Friday, December 22, 2017

PALIMPSEST

Walls carry memories. They are mute witnesses to the passage of time. Just as memories collect and fade to be overridden by new memories, traces on walls recall the familiar in an undefined way. Remnants of the past linger, enabling a nostalgic travel through time, into the imagination. For some time now, my muse has been the shabby, rundown walls of buildings in my city, Mumbai - walls without history, character or evident beauty; functional, yet filled with traces of time etched onto their surfaces.

With a view to extending my work to another city, I came to Bangalore. Here, I learnt about the administration’s wall beautification project. Local artists painted murals recalling memories of Karnataka’s cultural and natural habitat. The wall paintings, meant to serve as a deterrent to defacement, however, have since been marred in many parts of the city, and also undergone natural degradation. When Suresh Jayaram suggested that I photograph these painted walls of Bangalore, I was a bit doubtful, but decided to give it a try despite my reservations. To my surprise and delight, this exploration has given a whole new look and feel to my work. Whilst the process that I follow is the same, the resultant images are quite different from those I made in Mumbai.

My work records both memory and change. Change ensues from the many interventions that happen over a period of time. Layers of paint, posters, dirt and grime accumulated one on top of the other undergo various kinds and stages of degradation. Their transition through time is both imperceptible and insidious - gradually changing form. The beauty of the resultant visual is easily overlooked. It is overshadowed by the overtly soiled walls that turn away the gaze of the viewer.

My photographs attempt to capture that which is overlooked - the beauty of the passage of time on walled surfaces – evoking memory, erasure, and transience simultaneously. 











Saturday, December 16, 2017

BREAKING THE PATTERN

Am I a homemaker? Am I an artist? Does my role as a homemaker take away from my identity as an artist?

The eternal questions of identity, gender roles, patriarchy and conditioning all get thrown in the mix while trying to prioritize family and making art alongside. My work is an attempt to address the set notions about domestic life and also to celebrate the multiple roles within.


















Wednesday, December 13, 2017

BRAIDING CULTURES

Carina and Lukas are two product designers based in Winterthur, Switzerland. With their firm KreativKonsum they realize projects in the fields of product design, user centred design, game and educational design and scenographic design.

What they really love about their profession is the wide variety of procedures they are involved with. To design, for them, means to get in contact with different people, materials, methods and challenges. Sustainability, technological developments and humanity are constant parts of their design concepts.

Since Carina and Lukas are fascinated by the Indian culture and especially the handicraft, they planned the project Braiding Cultures.
As designers they are very interested in working hands on. That’s why they wanted to explore the basketry and other possibilities of processing natural materials to create designs of their own.
During their three months journey through India they got the great chance to visit many interesting places, work with skilled artisans and establish relationships for future collaborations.









Monday, November 27, 2017

DUBAI GOLD AND DIAMONDS

All that glitters is gold - and diamonds! At her work-in-progress showing, German artist and bangaloREsident@Pepper House, Sophie-Therese Trenka-Dalton presents excerpts of photo and video material collected in Kochi, Kozhikode and Malappuram during her residency. Besides her on-going interest in the unique traffic between Kerala and the Gulf States, Sophie explored other subjects like marine traffic, coir, palm fronds and malls.

Sophie-Therese Trenka-Dalton (*1979, Berlin) lives in Berlin. She studied visual art till 2007 at the University of the Arts, Berlin and Cooper Union, New York. After her studies she travelled for projects within Europe, to Los Angeles and to the United Arab Emirates, where she developed central aspects of her current artistic practice. In her research-based installations, Trenka-Dalton examines the processes of cultural shifting and appropriation that occur when centres of power implode and reshape. She retraces the continuous migration of cultural motifs along objects, buildings and stories.








Sunday, November 26, 2017

Botanical Cosmos

Man & Wah are flower boys living and working in Australia. They produce visual works that highlights the intricate forms and colours of plants through large format photographic prints & audio/visual digital projections. These works celebrate the beauty and diversity of nature from around the world, encouraging reflection and deeper contemplation of our relationship with nature, inviting us to pause and appreciate the role it plays in sustaining a liveable planet.
Botanical Cosmos Bengaluru is a series of new botanical inspired works by Man & Wah. Exploring the back streets of the city and Bengaluru’s renowned City Market, Man & Wah with the help of the Shanthi Road crew collected an array of plants within the city’s rapid concrete developments. They visually captured each plant's unique forms and vivid colours through still images and video works that reveal a new sense of perspective and connection with nature that seems to be quickly disappearing amongst this city’s modern expansions.