About Last Ship
History
In it’s brief stint of two and a half years from 2011 to 2013 in Mumbai, Last Ship became the defining place for a generation in the cultural scene of Mumbai.
Last Ship was created and is run by artist Julius Macwan. In 2011, having rented a space in Chuim village in Bandra, Mumbai, for sculpting, Julius decided to use it as an artist residency after younger artist-apprentices started creating work there.
Over the next two years, the ship, as it began to be called, became the venue for all kinds of cultural events, gatherings, and parties that represented the diverse and international current ‘underground’ scene and vibe of that time in Mumbai.
A New Decade
Last Ship Mumbai shut in 2013, and Julius got deeply involved in research and writing of his fiction novel Void. In 2017, he visited Khajuraho and Kalinjar for the first time, and then came again in early 2018. On this journey, and in these places over the next couple of years, he and his friends experienced people and events that corresponded to those in his writing. They also experienced much more, from the spiritual to the mystical.
This led to Last Ship sailing again, this time on a deeper and more spiritual voyage. Julius found a space for the artists studios eerily similar to the Mumbai space - a ‘deck’ with three studios and a kitchen all in a row, a terrace upstairs with two rooms, and a crows nest upper terrace.
Last Ship was set to reopen in late 2019, when Covid happened and the world went into lockdown. “Last Ship, now, lies silent with the temples of Khajuraho, waiting for the new life that will begin when the world opens up, What will life be like for all of us? Only time will tell.”
Eventually, post lockdown, Last Ship Khajuraho-Kalinjar hosted its first artists in the winter of 2023.