Whats cooking is an informal news letter of 1.Shanthiroad Studio/Gallery. It will feature events and happenings at the studio.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
We are honored to have received the Robert Bosch Institutional Grant in 2009 for the support of local art initiatives.
The first awardee was Bhavani.G.S.
Journey With River Cauvery
The Robert Bosch Institutional grant supports 1shanthi road studio to help young artists with their art practice in an effort to nurture local talent. It has been awarded to Bhavani.G.S for her video-“Journey with the river Cauvery”, this small video negotiates the landscape of the river, and it flows through the sacred and secular, private and public domains. The rivers in India are named after women and always refer to mythical origins, the use and control of river waters have been part of the dominant social and political discourses with sharing of waters for irrigation, building dams and harnessing hydro electricity. The visual narrative is a personal journey to locate the urban self and to question the faith that is passed on to her about the purity of water and its mythical and sacred associations heard from oral narratives.
Bhavani explores her relation with the most contested resource of water of river Cauvery and uses her body to navigate through the river till it forcefully reaches the metropolis of Bangalore. The images travel through traditional spaces of worship, contamination, rituals of bathing, washing and other communal activity. This poetic journey through the landscape has references to her earlier site- specific installations and interventions in landscapes using organic materials. This opportunity has opened new possibilities for the future and like the river will endure and nurture the artist. Suresh Jayaram
"The Residency in 1shanthiroad Gallery/Studio was my first artist Residency. The residency was agreat exposure to me.It helped me work more confidently with new media. The library was very useful – spent lot of time reading.I was able to discuss my work with Suresh Jayram and take his guidance. The opportunity I got from this residency is I got to meet lot of people. I was able to spend more time with the residents here especially Janet, and Jennifer, from Australia with whom I shared my works and got good feed back. Marcus –video artist who visited them also gave me a good feed back." - Bhavani G.S.
The Asialink Arts Residency, Program,@1Shanthiroad studio/gallery,Bangalore, India 2009 is supported by the Commonwealth through the Australia-India Council which is part of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Australia Council.
The recent work of Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley at 1.shanthiroad studio residency supported by Asia Link is called “Imitation of life”.Opening 21st Nov 6.30,on till26th Nov.
The show features a saree that has been designed with a camouflage print and another piece a traditional male underwear -langoti embellished with multinational symbols. They are emblematic and refer to the violence of our times. Centered around the uprising of the naxelite movement that unprecedented change in forest land acquisitions in the name of development that have systematically erased indigenous people from the land and cultural geography.
The process of using urban craft like the local welders, silk screen printers, tailors from the vicinity in this process makes this truly a collaborative effort by the artists with diverse handcrafted skills prevailing in the urban metropolis.
Despite the political associations they are fabrics that have not changed for centuries. The saree still is graceful, multidimensional ,uncut garment that is part of the living tradition of India. There have been many additions to the saree but the form is archetypal. One sees it as an architectural screen to deflect the gaze, a cradle to be hung like hammock to nurse a baby, a rope to escape an unbearable family and unfortunately as a rope for ending a life for a victim of domestic violence. By camouflaging the saree it the artist seem to empower and resist the timeless female garment. suresh jayaram
The langoti on the other hand has been almost extinct in urban situations except for rural sectors and part of the traditions of local wrestlers, farm laborers and the working class. The wearing of this is associated with the control of male sexuality and possibly a phallo- centric developmental module. These fabric works are displayed on an urban mannequin and on a steel armature of an architecture pillar read labour. Locating the fabric of camouflage and very private undergarment of the Indian male is made public and embellished with symbols of buoyant economy. These interventions can be seen as part of the resistance to the country’s accelerated growth, that seems to bulldoze the agenda of the new economy leaving an inhuman trail of stories that will be unheard amidst the din of globalization.
PRABHAVATHI MEPPAYIL AND MOHAMMAD HASANUR REHAMAN (REAZ)
OPEN DAY 12TH AUGUST, 2009. ON TILL 15 AUGUST, 2009-NRTT SUPPORT
We share a common cultural history, troubled past and a hopeful future. This is an opportunity to establish “people to people contact through visual artists’ wit our neighbors.
This is another attempt to bring two countries and individuals together to foster conversations across cultures. The significant aspect of this program is to create conducive situations for artists to have conversation, learn from each other and get to know social and cultural contexts.
1Shanthiroad studio will open a new window to know BRITTO, two organizations with similar objectives. We will connect and nurture friendships and artistic collaborations for the future.
ARTIST STATEMENTS:
1)PRABHAVATHI M
Melting Pot
The notion of movement is not unfamiliar to me. The place I live in is a picture blurred by never ceasing activity- a melting pot of various cultures and traditions brought by people who have come far away and made this place their home. When I was invited to be part of this KHOJ Project with a Bangladeshi Artist, the first thought that occurred to me was about the place I live and work in, where several migrant goldsmith communities live. They come here bearing their unique skill, the use of delicate hands to turn a piece of metal into fine jewellery; a craft which has been passed down over generations. They come mostly for survival; I wonder if it could also be for survival of their craft. Some are also Bangladeshi immigrants who conceal their identities to merge into our society.
