We were honoured to be invited by Marsha Ribeiro, the daughter of the late visionary Indian émigré artist Lancelot Ribeiro, to join a panel discussion alongside other artists and curators at the symposium Lancelot Ribeiro: A Risen Voice held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.  Despite ourselves working in a completely different artistic field, joining the talk named Painting through Space and Time was fittingly apt for us.  Educational and fascinating, it was a wonderful event and later, closing the symposium, we also delivered a presentation of Orchestra of Samples.

Believe it or not, the Victoria and Albert Museum (usually referred to as the V&A) is the world’s largest museum of applied arts and design, housing a permanent collection of nearly three million objects!  It was founded in 1852 and is named after Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert.

Already loving Ribeiro’s work, it was wonderful to discover so much more about this prolific and innovative artist and to work with his daughter Marsha, who’s currently writing a book about her late father.

Part of the Expressionist movement, Ribeiro was half-brother to artist F.N. Souza (interestingly a collection of whose works are at Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears’ Red House, where we were part of Platforma in 2025) and both brothers were incredible innovators when it came to usage of paints and materials. Ribeiro, born in 1933 in Bombay – now Mumbai – moved to the UK in 1950, living with his half-brother while studying accountancy, which he soon abandoned, taking up classes at the prestigious St. Martin’s School of Art.  His lifetime output over sixty years was incredibly wide-ranging and experimental in both style and mediums; for his pioneering use of polyvinyl acetate (PVA paints), The Times, in a 2011 article after his death, described him as “godfather to generations of artists using acrylics as an alternative to oils”.  He left a bold legacy and certainly helped reshape visual arts in the UK.

With huge thanks to Marsha Ribeiro, Janet Browne, Margaret Glover and the V&A tech team, and to Pranavi Agarwal for a couple of photos.