News
Cabinets of Time Travel - Samanta Batra Mehta debut solo
(work by Samanta Batra Mehta)
Artist Samanta Batra
Mehta is having her first solo show in India at the Shrine Empire gallery, New
Delhi. The show titled, ‘The Other Side of Time’ s on view till the 18th of May
2013.
The show draws
inspirations from the concept of ‘Cabinets of Curiosities/ Wonders’ , generated
during the Renaissance period in Europe. Taking the inspirations from the variety and eccentricity of the
collections found in those times and adapting them and formulating her own
‘cabinet of wonder’, the artist presents a body of work which involves
photography, prints, drawings, and installations made from her own life
experiences, family history and childhood nostalgia.
The work addresses the
issues of dislocation, migration, faced by an Indian artist living in New York,
at the same time bringing in an individual language of nature that nourishes
such expressions, enriching it.
Asia Art Archive Talk
series - ‘ Hong Kong Conversations’
The Asia Art Archive (AAA) Hong Kong has organised a talk
series titled “Hong Kong Conversations” from the 11th of May onwards till July
2013.
The talk series by
AAA is an attempt to bring forth the transitions and development of Art
indigenous to Hong Kong, before the British colonies influenced it. Hong Kong
has a long history and this series hopes to concentrate their focus on the
intricacies of local art from that era till date. The speakers will present
perspectives and raise questions about interpreting Hong Kong through its art.
The talk planned for the 11th of May marks the
commencement of this series and is titled,
“From Hong Kong Art Today to Hong Kong Eye’ - Representing Hong Kong through exhibitions.
The talk is to be held at Artis Tree,
Hong Kong from 11 am to 1 pm.
The speakers are C&G artist collective, Founders of
C&G Artpartment,
Kurt Chan - Professor of Department of Fine arts at the
Chinese University
The talk looks
at how Hong Kong has been represented, from its first survey exhibition ‘Hong
Kong Art Today’ in 1962, to the most recent one, ‘Hong Kong Eye’, questioning
the notion of site and context.
Imprinting the History of Printmaking
(From Waswo X Waswo's collection)
National Gallery of
Modern Art, Bangalore, Ministry of
Culture, Government of India, presents a show titled, ‘Between the Lines - Identity, Place and Power’. The traveling
show displays a vast collection of Indian prints from the private collection of
artist, Waswo X Waswo. The show has been curated by Lina Vincent Sunish, an art
historian and curator form Bangalore. Waswo’s collection documents the trends
inIndian printmaking over a span of the last 100 years.
The show promises to
raise interest in the printmaking and the print buying community and hopes to
engage the viewers as much as the buyers. The exhibition has a selection of
prints made using techniques such as etching, lithography, woodcuts and
serigraphs. There are about 152 works by 79 artists from all over the country.
Some of the prints date back to 1917.
The show is on till the
28th of May 2013.
Photography one
on one by PhotoSensitive Workshops
The PhotoSensitive Workshop, New Delhi is a joint
venture and brain child of two eminent photographers, Shailan Parker and
Joginder Singh. Having taught photography for a decade or more, these two work
as a single passionate unit, imparting the young, old and the restless with
pearls of photography wisdom. In view of this, they are conducting a workshop
on photography on the 11th May to 2nd June 2013.The workshop is called
Photo-One and deals with basics of systematically understanding light and using
it for better and meaningful photography.
The interested participants are expected to bring
their own DSLR cameras. The topics being
taught are understanding the dynamics of artificial light, manipulation/
stimulation of light, visual perception and appreciation of light.The details
of the workshop can be found at their website, www.photosensitiveworkshops.com or on +9198100 91751 / 98111 19331.
(News Reports by Sushma Sabnis)
Catcher in the Rye- Priyanka Govil
(Priyanka Govil)
Baroda based Priyanka Govil is an artist who invests
her creative energies in painting landscapes. But interestingly her works are
not about landscapes as landscapes or landscapes in art history. She looks for
a different experience and her innovative approach makes her works important
and the consistency in them enduring. JohnyML
profiles the artist
It was in 2010. Location- Luhari Village, Silvasa, Daman.
Sandarbh had organized its annual site specific workshop for young artists
there and the camp was led by artist, Somu Desai. Participating artists were
free to choose their sites in the village. Priyanka Govil, a young artist based
in Baroda found a huge old tree and its shade as her site. Half clad curious
village children gathered around her. She asked them to collect the twigs and
branches fallen from the tree. They did it promptly. The days that followed saw
Priyanka working on those twigs, tying them meticulously to make mesh that hung
from the lowest branch of the tree. It was so brittle that even a wind could
jeopardise its existence. Still it survived the days and the village children
found that they could also do things like that.
Priyanka had not titled her work. She knew its impermanent
nature. While querying her about the work, she said that that the mesh or the
net made out of the twigs was a window to see the landscape out there. The
landscape beyond it moved as the mesh moved in breeze. She sat there for almost
every day sketching the changing landscape that spread out before her. Was it a
sort of impressionist exercise for her? Perhaps, then she did not know about
it. She had been interested in nature and its manifestation in art, landscape.
I could see a bit of Andy Goldsworthy’s influence in that work. I prodded her
with that information. She smiled and said she was aware of Goldsworthy’s work.
And she was not there to imitate the veteran site specific artist. Her site
specific exploration was spontaneous and she knew that she was not going to do
the same all the time.
What makes Priyanka’s landscape paintings so captivating and
important, one may ask. In the conventional sense her works are not landscapes.
But each time one looks at her works, one could see the places that exist
somewhere in nature. They could be mental projections of the viewer or they
could be the collective memories of the artist’s journeys. Priyanka brings them
together on to the pictorial surfaces that she chooses to work on. She started
off her experiments with the idea of landscape when she was a student in the
fine arts faculty at MS Unviersity, Baroda. She used long scrolls of parchment
and graphite to create installations that resembled vast spaces, familiar and
strange at the same time. For a young artist in her university years, personal
world view could be a bit dark and gloomy. Once out of the college, Priyanka’s
palette started transforming into greens and blues. She consistently painted
paddy fields that never represented ‘any’ paddy fields, forest tracts that
never emblematized any forest tracts.
Priyanka’s confidence grew as she started exhibiting her
works in different group shows mainly in Delhi and Baroda. In a dingy studio in
Baroda, with not even enough space to look at the totality of the painted
images in the right perspective and light, she worked on huge canvases, papers
and other surfaces without complaining about physical constraints. A major
change occurred in her works when she started working with tea wash and gave
her works a predominant sepia tone. Priyanaka has never said that she has been
affected by the political and social tensions in Gujarat where she resides. But
the changing hues in her works could be taken as automatic responses to that.
It is not necessary that an artist always pitches her ideas on social or
political issues. But as a social being she cannot escape the ripple effects of
changes, which have considerably helped in changing her works.
Priyanka Govil is an artist who is not bogged down by
economic recession. During the boom years as well as in the gloom years she
works with the same verve and passion. When she was invited to participate in
the R.A.P.E show curated by me, without moving away from the characteristic
style, she articulated her gender concerns by adding certain phallic images in
her vast landscapes with a total change in palette. What makes Priyanka tick is
her insatiable urge to work and what makes her works relevant is the thematic
orientation and stylistic integrity and finally what makes her works enduring
is her consistency in creativity, which I am sure is going to last for a long
time.
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