In a few short months, Orpington based artist Ian Barrington will be fulfilling an ambition that’s taken almost 30 years to reach, having narrowly missing an exceptional opportunity to visit India in his teens through a national competition (of which, he claims would have won, by default after discovering nobody entered!).

Ian has been a practicing artist for over 25 years, exhibiting widely across the UK and internationally; together with managing a self owned gallery in London. Over the past 3 years he has been an active part of Narrative Movements arts foundation based in Kolkata, India, a voluntary position working with the international team with purpose to bringing a contemporary experience of culture and lifestyle to outreach communities, with a strong conservational ethos, for both the foundation and artists, the foundation has delivered a number of successful large scale, high profile events and exhibitions featuring up to 130 international artists at venues across India and internationally, in addition Narrative Movements also holds an annual artist residence programme, in its second year running at the famous floating Lake Nahagarh Palace, south of the beautiful pink city of Jaipur, capital of Rajasthan, where Ian will be taking the first of 2 residencies.

The visit will include travelling to the Indian capital New Delhi, then travelling by road and rail across the nation to the small town of Suri in West Bengal for the second arts residency programme working with a local school and its students; from there his objective is to visit and discover communities on route to New Delhi via Mumbai.

Along the journey Ian will document images and film of his experience of the many cultures, religions, foods, and landscape, travelling some 4000 miles passing through hundreds of cities, villages and communities for a unique view of Indias cultural diversity, including its influence from its neighbours of Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh. A series of exhibitions are planned for London starting in 2018 presenting a selection of images from the journey and residencies. A further selection will be published as a book, available at a number of outlets across London and online.

Further details can be found on http://www.ianbarringtonart.com Information on Narrative Movements can be found here at http://www.narrativemovements.com

If you would like to be actively supporting this project, a selection of artworks are available to purchase directly the proceeds of which will help towards outreach communities including Suri School, in addition to project aims for the following years to include delivering an exhibition of works made by international artists influenced or directly connected to India.

Submitted by Ian Barrington