Murugiah

And one conversation led to another.

And many months later, they came back and they said, look, about that small windmill space and your series of paintings, instead of doing that, would you like to open the new center with a debut solo exhibition of your entire body of work that you've developed from 2019 to now?

I had no real expectations.

I was just very happy and content with these pieces I was making.

They felt truly personal to me.

The work I was making from 2019 up to 2023 was about developing a visual aesthetic, but it didn't really...

have this very core emotional thing that I'm obsessed with, this connecting with your feelings, this sensitivity.

I wasn't ready to put it in the work at that point.

It was very much about describe or present a visual aesthetic of bright colors, busy compositions, influenced by South Asian culture and Western upbringing.

But now it's time to...

just turn the dial up a little bit more and add this emotional heft to each piece so personally i just felt very confident in presenting those ideas so i thought it was the right time to speak to someone about it and see if i could share them with somebody and luckily very luckily they responded in a big way

I think one of the other reasons that I was asked to expand my initial request into a debut solo show was

was because between the years of 2019 and 2023, I was also practicing illustration and art in a multidisciplinary way, and public art sculptures, festival branding, personal work,

Hello, then collaborations, everything, many different projects.

And I never stuck with one type of client.

I always pushed for a different type of client every time.

I think, I don't know this for sure, but I think the Quentin Blake Center had seen this varied portfolio and thought, wouldn't this be an interesting way to open a museum gallery space about illustration?

Look at what we can tell young people, kids,

new career artists, mid-career artists, late career artists, about what you can do with your work and the variety of things you can do with your work.

So aside from what they would say, which is, I'm also very talented, which is very nice of them to say, but I think the main thing that they are trying to say is, look at all of the different stuff you can do with this work.