David Chalmers Alesworth Pakistan
Joank (Leech/Slug)
The sahib and the housekeeper... his worst Urdu and his poor English.
The artist and his housekeeper meet in the vegetable garden to try and discuss the problems of some equally displaced Italian tomatoes. David in his worst Urdu and Jahangir in his poor English.
- Direction:
- David Alesworth
- Camera:
- Huma Mulji
- Edit:
- David Alesworth, Sajjad Ahmed
- Performers:
- Mohammed Jahanghir, David Alesworth
David Chalmers Alesworth
David Alesworth
The turning point in David Alesworth's artistic career was his relocation to Pakistan from England in 1987. Having previously studied at the Wimbledon School of Art he subsequently won the Picker Fellowship at Kingston University and then took up a teaching assignment at Glasgow School of Art. His encounter with Pakistani culture in the early eighties opened up his practice to a range of new materials and an entirely new aesthetic sense based on the decorative flourishes of the urban bazaars.
His central themes of environmental degradation and nuclear proliferation informed such whimsical yet lyrical works as Two Bombs Kiss (1993) and resonate throughout a career that keeps stylistically reinventing itself. Working with truck artists in the mid to late nineties, Alesworth was involved in producing a number of highly acclaimed installations, conceived in collaboration with Durriya Kazi. These generated substantial interest at local and international showings, and influenced an entire generation of artists to focus their attention on the cultural politics and aesthetics of cinema hoardings, truck art, bazaar artefacts, and commercial sign paintings.