Over the years, the description of art camps has undergone a change.
Over the years, the description of art camps has undergone a change. From a situation when artists were invited to commune together and paint and create in an ambience of camaraderie of likeminded people, many camps, especially those that are held abroad — possibly for reasons of logistics, are more of an arty holiday with fellow artists. Artists are not expected to paint but just soak in the ambience and give works from their studios.
A few months ago I had written about a wonderfully old-fashioned art camp that took place in the lap of the Himalayas in Mukhteshwar with artists who shared great friendliness amongst each other and had a great time experimenting and creating some very vibrant works. The reason I say “old-fashioned” is because artists actually painted in this camp. To my mind, the best part of the Mukhteshwar camp was the planned dimension of making serigraphs of the works. Artists painted at the camp with a view to create a painting of 3’ X 4’ which would eventually be turned into a serigraph for greater outreach. To take this forward, a serigraph printing workshop was held to convert the paintings from the camp into serigraphs and a portfolio prepared from these prints.
The entire project from the camp to the serigraphs held was under the aegis of the Gallery Pioneer headed by Praveen Upadhye in collaboration with art lover Saurabh Singhvi. It now culminates into a show Eclectic Metaphors, and opens on October 5 at the Taj Palace hotel in Mumbai. Yours truly was asked to curate it and I am delighted to be part of its culmination as I was with its inception. The Taj, Mumbai, has a long history of promoting the arts and the Taj Salon has been founded with the aim to promote meaningful contemporary art along with the traditional Indian art forms. Since both Gallery Pioneer and Taj Salon share the same vision and objectives and are committed to further the cause of Indian art and culture, the exhibition becomes a platform for both to unite and celebrate the vibrant facets of Indian art.
Eclectic Metaphors has emerged as a vibrant show of contemporary Indian art that reflects contemporary urban reality in its myriad dimensions. The exhibition features an interesting permutation of some of the most creative contemporary artists of the buoyant Indian art scene. They have made their presence felt at the international level and are recognised as the harbingers of growth and change.
The exhibits featured in the show are remarkable for their exploration of capturing metaphors and turning them into manifestations of realities that resound in no uncertain way. The form and content chosen by the artists is novel as they discover newer paths to present the expressions of their aspirations and realities. And that they are eclectic is only incidental.
The exhibition will showcase works of renowned artists including Niren Sen Gupta, Anu Naik, O.P. Sharma, S.D.Shrotraya, Sidharth, Anita Kulkarni, Jagdish Dey, Sridhar Iyer, Niladri Paul, Shampa Sircar Das, Vilas Kulkarni, among others. The exhibition displays all the works done by the participating artists in the camp along with a few guest artists. The guest artists include M.F.Husain, F.N. Souza, S.H.Raza, Ram Kumar, T. Vaikuntham, G.R.Santosh, Y. Shirwarcar among others.
The show is replete with an international flavour where the range of artists may vary in terms of age group, but not in terms of quality, this itself is a high point of the show. The exhibition features a significant component by way of important women artists whose work stands out for both form and content. The journey of women artists the world over has been accepted as an important expression of their reality tinged with their hopes and aspirations.
Increasingly the world is waking up to the fact that the feminine sensibilities are diametrically different from their male counterparts. For the feminine gaze does perceive and interpret given situations differently and nowhere is it more starkly reflected than in the most visual imagery that constitutes painting by women. Their concerns are shared, they are looking at urban and rural reality as it explodes and implodes around them like land mines programmed to go off with a whisper. But within this cacophony of silence, they make their statement in definitive ways.
The work of senior artists is marked by a perceptive and sensitive insight into human relationships, as they delve deep using interesting metaphors of form and content. The interplay of form and content of are so myriad in their approach that they can leave the observer breathless!
And yet at the end of the day, intrinsic human experiences are so unchanging, that is reflected in the works of the maestros including M.F. Husain, F.N. Souza, Ram Kumar and S.H. Raza.
The energetic works of these artists are a wondrous interplay of colour and textures and many of them are reminiscent of movement — after all, the sway of colour and its movement can be so interwoven that sometimes it is easy to forget whether they point in the same direction or are they headed in the opposite directions — that is what bonding is all about. The inherent strength of an artist is explored within the context of semi-urban reality in both figurative as well as abstract genres. Dr Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist and can be contacted on alkaraghuvanshi@yahoo.com
