HOME IS (W)HERE-Painting exhibition by Manju Mohanadas

Manju Mohanadas explores the idea of home beyond an address or a space. It is a private map, a sacred space where we come back again and again.

The artist questions herself-
"Where is home and where does one really belong?
The idea of a home - be it personal, geographical, familial is what the artist explores, questions and engages with. 
Displacement and dispossession trigger inquiries into ideas of ‘belonging’ - to places, spaces and times and a further re-look into one's roots and personal identity."

Manju works with mediums and materials to explore her idea, she explores her own body as map where life lines are etched deep. Through layered, strung and stitched landscapes, sometimes interspersed with maps and text, the artist attempts to articulate this fluid, unresolved state of being. 

When you say "I feel at home" it is a level of comfort, a space and time that is one's own. An address you want to own.To live and create and be yourself.

Manju Mohanadas is from Kochi, she has made Bangalore her home since 2000. She has received a MA in Fine Arts at College of Fine Arts, CKP, Bangalore.
- Suresh Jayaram

Water colour Drawings in ink & conte by Golak Khandual

Golak Khandual is a maverick working with multiple skills- an architect,set designer,makeup artist and an educator. His work reflects the conflict and change of our urban reality. His life and work maintain a critical balance, dealing with the collapse and recovery of spaces and skills that sustain our fragile world.His current set of drawings are an expressionistic take on urban landscapes. His poetic, abstract water colours seem to evoke an escape from them. 


About: Born in 1959, Orissa. Pursued Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture from School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi (1983) and then worked as freelance architect. In 1986 Trained and worked as a makeup Assistant to Wendy freeman on a fifteen hour television serial called ‘The Banyan Tree’; ‘In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones’ by Pradip Krishen and Arundhati Roy (1988); and also designed the sets and landscape for the feature fi lm ‘Electric Moon’ (1989-90). Amongst his architectural ventures are: an extension of Corpus Christi School, Kottayam, Kerala originally designed by Laurie Baker (1987); worked on the Natural History Museum for Satpura National park; worked as part of the task force with government of Madhya Pradesh to prepare an integrated Conservation Plan for Pachmarhi and worked at Baba Amte’s Anandwan, Warora ,developing prototype houses to be built by users who were cured leprosy patients; worked on safety measures in the school building for children at AADI, New Delhi; designed the buildings for Timbaktu Collective in Andhra Pradesh and a botanic laboratory for Centre for Science for Villages, Wardha (2000-2002) and he lived and worked in Himachal Pradesh designing buildings in Mashobra and Sidhbari (2002-2004). In 1992, traveled to Bhutan to study traditional architecture and made a series of paintings of Dzongs and Chhortens for the SAARC Complex for the Royal government of Bhutan. Held several painting and drawing Exhibition seasonally throughout. Presently lives in New Delhi; coping his time in between architecture, painting, writing and teaching.

Difference screen-Film screening

Difference Screen presents international artists' film and video at 1.Shanthiroad. The screening shows part of an evolving programme traveling to venues in 20 countries over 2.5 years. The project reveals hidden, unexpected and often a very human view of diverse countries, places and landscapes shaped by recent events - artists’ responses that together show the vital, creative value and potential of difference.

Difference Screen as been developed and curated by Bruce Allan and Ben Eastop. Profiles of contributing film-makers, an essay From the Fabric of Things by Gareth Evans,

Two Gardens and a Kalamkari, lecture by Omana Eappen @ 1Shanthiroad

About the Talk
This presentation, studying the representations of the Deccani garden in 16th and 17 th century kalamkari textiles from South India looks at the importance of imagination and of rasa, emotional essence, in engaging with the past. Also about associations which are important in our culture like ornamentation, alamkara. How plants – animals – men – gods are a continuum, one often representing the other, one being treated like the other, just like representations of the past, present and future, are another continuum without sharp dividing lines. Omana Eappen looks at multiple ways of looking at the past – accommodating plurality in a country that is extremely diverse, which could be through combinations and multivalence. She looks at how intertwined textiles and gardens were, how the iconography of an image developed, markers of identity, and the many layers, political, economic, social, scientific - that are all woven together in our dealing with the past.

About the Speaker
Omana Eappen is the Managing Trustee of the Nauras Trust, Bengaluru – working on a project with the Archaeological Survey of India and the National Culture Fund to revitalise the 17th century Adil Shahi Gardens of the Ibrahim Rauza and the Gol Gumbaz (the tombs of Ibrahim Adil Shah II and his son Mohammad Adil Shah respectively) in Bijapur (now Vijayapura), Karnataka and on its related publication. Looking for evidence of gardens in textiles led to an in depth study of a rare group of 16th/17thcentury kalamkaris from South India. She is writing a monograph on these textiles for Jnana Pravaha, Varanasi. She is interested in relating these projects to our times in multiple ways to connect across the plural segments of our society.

Weaving in Weaving out- A show of drawings sculptures and installation by Sian Torrington

Siân Torrington is an artist from New Zealand, Aotearoa, who makes drawings, sculptures

and installations. Her work has been widely shown in galleries, festivals, and commissioned

for public spaces. She uses diverse materials to create structural forms which are expressive,

embodied and grounded in practice-based experimentation. Her work is experiential,

requiring the viewer to move around, through and inside, asking their bodies to respond in

space. Siân’s work is drippy and colourful, stuck and woven together, leaning and clinging to

existing structures, or building its own in defiance of straight lines and the upright.

Siân has been artist in residence for 3 months at 1 Shanthi Road, generously funded by The

Asia New Zealand Foundation. She has researched everyday skills and vernacular structures,

as well as local forms of arrangement; how things are hung up in shops or stacked building

materials. A particular focus of the project has been being a woman in India, and how to

express her femme identity in a new culture. How to find a place for it.

Skill-based, everyday making, such as flower-tying and bamboo- weaving have been a way

to connect with local practices of making.

“I want to make my own kind of offering towards these incredible skills which I see

everywhere. Skills that are a part of every-day life here. Skills which do not make people

rich. Skills which are hard to learn, and essential to life. To join together, beautify, bless,

carry and build.”

Siân is extremely grateful and humbled to be taught new skills, work with, and be gifted

materials by local women. This project includes the generous labour, teaching and time of

women without whom she would have remained adrift. Their conversations, humour,

sharing and openness have enabled her to weave her own way in and find connections in a

place that is completely new. This show is dedicated to them, and to female struggles,

community, expression and daily lives, everywhere.

See more of her work and read her blog about her residency here;

http://allmeaningisthelineyoudraw.wordpress.com