HEART AT WORK

London is a stomping ground for many South Asian creatives. AKANKSHA KAMATH meets an artist, an author-stylist and the duo behind a first-of-its-kind label on Savile Row to see what their work desks reveal about their unique expression

- AKANKSHA KAMATH

IN AN ERA of digital nomads and work-from-anywhere conundrums, there exists a rare breed of professionals who treat their workspaces as an extension of themselves. For an artist, a studio could be the literal manifestation of their creative motivations. For a multi-hyphenate working out of a building inhabited by others of her ilk, the opportunity to find community in an otherwise solitary profession could be the draw. For a duo partnered up in both life and business, the office and atelier provide distance from the minutiae of running a household and get the creative juices flowing.

From Hackney to Mayfair to Soho and beyond, these London-based creatives are making a case for spaces in a city where every corner is a beating heart for arts and crafts.

IAN MALHOTRA, ARTIST

Ian Malhotra's paintings and prints take anywhere up to 100 hours of meticulous, repetitive pattern-making that might send someone less patient into a frustrated spiral. Squint your eyes at his canvases and they look like the inside of a game controller's motherboard arranged to resemble the sky here, a mountain range there, the ocean elsewhere. The 32-year old artist's analogue-meets-digital art that recently acquired a primetime spot at Galerie Isa in Mumbai as a solo show, as well as at India Art Fair in February, uses a laborious and systemic method of creating images by hand. "It's a way to slow down and understand how we experience the natural world, often mediated through a screen in the digital age," he explains.