Grosvenor Vadehra presented a solo exhibition of recent paintings by Anjolie Ela Menon . She is among India’s leading contemporary artists, and has created a name for herself in the domestic as well as international art scene. Her works are a part of significant museum, private and corporate collections across the globe. Though she normally prefers to work with oil on masonite, she has also experimented with other media such as glass, acrylic, computers, ceramics and painted junk. Desolation is a quality that is palpable in many of Menon’s paintings and again, one may infer that a sense of loss imbues some of her work a certain profundity. She evokes that which is hinted at but not quite visually stated even as the unsung ode wafts across disturbing landscapes. The small miniatures in this show are the result of the period of experimentation that began in 1992.  Menon’s conviction and courage in leaving the safety of her preferred medium – oil on masonite – was fraught with considerable uncertainty. In an ongoing engagement with Kitsch, Bollywood posters and street art, she imparts objects appropriated from so called “low art” with an aesthetic identity and autonomy. In her inimitably impish manner, Menon coalesces the traditional and post modern with rare panache creating a pastiche with collage and paint. Underlying the slick surfaces of the totally new compu-pictures are echoes of the artist’s earlier work, reinforcing those elements that have been associated with the Menon idiom while achieving a new visual language of intriguing complexity.

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Nestling in the terai, the valleys and mountains between the Tibetan plateau and the India plains, Nepal has its own characteristic expression between the two powerful cultures that flank it: Indian and Chinese. The people of Nepal, its artists, writers and thinkers, digest these influences to create their own independent ideas, way of life and art.

The five artists of different generations and can see them evolving icons and narratives in  a continuum, like the flow of a Buddhist chant, at once devotional and historical, for the Buddha’s thinking was neither theistic nor oriented to final judgements of heaven or hell. It was liberation theology at its best.

The journey begins with the horses of Shashi Bikram Shah, reminding us of ancient rituals like the Asvamedha that symbolizes episodes  marked by challenges, struggles and conquests, whose end is never postulated  until it actually occurs. They highlight liminal periods of change and transition with a surge of positive feelings and courage to carry on.  His powerful expression makes a striking starting point for a foray into contemporary Nepali art.

Kiran Manandhar carries forward the iconic tradition from that of village deities to secular icons of the modern world. Umashankar and Seema Sharma Shah’s narrative landscapes that encapsulate the lives of our day to day icons in swathes of colour out of which recognizable images of the Pashupatinath and Swayambunath temples and the Bouddhanath Stupa transform themselves by becoming collective icons.

The works of Bhairaj Maharjan, who blends the many elements along the path of enlightenment and liberation into single meditative images where the stereotype of the Buddha too transforms itself into the portrait of a meditating human being.

This understanding is brought about by looking at the collective presence of Nepali art while at the same time pursuing its changes and development over time, in the works of individual artists.

Suneet Chopra

Art Critic

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The project Re-imaging The People of India 2013 aims at providing a visual comparative interpretation of an enormously multicultural nation from widely contrasting standpoints in terms of space and time; the ones who ruled and their observation and now post-independence. Re-imaging The People of India (1850-2013), a photography exhibition under the aegis of Neel Dongre Awards/Grants for Excellence in Photography by India Photo Archive Foundation. The People of India was an 8-volume publication compiled by John Forbes Watson and John William Kaye between 1868 and 1875.

Originally conceived by Lord and Lady Canning, it was an early experiment with photography as a documentary medium. The Foundation presents a collaborative photographic project by four eminent contemporary photo practitioners representing different genres of photography; Dinesh Khanna, Dileep Prakash, Mahesh Bhat and Sandeep Biswas and curated by Aditya Arya, a leading practitioner, a photo historian and archivist. This exhibition showcases rare albumin prints from 1850s (from the Aditya Arya Archive) and the contemporary work on similar communities and professions.

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DLF Place Saket instigated a month long Denim festival with an Art Mob titled, “We don’t need no education”. Creativity has soared high as young creative artists came together to paint their construe of Denim’s ode to freedom at the Art Mob. In this impromptu art competition, around 20 youngsters from NIFT, Pearl Academy of Fashion and Delhi College of Arts had painted their imagination on their canvases.

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Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) has organizing an exclusive exhibition ‘Phulkari: from the realm of women’s creativity’ until May 3^rd, 2013. Its well known for its vibrant colours, geometric pattern and gaiety, the conventional embroidery from Punjab,  ‘Phulkari’ is very popular with women across India. As a part of its silver jubilee celebrations, IGNCA is display exquisite work by women artisans at the exhibition, following its tradition of promoting art and culture.

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TAD Arts present ‘Enchanted’, a solo presentation of art works, by Bahrain based artist Ella Prakash, at Courtyard by Marriot, Sector 27, Gurgaon. It’s her first exhibition in India and she implies both fine & abstract genres expressing her feelings freely using her brushwork technique.

Ella Prakash is a self made artist, she paints her emotions, dreams, hopes and her art comes across as ethereal, almost surreal. She explores different themes, but she mainly delves into the theme of the “Woman” who fulfills everybody wishes –as a lover, a wife, a daughter, a sister and a mother unconditionally as all this gives “her” immense happiness and satisfaction.

