Hackney resident Matthew Krishanu was born in Bradford in 1980. Matthew’s art practice is based in drawing and painting. His work is often narrative - places and people glimpsed and quickly sketched, then worked up into acrylic, oil and water colour paintings. Sometimes the work is site specific, drawn/painted directly on to the floor or the wall of a space.
His largest solo show was Roots & Branches at Wednesbury Museum & Art Gallery and The Works Gallery, Birmingham (late 2004 to early 2005). Group shows include: Hackney Artists Collective, The Foundry and the Tab Centre, London, 2005; Crow, Custard Factory Gallery, Birmingham, 2005; Small Works, Periscope, Birmingham, 2004; Radioactive, X-Ray factory, Birmingham, 2003.
Matthew combines time spent in the studio with working on a wide range of arts education projects. He was Exhibition Organiser for the RIBA Trust/Arts Inform project Architects in Residence: King’s Cross, an exhibition of work by six secondary school and sixth form students working in partnership with six architectural practices. The exhibition took place at RIBA during architecture week 2006.
Among other projects, Matthew has worked as artist educator with Creative Partnerships, Action Space, Stepping Up Youth, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and the AAVAA (African and Asian Visual Arts Archive) Online project. His work for AAVAA is documented in the educational CD Rom Selecta.
In 2005 he was commissioned by sampad to design the book cover and illustrations for Weather Report, an international collection of young people’s creative writing.
Matthew is currently artist in residence in a secondary school with Whitechapel Art Gallery’s Creative Connections programme. Whitechapel will arrange an exhibition of this work in July 2007.
When Matthew moved to Hackney he didn’t waste any time and within his first few weeks he enrolled on a business basics course for creative freelancers at CIDA.
“I wanted to hit the ground running so I decided to make the most of the support available to me. CIDA’s Do you dare? workshops helped me to understand the business aspects of working as a professional artist, which is something that often gets overlooked on creative courses.”
With CIDA’s help Matthew developed a professional development plan and got to grips with some essential topics including basic book-keeping, money management and marketing. Matthew began to feel more confident and when he heard about the Peer Support Programme offered by Freeform Arts Trust (part of the Creative Network - a creative training initiative led by CIDA) it seemed like it might be the ideal next step, as it offered an opportunity to receive one-to-one advice and support from experienced artists.
“There’s a lot of support out there for people wanting to develop their careers, I would urge anyone to make the most of what’s on offer and who knows how quickly you could achieve your goals!”
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