Fine Print and Returning a Stranger

IVS Gallery and VASL Artist's Collective are pleased to invite you to two exhibitions

Fine Print - Etching and Aquatint
Returning a Stranger by Ester Svensson-Ali

Friday 17 March from 5 to 8 pm

IVS Gallery, Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi

Exhibition continues until 24 March

Fine Print - Etching and Aquatint includes prints by 20 artists coming from multi-disciplinary backgrounds. These works culminated from a two week workshop conducted by international printmakers Damon Kowarsky and Hyunju Kim.

Participating Artists: Aamir Habib, Abdul Jabbar Gull, Ayesha Naveed, Aziza Ahmad, Damon Kowarsky, Emaan Mahmud, Farrukh Shahab, Hyun Ju Kim, Meher Afroz, Moeen Faruqi, Muzzumil Ruheel, Naila Mahmood, Natasha Malik, Noreen Ali, Nurayah
Sheikh, Rabia Ali, Roohi Ahmed, Sara Mahmood, Seher Naveed, and Zara Asghar

Damon Kowarsky holds a BFA from the Victoria College of Arts and has participated in extensive artist residencies from Cairo, Oman, France and Pakistan. He is the recipient of the 2015 Mitchell Cox Residency Portland Bay Press and has taught Printmaking at the Beacon House National University and the National College of Art in Lahore, Pakistan.

Hyun Ju Kim studied at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, India and Dankook University, Korea. She has exhibited widely and has undertaken several residencies internationally. Hyun Ju Kim has taught at Lalit Kala Academy, Bhubaneswar, India, taken part in a Serigraphy Workshop at the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkota and taught lithography at National College of Art, Lahore.

Returning a Stranger includes work made by resident artist Ester Svensson-Ali. For 2017 Gasworks has selected ceramic artist Ester for the VASL Fellowship as part of the Gasworks International Fellowship Programme.

Ester Svensson Ali is a ceramic artist, creating small-scale figurative sculptures and installations. Before developing an interest in ceramics, she studied illustration, and narratives and drawing continue to play a significant role in her practice.

In 1980, Svensson Ali’s parents moved from Sweden to Pakistan to work as missionaries. She was born a year later in Qalandarabad. Her childhood was split between the two countries. She has continued to travel and live in different places as an adult, and is currently based in London with her husband and young daughter.

This background has led her to take personal experiences as a starting point in her work, going on to deal with more universal aspects of the human condition such as home, travel and migration, identity and belonging, freedom and restlessness. The small scale and fine detail of the work invites the viewer to come close, to be drawn in and to engage with these themes.