Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1980 Bradford, Yorkshire

Biography

Painter, curator and writer, Matthew Krishanu was born to a Bengali Indian mother, who was a theologian, and a white British father, who was a Christian priest, in Bradford, England in 1980. He spent a significant part of his early childhood in Dhaka, Bangladesh, a period that deeply influenced his artistic themes and subjects. Krishanu's family moved back to England when he was 12 years old. ‘The main impact I had from my heritage’, he has observed, ‘was the sense of always being between countries. […] I always had the feeling of being somewhat outside of each of the cultures’ (Krishanu, 2018). Residing on the ground floor beneath the church, Krishanu's home was in close proximity to its activities, yet he felt an outsider to church life, even though he would later often paint it, though without any wish to be polemical. In terms of his relationship to religion, he stated: ‘I’m not a practising Christian, it’s something I’ve rejected, largely due to the personification of God as an old white European man with a beard – which is extraordinary given the Asian and African roots of Christianity,’ (Krishanu quoted in Trigg, 2021). He pursued his higher education in the arts, graduating from the University of Exeter with a BA in Fine Art and English Literature in 2001 and later obtaining an MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London, in 2009.

Krishanu’s oeuvre is influenced by his personal experiences, especially his upbringing as the son of a Christian missionary minister in South Asia. His works often explore themes of memory, especially childhood memory, colonialism, empire, faith, religion, and autobiography, reflecting on his dual cultural heritage and its impact on his identity. Krishanu's paintings are known for their narrative quality, combining a nostalgic inspiration drawn from photographs, with a looser, more expressive handling of paint. He often employs thin layers of paint, creating a contrast between different elements within his compositions. This technique is evident in works such as Boy in Water(2013) where he contrasts the fluidity of the water with the more solidly painted figure, and Mission School (2017), which depicts children in front of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, highlighting themes of cultural and religious imposition. While his wife was in hospital in 2021, he painted a series of works on the theme of sickness, convalescence and terminal illness. Krishanu's artistic reference points embrace styles and artists from different periods, including Ajanta cave paintings in South India (which are about 2000 years old), Fayum funerary portraits from the Classical period, El Greco, Francisco Goya, Félix Vallotton, Édouard Manet, Walter Sickert, Horace Pippin, Peter Doig, Chris Ofili, Chantal Joffe, Mamma Andersson and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

Krishanu's solo exhibitions include The Sun Never Sets, Huddersfield Art Gallery (2018) and House of Crows held at Matt’s Gallery, London in 2019, which explored his favoured themes of memory and childhood, focusing on his experiences in Bangladesh. This was followed later in the same year by The Sun Never Sets reprised at the Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham In the exhibition A Murder of Crows at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham (2019), Krishanu's crow imagery merged both playful and dark elements, inspired by bird-related mythology and literature, ranging from Ted Hughes and Edgar Allan Poe, bird watching in England, to memories of crows from his childhood. Krishanu was an exhibitor in the John Moores Painting Prize 2020. He subsequently explored themes of religion, colonialism and his childhood memories from Bangladesh in the group show Mixing It Up: Painting Today which opened in London’s Hayward Gallery in 2021. In 2023 his work featured in Life is More Important than Art at the Whitechapel Gallery, London and, in early 2024, Krishanu held a solo show at the Camden Arts Centre, London.

Beyond his art practice, Krishan is a visiting lecturer and teacher at Goldsmiths, University of London; Chelsea College of Arts (UAL); and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Additionally, he writes about art and occasionally curates. He is represented by several galleries around the world, including London’s Niru Ratnam Gallery. Matthew Krishanu currently lives and works in London. His works are held in several UK public collections, including the Arts Council Collection, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Central Saint Martins, Government Art Collection, and Huddersfield Art Gallery.

Related books

Mark Rappolt, Ben Luke and Dorothy Price, Matthew Krishanu (London: Anomie Publishing, 2023)
Morgan Quaintance, ‘On Grief and Grieving’, Art Monthly, No. 455, 2022, pp. 10-13
Ralph Rugoff et al, Mixing It Up: Painting Today, exh. cat. (London: Hayward Gallery, 2021)
Jenni Lomax and Ruxmini Choudhury, Matthew Krishanu: The Sun Never Sets, exh. cat. (Birmingham: Midlands Arts Centre, 2019)
Matt Price, Matthew Krishanu: The Sun Never Sets, exh. cat.(Huddersfield: Huddersfield Art Gallery, 2018)

Public collections

Related organisations

Central Saint Martins (student )
Chelsea School of Art (visiting lecturer )
Courtauld Institute of Art, London (visiting lecturer )
Exeter University (student )
Goldsmiths, University of London (visiting lecturer )

Selected exhibitions

Matthew Krishanu (solo exhibition), Camden Art Centre, London (2024)
Beyond the Page (group show), MK Gallery, Milton Keynes (2023)
On a Limb (solo exhibition), Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai (2023)
Life Is More Important Than Art (group show), Whitechapel Gallery, London (2023)
A Voice Answering a Voice (group show), Tanya Leighton, Berlin (2023)
Playground (solo exhibition), Niru Ratnam Gallery, London (2022)
The Kingfisher’s Wing (group show), GRIMM, New York (2022)
Mixing It Up: Painting Today (group show), Hayward Gallery, London (2021)
John Moores Painting Prize 2020 (group show), Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (2021)
Everyday Heroes (group show), Hayward Gallery/Southbank Centre, London (2020)
Too Cute! (group show), Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Birmingham (2019)
House of Crows (solo exhibition), Matt’s Gallery, London (2019)
The Sun Never Sets (solo exhibition), Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham (2019)
A Murder of Crows (solo exhibition), Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2019)
Matthew Krishanu, Corvus (solo exhibition), Stuart Hall Library, Chelsea College of Arts, London (2019)
Matthew Krishanu, The Sun Never Sets, Huddersfield Art Gallery, Huddersfield (2018)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Matthew Krishanu]

Ben Uri Research Unit

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

Matthew Krishanu artist