Art for Concern, The Buddha, Stains of Stimuli and more..

NEWS

Art For Concern

( work on display)

Visual arts Gallery, of the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi presents its Annual art exhibition organised by Secure Giving in aid of Concern India Foundation. Showcasing the eclectic collection of art by masters and promising artists, the show boasts of works by acclaimed artists like Akbar Padamsee, Suhas Roy, Jogen Choudhary, Jayasri Burman, Sanjay Bhattacharya, Dhiraj Choudhury and Sudip Roy. 

While the prime focus is to raise funds for underprivileged sections of the society, it also takes this opportunity to bring forward the works of struggling and needy artists, thus providing them a platform to be visible alongside the masters. 

The show is on view from 26th February to 27th February 2014.

The Buddha

( work by Suniyata Khanna at the show)

Aalankritha Art Gallery, Hyderabad presents an exhibition of paintings titled, ‘The Buddha’. As the name suggests, it displays a range of colourful Buddha paintings by talented artists including Ananda Das, Anand Panchal, Ashoke Ganguly, Makrand Jadhav, Subramanian Gopalsamy, Subrata Das, Sukanta Das, Suniyata Khanna and Suryanarayan J.

The show is on view till 22nd February 2014.

And I laid traps for Troubadours…

( Work on display)

Clark House Initiative, Mumbai along with Kadist Art Foundation, Paris presents a group show titled, ‘And I laid traps for troubadours who get killed before they reached Bombay’ of artworks that have been curated by Emilie Villez, Zasha Colah and Sumesh Sharma. The works on display depict cultural transference. This implies how ideas travel through objects and how the meaning of artworks will change and increase, when brought into the context of Mumbai’s political and social realities, and imaginaries.

The works on display are a collection of works from the Kadist in Paris with productions by artists from Mumbai, or those who once travelled to Mumbai. The participating artists are Francis Alÿs, Liz Ballard, Yael Bartana, Yogesh Barve, Kemi Bassene, Zied Ben Romdhane, Judy Blum, Sachin Bonde, Kennedy Browne, CAMP, Ceal Floyer, Chinchu Kumar Sreekandan, Aurélien Froment, Grupo Etcetera, David Horvitz, Poonam Jain, Jamboys, Mangesh Kapse, Ben Kinmont, Chinchu Kumar Sreekandan, Naresh Kumar, Ranjeeta Kumari, Lawrence Liang, Simon Liddiment, Aurelien Mole, Scott Myles, Prasad Nikumbh, Roman Ondak, Open Circle, Prabhakar Pachpute, Amol Patil, Rupali Patil, Pratchaya Phinthong, Justin Ponmany, Tatiana Pozzo Di Borgo, Prajakta Potnis, Nikhil Raunak, Société Réaliste, Uday Shanbagh, Caecilia Tripp, Nil Yalter and Carey Young.

The exhibition has been scheduled as a second part of a project started in Paris in 2013 with the exhibition 'L’exigence de la saudade', curated by Clark House Initiative then in residency at Kadist.

The show is on view till 30th April 2014.

Interface and Stains of Stimuli

(Work on display)

Forum Art Gallery, Chennai presents two shows, a show titled, ’Stains of Stimuli’ solo show by S.N.Sujith and ‘Interface’ a group show featuring eminent artists A.V. Ilango, Biswajit Balasubramanian, Birendra Pani, BO. Shailesh, C. Douglas, Harsha Biswajit, K. Muralidharan, P. Elanchezhiyan, S. Nandagopal, Santhosh Kotagiri, Shalini Biswajit, Shivarama Chary and Thejo Menon.

The shows are on view till 12th March 2014.

(News reports by Sushma Sabnis)

FEATURE

Down memory lane, by the sea

(The exhibition was aimed at connecting people with Chennai's built heritage. Photo: K.V. Srinivasan)

Memories of a street that once was, revisiting personal landmarks that have vanished, looking away to observe how much the landscape has changed, and all this punctuated with the crash of the waves. ‘Madras before after’, a predominantly black and white photography exhibition at Elliots Beach, looked at the city not just through a sepia-tinted lens, but also a disciplined archival approach.

Organised as part of the ongoing Art Chennai 2014 festival, the exhibition traces a nostalgic, yet measured trajectory of the city’s colonial past and its evolution.

From Indo-Saracenic architecture to depictions of daily life, the exhibition draws you to engage with it.

