture and its expression in form’ (King, 2017). Yet in addition to her personal responses to ceramics, she has long been distinctly aware of its history and discourses (Hermann, 2021). Rejecting the colourless, vessel-formed conventions in the tradition of British studio potter, Bernard Leach, over the years Chowdhary has employed vivid and bold designs, as illustrated by Lantern Tower, a ceramic architectural commission for Slough Borough Council in 2007. Similarly, for Interstice, installed at 100 Liverpool Street, London in 2021, Chowdhary took inspiration from the site’s history as a major railway interchange by producing 20 abstract ceramic panels conjuring the sense of a journey, and the fleeting glimpses of a landscape caught through the windows of a train carriage in rapid motion. The same year, the exhibition Erratics showcased the artist’s recent paintings, sculptures and installations made from ceramic, wood and industrial materials. The works were shown at PEER, London, initiated by the gallery in partnership with MIMA, Middlesbrough, where it was shown in an expanded presentation in 2022. The following year she created a new ceramic work in response to the urban environments of Rochdale for Touchstones Rochdale (previously known as Rochdale Art Gallery). Reconsidering the spaces that she inhabited as a child, she undertook research visits to Rochdale and its surrounding areas to address the contemporary landscape of the town. ‘The places and spaces of Rochdale, real and remembered, are rendered abstractly through arrangements of shape and colour to create a sensory experience’, the catalogue described (Touchstones, 2023). Other exhibitions in which Chowdhary has been involved include Strange Clay at London's Hayward Gallery (2022) and Abstract Colour at Marlborough London (2023).

Chowdhary lives and works in south London, where she has an ‘enviable sunlit studio designed by David Adjaye’ (Santos, 2018). Her work is held in UK public collections including Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, University of Warwick Art Collection, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (acquired via the Contemporary Art Society, CAS), Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, and the Government Art Collection.

Related books

Emilia Terracciano, 'Lubna Chowdhary: Erratics', Art Monthly, Iss. 460, October 2022, p. 31
Daniel F. Hermann, 'Subversive Deposits: On the Work of Lubna Chowdhary', Lubna Chodhary: Erratics, exhibition catalogue (London: PEER, 2021)
Calvin Winner and Tania Moore eds., Rhythm and Geometry: Constructivist Art in Britain since 1951 (Norwich: Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, 2021)
Nancy Durrant, 'O come, all ye faithful art lovers', Times, 7 December 2018, p. 4
Lubna Chowdhary, exh. cat (London: Lubna Chowdhary, 2017)
Oliver Bennett, Home Grown: The Cultivation of a Neighbourhood (South Cambridgeshire District Council and Commissions East, 2009)
Emmanuel Cooper, Contemporary Ceramics (London: Thames & Hudson, 2009)
Kenneth Powell, Breaking the Mould: New Approaches to Ceramics (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007)
Stephen Gardiner, 'A Hidden Treasure in Simple Form', Times, 6 December 2004, p. 51
'Constructive Dialogue - Lubna Chowdhary talks to Claudia Clare about the influence of colonialism, colour and commissions on her ceramic installations', Ceramic Review, No. 208, 2004, p. 24
Malcolm Miles, Urban Futures: Critical Commentaries on Shaping Cities (London: Routledge, 2002)
Amal Ghosh and Juginder Lamba eds., Beyond Frontiers: Contemporary British Art by Artists of South Asian Descent (London: Saffron, 2001)
'City of Dreams: Lubna Chowdhary's Ceramic Metropolis', Crafts London, No. 139, 1996, pp. 22-25

Public collections

Related organisations

Arts Council England (award recipient)
Camden Arts Centre (artist-in-residence)
Freelands Foundation Award (shortlisted nominee)
Jerwood Ceramics Prize (shortlisted nominee)
London Arts Board Award (recipient)
Manchester Metropolitan University (student)
Paolozzi Foundation Travel Award (recipient)
Royal College of Art (student)
Victoria and Albert Museum (artist-in-residence)

Selected exhibitions

Abstract Colour, Marlborough London (2023)
Strange Clay, Hayward Gallery, London (2022)
Lubna Chowdhary: Erratics, PEER, London (2021) and MIMA, Middlesbrough (2022)
Interstice, 100 Liverpool Street, London (2021)
Metropolis, Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai (2020)
Speech Acts: Reflection-Imagination-Repetition, Manchester City Art Gallery, Manchester (2018-2019)
Mind Forged, Frestonian Gallery, London (2017)
Metropolis, Victoria & Albert Museum, London (2017)
Collect, Saatchi Gallery, London (2011)
The Beautiful Script, Truman Brewery, London (2005)
Import Export, Victoria & Albert Museum, London (2005)
Inside Outside, Contemporary Applied Arts London (2004)
Open, Triangle Gallery, London (2003)
Phillips Gallery, Walton on Thames (2003)
Pattern, Crafts Council, London (2002)
Metropolis: Lubna Chowdhary, Fairfield Arts Centre, Basingstoke and Millais Gallery, Southampton (1999)
Foyer, Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham (1998)
Lubna Chowdhary, Oldham Art Gallery, Lancashire (1998)
Metropolis, City Art Gallery, Leicester (1994)
Fahmida Shah, Siripan Kidd, Lubna Chowdhary, Foyle Gallery, MAC, Birmingham (1993)
NeoGeo, Commonwealth Institute, London (1993)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Lubna Chowdhary]

Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.

Lubna Chowdhary ceramicist