Joshua Monaghan
It is no secret that artists’ studios in London have been steadily decreasing in number and increasing in cost. ‘I didn’t want to be pushed out, so finding somewhere permanent was a priority,’ says Rana Begum. In 2011, she bought a former engineering factory overlooking Abney Park Cemetery in north London. Before she moved to the UK as a child, her family lived on a farm in Bangladesh where there was no separation between work and life and Rana aspired to something similar. However, it took until 2020 for her and her team of seven assistants to move into this ground-floor and basement studio below her living quarters. ‘It was an asbestos-covered shed, so we had to rebuild,’ says Rana, who worked with Peter Culley of Spatial Affairs Bureau on the new design.
Joshua Monaghan
Rana’s practice intersects painting, sculpture and architecture, using a minimalist language of geometry, colour and light. These qualities are mirrored in the main space, which consists of twin modernist boxes lit by skylights that, depending on the weather and time of day, can create striking lineation or bathe the studio in a radiant glow. Art is mounted on walls or strung from the ceiling, allowing for prolonged contemplation. There is a piece from her new Louvre series, which draws threads between Donald Judd’s stacks and the different configurations of Venetian blinds, and a beguiling, multi-coloured mesh ‘cloud’. Another – far larger piece – from that same series, No. 1367 Mesh, is currently installed in the centre of the staircase at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, part of a continuing exploration into forms that, she explains, ‘are more organic and fluid than hard-edged geometry’.
Joshua Monaghan
Joshua Monaghan
The layout of the studio, from the downstairs workshop to the office lined with shelves of maquettes, was informed by Rana’s previous arrangement in Haringey. Throughout, order is apparent: ‘I grew up reading the Quran and praying five times a day, and I need clarity,’ she says. A spate of upcoming commitments is detailed on a whiteboard – including the curation of an exhibition at Pallant House Gallery later this year – while ready-to-go art storage boxes are providing entertainment for her two Bengal kittens. Their presence – like that of Rana’s children after school – is proof of the success of the merged purpose of the building, which Rana credits with ‘heightening my sensitivities. And I feel secure – which has further strengthened my working resolve’.
Joshua Monaghan
