Lubna Chowdhary works primarily in the field of ceramics, bridging the disciplines of architecture, craft, design, sculpture, and painting. Her practice subverts the context and utility traditionally associated with the medium of clay, addressing a longstanding preoccupation with material culture. Chowdhary's work thrives on interconnection and the creation of relationships between a range of references and aesthetic traditions – architecture, anthropological collections, modernist design – and modes of production. Through experiments in aesthetic hybridity, her work negotiates cross-cultural narratives of modernity. Her heritage – born in Tanzania to Pakistani parents who emigrated to the industrial north of England in the 1970s – brings with it the memory of richly designed spaces and diverse architectural landscapes.
Certain Times LXXIV (2022) is a new ceramic work, specially commissioned for Touchstones Rochdale’s exhibition A Tall Order! Rochdale Art Gallery in the 1980s (2023). The work reflects on Chowdhary’s childhood memories of the town of Rochdale, where her family settled and established a business in the local textile trade. Chowdhary has recalled the contrasts between the brightly coloured fabrics and the industrial architecture that formed the backdrop to her childhood, such as her local mosque. The places and spaces of Rochdale, real and remembered, are rendered abstractly through arrangements of shape and colour to create a sensory experience. The vibrant glazed surfaces of the tiles carry the softness and irregularity of hand glazing, contrasting with the technologically precise cut of the ceramic forms.
As part of Touchstones Rochdale’s Linking Schools programme, the museum organised workshops, events, and self-guided activities around the exhibition and Chowdhary’s work, which resulted in over 1000 ceramic pieces made by young people from local schools. Supporting young people to explore identity, build connections, and strengthen communities, the Linking Schools programme runs nationally and brings together two carefully matched classes from different schools, backgrounds, nationalities, ages, and faith to share experiences.
