South Asian Creative Arts
CommonGround& is a platform to offer a showcase for South Asian creatives across a broad range of disciplines. Starting with our first annual Summer Show in 2021, we opened the opportunity for creatives active in art, photography, film, textiles and graphic art to exhibit their work.
Exhibition& more
CG& is for the practicing artist, offering a platform to come together (express the art of the moment) and reflect the experience of the current generation.
We endeavour to grow CG& into an annual exhibition with live programming, expanding into fashion, music and performance. We aim to invite artists from the South Asian diaspora in the UK and beyond to participate.
CG& coincides with South Asian Heritage Month.
At the core of CG&, is a spirit of community and connection amongst the South Asian diaspora, to reflect the experience of the current generation who share common interests as well as their culture and heritage.
— Mehala Ford, Founder
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Mehala Ford
FOUNDER
Mehala is a creative entrepreneur with a passion for elevating and nurturing creative talent, connecting people to inspire enriched networks, and instigating creative platforms. She has over 20 years of experience in the fashion industry across PR, show production and consulting spanning the high street to cutting edge designers. Mehala has worked with Alexander McQueen, Preen, Debenhams and Concrete PR. She is instinctive and holistic in her approach to creative businesses and projects. Mehala has a bootstrapping, grassroots ‘whatever is possible’ mindset. In 2007 she started ‘Restless Artists’ agency and 2012 started ‘Wise Kids Yoga’.
In the last decade her focus has been in South Asian contemporary culture at the intersection of fashion, arts and music. . In 2018 she launched ‘Friday Sari Project’ store and created an exhibition on modern sari called ‘Future Drape’. In 2021 in the midst of lockdowns and chaos, she created ‘CommonGround&’.
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Celine Dalcher Wilkhu
Originally from Switzerland, Céline brings 20 years’ experience working within the creative industry, starting her career within interiors and retail design, for the last 15 years as an exhibition designer for the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Royal Museum Greenwich and more recently heading the design team of experiential art organisation, Superblue.
Céline has a huge passion for working with a diverse range of people and cultures, creating spaces for artists’ works to come alive and take their audiences on a journey. With her hands-on attitude and her extensive museum experience, she has a huge knowledge of how an exhibition is put together from initial concept stage to the opening.