Lancelot Ribeiro: Heads In and Out of Our Time

Working in partnership with the Estate of Lancelot Ribeiro (1933, Bombay/Mumbai, India – 2010, London, England), this exhibition focuses on Ribeiro’s preoccupation with portraiture and imagined heads from two of the most innovative decades of his practice, the 1960s and the 1990s, exploring concepts of power and evil, through subjects he listed as: ‘colonialists, kings, tyrants, Christ (resurrected), tycoons, women and thugs’. His later works, often on a large scale, employ a brilliant palette and take an imaginative approach to disassembling, reimagining and reinvigorating the portrayal of the human head. A supporting display in the lower galleries features a display of stylistically diverse and innovative paintings, sculptures and works on paper of heads and portraits from the Ben Uri collection and a painting by Indian painter, muralist, dramatist and poet Samuel Fyzee-Rahamin (né Samuel Rahamin Samuel, 1880-1964).