In the Shanthiroad Studio, I chose to work in the kitchen which was almost empty. I moved out the few things that were there; the space carried the resonance of absence.
Every year the pot used to melt gold in my father’s workshop would be discarded for a new one. The old one was used to grow plants by my mother – krishna tulsi, nishagandhi, hibiscus, marigolds…thus taking on a new form. Hardened by the fire, it now held a living thing; plants which reminded her of home, the fragrance of the cinnamon tree in her backyard. The cinnamon is also reminiscent of a colonial past.
My grandfather, a goldsmith, came here in search of work many years ago, like so many others. This part of the city is now called ‘old city’. For people who have lived here for years, it is the only city they know. From here the city grew, I wonder if I have become a stranger to it, or if the city is unrecognizable now. Cobblestone paths have given away to concrete roads; what is left of the old architecture is now but a pile of rubble.
I picked up these pieces of flesh, which contain several fossilized layers- smell, touch, sound, memory and loss. I etched on them with my goldsmith tools, marks like a prayer and placed it in the kitchen.
2) Mohammad Hasanur Reaz
The opportunity to come to Bangalore was exciting for me. I wished to explore Bangalore and the contemporary art scene. I was ambitious and planned to work in local stone and later tried to look for objects and materials that resonates my concerns.
My interaction with Prabhavathi, the collaborating artist, was an interesting situation to locate myself in a context of Bangalore. Prabha comes from a traditional goldsmith family was a fascinating experience I visited her studio and interacted with her migrant Bengali neighbors who have made Bangalore their home. I was questioning the reasons for the migration of labour and the struggle for livelihoods.
My concerns include the political reality in our countries, the struggle for survival and the constant hope for utopia. Like many others I wish to dream of a new utopia. I visited Pondicherry and was inspired by the Auroville and the charter for the global village. This is reflected in my representation of the idea of Matri Mandir. I want to know if this was a solution for a new reality. My visit to the Golden bridge pottery was another inspiration to acknowledge the triumph of labour and craft skills. And the ability to create a sustainable model for creative studio practice.
Can we move away from the dominant discourse of globalization and the logic of development? In our own south Asian context I wish to be part of the search of a new universalisms and world view, which sustains our traditions and cultures that, are rooted in the vernacular.
I quote:
“…it is here in the cosmologies of cultures, here with peoples on the peripheries that we must seek the beginnings of an alternative discourse. It is here perhaps, that the notion of the sacred survives. to return the spiritual to the material and the ethical to the political. The one central mountain”
-Corinne Kumar, Universalisms In Political Discourse- in “Asking we walk”-the south as new political imagery.
Urban memory with the smell of cinnamon
-Suresh Jayaram
We visited Prabhavathi’s studio in the old part of Bangalore. Here the sounds of last surviving silk weaving homes and gold jewelers survive amidst the bustle of the city. Prabha lives in a close net family with living traditions of making gold. Her Father migrated to Bangalore and was the first among the Malayali jewelers who established themselves here. The craft of the jewelers “thatans” in Kerala is much respected for the intricate designs that adorn women and men. They continue to use time tested patterns to fashion jewelers for many communities that believe in the custom of buying jewelry as a ritual necessarily and an investment.
Prabha has been passionately exploring the revival of panel painting with gesso; she patiently layers wood surfaces with limestone to create a surface that becomes her canvas. Line drawings have been her forte, a language revived from the many traditions of miniature painting she has researched. Her lineage can be traced to the Bengal school and the contemporary adaptation by well-known artist Nilima Sheikh. The artists draws from the pan Asian tradition of lyrical lines and patterns that trace the elements of nature and the fragments of female subjectivity that suggest desire, loss, hope andpersonal narratives that are more poetic evocations.
Prabha takes her drawings and mark making to another level, she believes in subtlety and suggestion, “dhavani” an important element of Indian aesthetics that believes in suggestion rather than statement. This device becomes the essence of her recent installation at the Khoj collaborative project at 1Shanthiroad. She chose a minimal space that is used by artist as a living space with a small kitchenette adorned with local grey granite. The bed hangs above like a loft, a series of concealed cupboards open up another world of storage and mystery.
The artist’s intervention is subtle and dramatic. She makes marks using charcoals to suggest soot from the kitchen. The empty kitchen is adorned by a terracotta pot that is used to smelt gold by her father. It suggests other urban uses like pots for plants that line her terrace garden tended by her mother in memory of the verdant backyard of her Kerala home. All this is accentuated by the smell of cinnamon that wafts in the room. The artist suggests through absence and recollects the smell of cinnamon trees and its colonial history in the spice route.
The most dramatic and bold gesture is the spill of debris that has been collected from the old city. These are palimpsests of homes, painted with sweet colored distemper of middle class homes. Prabha looks at them as fragments of bodies that bear witness to the change and conflict of a city that struggles to grapple with its new found global climb. Now citizens cling to rituals and traditions of livelihoods that are gradually erased by rampant migration. Prabha assets herself by using her fathers chisels to embellish these fragmentary walls with delicate abstract patterns. These are her haikus without words, she leaves marks to claim her identity from the by lanes of the city she lives and loves.
