NEWS
Community Art Therapy Program - Apparao Galleries
De-stressing becomes
increasingly necessary to be able to cope with an urban lifestyle; the Apparao
Galleries, Chennai, present an art program to help people do the same with the
help of Art.
Specially designed for
adults from all professions and backgrounds and for people of all ages groups,
Apparao Galleries presents the ‘Community Art Therapy’ program. The program is
being conducted by Auroville based, Tia Pleiman, an artist and art therapist
herself, she has specifically designed these long term sessions.
The program encourages self
discovery through art, using various methods, like drawing, painting, mixed
media work, collages, journaling, sculpture, clay modeling and many more such
activities. To create and to transform is the mission statement of the program.
The program began on the
19th of May 2013 and will be held on every Sunday at the Apparao Gallery.
For any further information,
please call on 28332226.
Resist - against gender violence through Art
Gallery Beyond, Mumbai
presents a multi faceted art event, titled ‘Resist’, an intervention and
protest illustrating dissent against the gender based violence rampant in
today’s society. The event comprises of performance art, graffiti, site
specific installations, new media, paintings, protest music and fashion.
The artists
participating in the event are : Anindiya Bandopadhyay, A V Ilango, Adil Khan, Alex Davis, Anil
Bakshi, Anjolie Ela Menon, Anupam Sud, Arpana Caur, Baaraan Ijlal, Balbir
Krishan, Bani Pershad, Biswajit Balasubramanian, Durga Kainthola, Gigi Scaria,
Puneet Kaushik, Raghava KK, Ram Rahman, RAQS Media Collective, Ritu Kamath,
Saba Hasan, Satadru Sovan, Satyakam Saha, Shanti Vrinda, Shivani Aggarwal,
Simeen Farhat, Suparna Mondol
The show is
hosted by Engendered Gallery, New Delhi and the show is an attempt at
connecting art and the community. In response to the brutal incidents in New
Delhi, the show brings art that aims to look beyond cliches and conditionings
and raises questions to challenge powerful socio-cultural hierarchies.
The Resist
show is on till the 21st of May 2013.
Reviving Indian Folk Art Legacy at Baaya Design
Baaya Design, Mumbai has
organized folk art workshops, this summer to revive the beauty and serenity of
the colourful and elegant folk art from
Orissa, Patachitra.
Baaya Design will be
providing all the necessary equipments for the workshop. The workshop is being
conducted by the famous artist, Shashikant, who will share the intricacies and
details of making this ever green art form.
The history of this art
form and its propagation over the years, and its revival from niche Patachitra
painters to any one who shows genuine interest in learning it will find this
workshop very useful.It attempts at being a unique creative learning experience
for adults and children alike this summer.
The enrollment and
workshop particulars are as follows:
The workshop is being
held on 25th May and 26th May 2013.
Age: 12 years & above,
Time: 11am to 1.30pm & 3pm to 5.30pm (2 sessions daily)
for any more information
please call: 022 65210165 or Email:
baayadesign@gmail.com
Message to Zero - using large scale murals
The Guild gallery,
Mumbai presents a debut solo show of artist Amitabh Kumar titled, ‘Message to
Zero’.
Amitabh Kumar is a
designer and artist from New Delhi and a graduate from the Faculty of Fine
Arts, MS University, Baroda. He has worked as part of Sarai Media Lab,
researching and programming events. He also designed comics and books, and has
co-curated an experimental art space. He is the visiting faculty to the Srishti
School of Art, Design and Technology.
In the show ‘Message to
Zero’, Amitabh along with some of his colleagues have painted large scale
murals on paper and all along the gallery wall space and outside the gallery.
The 50 murals painted in various locations in Mumbai form a kind of
constellation of mappable images.
The imagery in the
murals comprise of symbols from various cultures and styles, to form sometimes
shapes of animals and birds, and sometimes insects or the front of a train engine. The murals are
painted exclusively in black and white making the viewer focus on the symbols
depicted.
The show is on view till
the 29th of June 2013.
PROFILE
An
environmentalist and an artist - Amitesh
Shrivastava
Amitesh
Shrivastava is a man with deep rooted affinity for the nature. It would be safe
to say he is a closet environmentalist and a practicing artist. His works
mainly hover around paintings rendered in a fluid figuration mostly depicting
the effects of industrialisation on earth and humankind eventually.
His paintings
and palette more often are reminiscent of Rabindranath Tagore’s palette, with
similarity in lines and their near transparent and slightly melancholic
depictions. However, Amitesh chooses to claim his own by the subjects he
chooses to paint about, mostly about the onslaught of over industrialisation
and the destruction of nature and its ill effects..
A MS
University Baroda, graduate, this artist associates and dissociates with the
duality of today’s urban and rural lifestyles. His work toggles between two
conflicting issues of preserving nature and rapid modernisation. The
sitting-on-the-fence conflicts of people torn between two wants, is evident in
his works. In his painting works, the human figures are portrayed ushering in
new age but visually obscure modern implements and tools, which are implied to
help humankind lead a simpler and easier life. However in the same pictorial
space, one would find signs and hints at the impending doom of such a
progression, further highlighting the long term, irreversible destruction of
nature.
In a recently
held workshop at Sandarbh Artists Workshops, Partapur, Rajasthan, Amitesh took his painterly
afflictions to a whole new level of environmental and socially relevant art.
The project involved school children from the Daduka village, who were
initially involved in the project with the emphasis on keeping the environment
and one’s surrounding clean. The project titled, ‘The Pledge’ focuses on the
clean up of the lake at Daduka, which has been brutally polluted by the
drainage system over the years. ‘The Pledge’ project involved the students to
write down each of their concerns about the village, and their surroundings on
pieces of paper and these were later
attached to each other in the form of a scroll. The children involved took a
solemn pledge to keep their village clean and other such declarations in public
spreading awareness about pollution. The scroll was then taken around the
village by groups of students meeting people and the entire community
eventually contributed their concerns on to this list.
The scroll was
later pasted on to a village wall, as a reminder of the project and a direction
of movement for future betterment and quality living of the community. The whole exercise was to involve not just
students of a village but the entire village in an artistic way to spread
awareness of their follies causing environmental damage. The scroll was written
on, drawings were made and pictures and images were later pasted to the wall as
a reminder. Taking this project as a
point of departure, Amitesh then displayed his installation, made from a
bicycle. The installation was an attempt to introduce his art to the villagers
and to emphasise on the subject of recycling. The installation art is a
modified bicycle which has been taken apart, painted on, and several other
attachments like a small windowed dome shaped protrusions were added to it.
From terra-cotta tiles to threshing equipments, this bicycle metamorphosed into
any number of things after Amitesh finished making it. This was his attempt to
bring art to the people and also to bring them closer as a community.
Amitesh with
his installation art, his paintings and The Pledge project, together created a
performance related art in the village with strong social and environmental
messages which are bound to get addressed and attempted to be solved.
(by Sushma Sabnis)
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