72 photographs from the collection of ‘Vintage Vignettes’ were curated by the festival’s artistic director Girish Shahane. “We thought it was a great way of connecting people of the city with its built heritage,” he said.

The exhibition has photographs of Mount Road in 1907, flower bazaar in 1896, a rather pristine Adyar River in 1886, the central railway station, the Chepauk Palace, and the Marina among many others.

K. Skandan, Managing Director, Tamilnadu Tourism Development Corporation, said “Like climate change, cultural change also matters. It has to be discussed and debated.”

D. Krishnan, managing partner, Vintage Vignettes, emphasised the need for thorough and systematic documentation of the city. Sanjay Tulsyan, founder and convenor of the festival was also present.

For those such as Aishwarya Pesala, a resident of East Mada Street in Mylapore, it was about revisiting the street where she lived all these years.

“I live here and am trying to recognise this building and what stands in its place now,” she said standing in front of a photograph. “But the car festival at the Kapaleeswarar temple still draws as much of a crowd,” she added standing in front of a 1906 photograph of the festival.

(Report courtesy The Hindu)

India Art Fair 2014, Manifestations X and more..

NEWS

India Art Fair 2014

India Art Fair held in New Delhi, is South Asia’s leading art fair for modern and contemporary art from across the world. The 6th edition of the fair is poised to take forward its activities with renewed impetus to excellence and impact. Spread over four days from 30 January (Preview Day) – 2 February 2014, its endeavor is to present a diverse selection of galleries, influential voices and cater to a wide-ranging audience of art enthusiasts from around the world. 

YES BANK for the second consecutive year is Presenting Partner at the 6th edition of India Art Fair 2014. 

The India Art Fair continues to be one of the world’s most attended events of its kind, attracting over 300,000 people since its inception. This includes key collectors and museums from several Asian countries, USA, Latin America, Australia, China, Russia, Greece, France, Germany, Argentina, Hungary, Africa, Latvia, France, Portugal, Spain, China, Singapore, Israel, Italy, Bangladesh and Austria amongst others.

The India Art Fair 2014 is open to public from 31st January to 2nd February 2014 at NSIC exhibition grounds.

Fictitious Realities - I

The Viewing Room, Mumbai presents the works of Simrin Mehra Agarwal as a part of the ongoing ‘They are Us-An emphatic response’ show. The series titled ‘Fictitious Realities - I’ displays 29 portrayals of characters carefully mapped out of 29 novels and books. Each character has been painted upon book covers to illustrate the important role it plays in the plot and other characters in the story. These characters have also been picked out on the basis of the effect on the artist. 

What gets portrayed is an amalgamation of the artist’s imagination, the books and film influences from childhood to now creating a painterly essence to the visual. The multipanel work is a library of emotions. 

The work is on display till 8th February 2014.

Manifestations X

The 10th edition of Delhi Art Gallery’s biannual series, ‘Manifestations - X’, showcases works of 75 of the most noted modern Indian artists. These artworks are grouped under genres that span from figurative to mythology to landscapes and so on. Manifestations X features works by four out of the six founding members of the Progressive Artist’s Group and thus showcases significant works by M.F. Husain, F.N. Souza, S.H. Raza and S.K. Bakre, alongside these are the three Tagores- Abanindranath, Rabindranath and Gaganendranth. However the highlight of this series remains a set of 92 works by Indra Dugar where each work is a study of a woman or women wearing traditional Rajasthani clothes. Also included is a set of ten anonymous Kalighat Pats belonging to the late 19th century.

Artists works on show are A. A. Raiba, A. R. Chughtai, Abanindranath Tagore, Adi Davierwalla, Arpana Caur, Avinash Chandra, Benode Behari Mukherjee, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Biren De, Chittaprosad, D. P. Roy Chowdhury, Dhanraj Bhagat, Dharamanarayan Dasgupta, Early Bengal Oil, F. N. Souza, G. R. Santosh, Gaganendranath Tagore, Ganesh Haloi, Ganesh Pyne, George Keyt, Gieve Patel, Gogi Saroj Pal, Gopal Ghose, Haku Shah, Hemanta Misra, Hemen Mazumdar, Himmat Shah, Indra Dugar, J. Swaminathan, J. Sultan Ali, Jamini Roy,Jeram Patel, Jogen Chowdhury,Jyoti Bhatt,K S Radhakrishnan,K. C. S. Panicker,K. G. Subramanyan, K. K. Hebbar, K. Laxma Goud, K. S. Kulkarni, Kalighat Pat, Laxman Pai, M. F. Husain, M. V. Dhurandhar, Manu Parekh, Meera Mukherjee, N. S. Bendre, Nandalal Bose, Nikhil Biswas, P. Khemraj, P. T. Reddy, P. V. Janakiram, Paritosh Sen, Pilloo Pochkhanawala, Prosanto Roy, Rabin Mondal, Rabindranath Tagore, Raghav Kaneria, Raja Ravi Varma, Ramgopal Vijaivargiya, Ramkinkar Baij, S Dhanapal, S. H. Raza, S. K. Bakre, Satish Gujral, Shanti Dave, Shyamal Dutta Ray, Sohan Qadri, Somnath Hore, Sunayani Devi, Sunil Das, Sunil Madhav Sen, Thota Vaikuntam, Vishwanath Nageshkar.

