At a glance
Headed by artist Sanchita Islam, pigmentexplosion was initially set up to perform live art events in the Brick Lane area. Since 1999 pigmentexplosion has branched out into projects that spill into film, painting, drawing, writing and photography.
Sanchita Islam
If you read Sanchita Islam’s CV her journey into the art world has been an unusual one. Islam is an artist, writer and filmmaker. She completed her BSc (econ) and MSc (econ) at the London School of Economics before embarking on a Channel 4 sponsored MA at the Northern Media School in Directing and Screenwriting, and a BA in the Practice and Theory of Visual Art at Chelsea School of Art and Design. Islam has exhibited and screened her films in London, New York, Paris, Bangladesh, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Rome, India, Pakistan and Frankfurt. She has shown at the Whitechapel, ICA and Hayward Gallery and completed over 70 group and solo shows including the groundbreaking show Schizophrenia Part one where Sanchita showed as four artists, Sanchita, Sophie, Mia and Fred. She was artist in residence at the Whitechapel Art Gallery (2003) and artist in residence at Artscape (2004-2008) and Shoreditch House (2007-2009) and her art features in various venues around London such as Sketch, Mark Hix’s Farringdon and Brewer Street restaurants. She was commissioned to do over one hundred paintings for Clifton Hotel Group in Bristol. She has produced and directed seventeen films to date including shorts and one-hour films. In 2010 she was commissioned by the UK Film Council to make an animated short entitled The White Wall. She collaborated with Didar Films in Tehran, Iran and Andy Frain at Touchwood-animation on this production. She is signed with the publishers Chipmunka Press. The Arts Council, BBC and British Council have mainly funded Islam’s films and five books. These include 'From Briarwood to Barishal to Brick Lane,' 'Old Meets Young,' 'Hidden,' 'Connecting Kids' and 'Avenues'. Her company Pigment Explosion recently branched out into book publication producing its first publication 'The Cloud Catcher.' Chipmunka Press published her first volume of poems ‘Eternal Pollution of a Dented Mind’ and the novel ‘Gungi Blues.’ Islam has been running Pigment Explosion, an organisation specialising in international art projects, since 2009.
Our approach
Pigment Explosion has developed a reputation as an innovative art organisation operating within an international framework completing projects for the Arts Council, the Barings Foundation, the British Council, the Commonwealth Institute and the Peabody Trust, to name a few. When Pigment Explosion was commissioned to make several films in Bangladesh for the Commonwealth Institute, the organisation trained local Bangladeshi youth to help in the production of the film in order to transfer Pigment Explosion’s skills and expertise. The organisation deliberately works with marginalised groups and individuals who otherwise would never have an opportunity to work in the creative industries. Pigment Explosion believes in the empowering impact of the arts and has completed projects with the elderly, to battered women, to old people, to street kids in Bangladesh.
Pigment Explosion is currently developing projects related to psychosis and postpartum psychosis working with eminent psychiatrists and psychologists in London and Europe, exploring the links between art and psychiatry.