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The artistic chronometer is a description which allows the viewer to modify how one views the idea executed by the maker/artist. Gallery space converts into a customized space for the viewers to get an enhanced experience. Hence this categorization of art practice is of three brief points, which eventually befalls as the title of exhibition, conceptualized by Gallery Exhibit 320.

Time: Artist uses, “Time” as a key instrument to grasp and gather all the ideas they get by observing and indulging into a variety of events. Viewer can use this route to interpret works from one of more viewpoints conveyed by artists on display.

Space: It is clear that creative mind uses popular imagery or a common event then place the subject in self-narration, where the viewer gets to see the real image of the virtual experiences. Now on a larger ground enveloped in by a Society, City and Country, or with due time in any other given space.

 Memories: Artist here is customizing the number of events they want to consider. Choosing between viewing all occurrences to the selected events, hence memories work as an evasion point, where all the data of experiences and events is stored.

Ultimately spectators are left with the carnal cybernetic imagery produced by the incidents, which are always in the virtual space of the artist’s mind in other words the Time and Space in their Memories they acquired. The participating artists are Pooja Iranna, Riddhi Shah, Ritesh Ajmeri, Rizwan Ahmed, Manit Balmiki and Aditi Tailang.

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Art Bull, presents ‘R.A.P.E. – Rare Acts of Political Engagement’, a group show of twenty four woman artists from all over India, curated by JohnyML. R.A.P.E. is expected to debate the issues regarding the sexual atrocities committed against women. The show features the works of Anindita Bhattacharya, Arshi Irshad, Deepa Jayaraman, Garima Jayadevan, Kanika Sharma, Kavita Singh Kale, Manmeet Devgun, Manmeet Sandhu, Maya Pillai, Meena Kandasamy, Megha Joshi, Moutushi Chakravarty, Mukta Wadhwa, Neha Grewal, Neha Lavingia, Pallavi Singh, Pari Baishya, Pooja Panchal, Priyanka Govil, Sabrina Osborne, Sumana Chowdhury, Sushma Sabnis, Varnita Mahajan and Vinita Dasgupta.

The idea of R.A.P.E. – Rare Acts of Political Engagement was formulated at the wake of the national outcry that followed the gang rape of a paramedic in New Delhi. However, the show is not intended to deal directly with rape of a particular girl and her death. Without making rape as a thematic, R.A.P.E is an attempt to bring in a variety of visual responses to the very atrocious notion of keeping woman as a secondary citizen even in our so called globalized scenario. Despite all feminist interventions still women are subjected to power both in the private and public domains. Physical violence against women in the form of rape is not a biological act of the perverts but a strong imposition of power that often goes unchecked and unpunished.

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Deepak John Mathew, ‘Missing Interiors’, will be exhibiting at The Cornerstone Gallery Liverpool Hope University, today. In ‘Missing Interiors’ he captures sites of displacement that have happened within his life over a period of time. As children have come into his life, they have occupied his space and intervened in his sense of order that he had created when he was a free individual/bachelor. Children place their toys and dolls where the artist used to keep his books and equipment. Each inch of his house gets re-inscribed by the children’s presence. They become the active agents of this inscription that fundamentally changes every parents life. It moves from the quotidian and the generic to the larger implications of invasions and displacement. The apparently innocent images of his home interiors become emblematic of the zones where political and militaristic incursions happen in our times. Friendly presence of hospitals and public amnesties could also be symbolic of the arrival of multi-national corporations that want to exploit the lands of the native. Hence, Missing Interiors achieves a political meaning that oversteps the apparent innocence and joviality seen in the pictures. Dr. Deepak John Mathew P.h.D is the Photography Design Coordinator at the National Institute of Design in Paldi, Ahmedabad, India.

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Creator to Creativity II is an art exhibition by 17 artists of the professional artists group – Art Melange, all of whom share a passion for art and the professional guidance and mentorship of eminent artist, Vijaya Bagai. They are all professionally trained upcoming artists who are looking beyond the obvious and expressing themselves creatively to push the frontiers of art.

The exhibition will be inaugurated on Wednesday, April 10^th at 7 pm at the Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre by the Honorable Mr. Shashi Tharoor, Union Minister for State for HRD and his wife, Ms. Sunanda Pushkar. The works on display bring out the perception and introspection of life by the creator of life. These are the expressions of the artists – revealing the colours of life! They are in search of something…and art is helping them find that…it is providing them a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction, show curated by Ameeshi Tapuriah and Puja Gupta.

The participating artists are: Aashna Mehta Kataria, Aditi Saigal, Amrita Matharu, Arvind Bharadwaj, Era Jain,,Farida Shervani,Kaveri Ray, Kavita Dixit, Malabika Saikia, Mita Brahma, Naina,  Navpreet,  Parul Bali, Radhika Mehra, Ritu Bhatnagar, Shashi Ahuja, Simran Toor.

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