The show is on view from 25th January to 25th February 2014.

Celebration 2014

Kumar Gallery, New Delhi. presents a show of a group of artists from modern masters to contemporary artists of today. The show is titled, ‘Celebration 2014’. 

The show displays paintings by 26 modern masters and contemporary artists’ works. The show includes works by well known names like F N Souza, Gopal Ghose, K S Kulkarni, Ramu Das, Shampa Sircar Das among others.

The show is on view from 29th January to 15th February 2014.

( News Reports by Sushma Sabnis)

FEATURE

Space for Creativity

Participants tried their hand at pottery and got to witness works of Aarti Vir, Priyanka Aelay and Albert Camus

(Potter Aarti Vir exhibits her work as part of Hyderabad Literary Festival 2014.)

The Hyderabad Literary Festival 2014 turned out to be a forum that engaged participants beyond books and discourses. Kalakriti Art Gallery witnessed three exhibitions at a go — potter Aarti Vir’s works, Priyanka Aelay’s pen and ink drawings on paper and Albert Camus’s interactive exhibition.

(A participant tries his hand at clay modelling during the pottery workshop conducted by Aarti Vir as part of Hyderabad Literary Festival 2014.)

Outside the gallery, a bunch of children and young adults put their creative skills to test learning to mould clay under the watchful eye of Aarti Vir. Clay became a tool of fun in the hands of children as they moulded it into angry birds, a hulk-like human reading a paper and a few took the opportunity to bring in thoughts on ecological conservation and living in a beautiful world. The adults, meanwhile, tried sculpting human faces with minute details, large butterflies and even a game of Sudoku. The idea behind the workshop was to let participants have fun. School student Harem B contemplated replacing a small sheet of paper with a newspaper in the hands of the hulk-like human he had modelled even as his mother felt he would end up breaking the arms of the model. Witnessing the fun the children were having, Aarti simply shrugged and smiled.

(Potter Aarti Vir exhibits her work as part of Hyderabad Literary Festival 2014.)

Elsewhere, inside the gallery, Aarti’s works transcended the realm of functional pottery and showed her artistic prowess. She juxtaposed Leonard Cohen’s lines, ‘There’s a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how light comes in,’ to compliment her series ‘fences and borders’. As Aarti puts it, her pottery has changed in response to the world around her, addressing both external and internal concerns. A series titled ‘secure, insecure’ attempts to address the conflict between the securities and insecurities we experience in our own homes.

Pen and ink

(A pen and ink drawing by Priyanka Aelay)

Priyanka Aelay’s exhibition has pen-and-ink drawings on paper. Simple lines reflect her perception of issues faced by women, as addressed by authors Susie Tharu and K. Lalita. Priyanka’s drawings are part of the new Telugu edition of ‘Women writing in India’ by the two authors. The original book in English is now widely read across universities.

Scan and see

(Works of Albert Camus on display at Kalakriti as part of Hyderabad Literary Festival 2014.)

Albert Camus’s interactive exhibition comes to India for the first time. At first glance, you might overlook the display as mere posters. But keep your 3G-enabled mobile phone or tablet handy to view this exhibition. Once a viewer downloads the Alliance Francais’ Albert Camus app, the user will be able to access the contents pertaining to the Nobel Prize winning author. A user can select the language and go through the tutorial on how to scan the QR codes and explore text, video, images and sounds that appear on screen. The content is divided into five time periods and the entire viewing will take between 60 and 90 minutes.

The exhibition will continue till February 8th 2014 at Kalakriti Art Gallery.

(Report and Photos by Sangeetha Devi Dundoo for The Hindu)