'NEW ART from SOUTH ASIA': PROVISIONAL itinerary

Friday, 26 October 2007

PROVISIONAL itinerary

2007
NOVEMBER
9th November: Fly to Kochi, Kerala, to see the KAVA 3 Art prize exhibition.
14th/15th November: to Bangalore to set up Total Design Project (Museographies) [see: totaldesignbangalore.blogspot.com].
15th-30th: Visit artist studios and meet KAVA 3 finalist, Mahesh Grubasava.
DECEMBER
Attend Art festival, Bangalore and
Degree show, Srishti College, Bangalore.
Give a talk at Alliance Française.
Visit 10th anniversary exhibition at KASHI, Kochi, Kerala
15th December: Fly/train to Mumbai.
To visit Art College, meet artists and ARTINDIA magazine.
Go to Boroda:
Meet artists, including Kava 3 finalist Puja Vaish.
22nd December: Fly to Lahore: to visit the National College of Art in Lahore:
To see the degree show, meet artists and staff and, more generally get a sense of place and discover a country I have never visited before.
It looks as if a pedagogic contribution to the programme may be part of the visit.
I also plan to visit the School of Visual Art, Beaconhouse National University, where a student from Bangalore is on a visiting scholarship.

3 comments:

Unknown said...: Gerard,

I wonder if you have read my articles. I am a writer for The Hindu. My focus is on Contemporary Indian Art. I have a blog where I have posted links to my articles. Do have a look at them.

I just thought you might be interested as you talk about cultural specificity, which is something I discussed in my first article.

Im just starting out as a critic ( ive written 4 articles so far). Im trying to reach out to the mass audience. I was wondering what your thoughts were on supporting young emerging art critics in india.

my blog - meensonindianart.blogspot.com; 11 July 2008 at 19:38
Anonymous said...: top [url=http://www.c-online-casino.co.uk/]casino games[/url] coincide the latest [url=http://www.casinolasvegass.com/]casino bonus[/url] manumitted no store reward at the best [url=http://www.baywatchcasino.com/]casino
[/url].; 7 February 2013 at 14:06
Anonymous said...: [url=http://www.realcazinoz.com]casino[/url], also known as operative casinos or Internet casinos, are online versions of automatic ("hunk and mortar") casinos. Online casinos approve gamblers to pick up detail in and wager on casino games to a t the Internet.
Online casinos superficially submit on the booster unexceptional odds and payback percentages that are comparable to land-based casinos. Some online casinos orate on higher payback percentages in the function of position gismo games, and some drop upon known payout come apart audits on their websites. Assuming that the online casino is using an fittingly programmed indefinitely budge generator, proffer games like blackjack pocket an established shadow edge. The payout sculpt up preferably of these games are established on the rules of the game.
Innumerable online casinos sublease or be revealed their software from companies like Microgaming, Realtime Gaming, Playtech, Ecumenical Skilfulness Technology and CryptoLogic Inc.; 26 February 2013 at 13:29

Post a Comment

Reflections about South Asian Art

REFLECTIONS ABOUT CONTEMPORARY ART FROM SOUTH ASIA

Like Chinese Art, Contemporary Art from SOUTH ASIA is becoming ‘flavour of the month’ among Western curators and gallerists in search of new cultural commodities for the hungry international Art Market.
This marketability and comodification of Contemporary South Asian Art is reflected not solely in high prices fetched by some artist works at auctions, but also in the fact that an increasing number of artists are now in a position to make a living from their art.
In India, besides the wealthy urban centres of Dehli and Mumbai, this is evident in KERALA, among other states, where artist colonies are developing: with artists who have returned from Dehli, Mumbai and other cities where 'important' galleries are concentrated.
Kashi Art Gallery, who will be celebrating its tenth anniversary programme in December 2007, has played an important part in this shift, offering support to artists in the form of exhibitions, residencies and sales.
This professionalization of art is a positive sign, especially when anchored at local level.

It could, however, also become a curse if pressure to ‘make it’ with the 'big' galleries, biennales, and auction houses, pressurized artists to relinquish their own artistic, social and political agendas in favor of commercial ones.

The aim of this exhibition is to present the work of emerging artists—artists not yet subjected to the pressures of the international art market—and give them A FIRST OPPORTUITY TO SHOW THEIR WORK INTERNATIONALLY; without having to pander to international taste and fashions; by just being themselves.

In order to locate these works I plan to travel throughout INDIA and PAKISTAN to meet artists, teachers and gallerists.

The works I am looking for will show a CREATIVE EXPLORATION OF MEDIA AND ISSUES, and display a QUALITY OF THOUGHT not impaired by a concern to produce seductive commodities for the art market.
This, however, does not preclude the work being pleasurable and seductive in its materiality as well as conceptually stimulating.

The work selected for exhibition will be available for sale: to ordinary people not to millionaires. In this way, it will bring together artists and public before speculation drives them apart.

Having assimilated and transformed Indian and European artistic and cultural traditions, Contemporary Artists working in India and South Asia, have to face the additional challenge of defining their identity as CITIZENS and as ARTISTS in a multi-cultural contexts fraught with conflicts of interests. Conflicts anchored in differences of religion, culture, castes and class offer a greater challenge than those faced by Western artists who have to negotiate their own identities on the monocultural ground of Western capitalist consumer society.
One challenge for young Asian artists, which adds interest to their work, is the opportunity left to define themselves as artists, without relinquishing their respective HISTORIES and ‘local’/specific cultural TRADITIONS in the moment of RE-INVENTING THE MODERN according to their needs and circumstances.

What I hope this exhibition will make clear are the strong links which remains between TRADITION and MODERNITY, AESTHETICS and ETHICS, and highlight the tensions between aspirations to globalization and the more or less explicit or implicit critiques and reservations towards it; a reserve based on respect for local traditions and humanistic values.

It is a measure of our ignorance and long-standing prejudices that in the West we perceive the cultural specificity of Indian Art and Culture as ‘exotic’ rather than as an expression of contemporaneity: as cultural diversity (on the periphery) rather than as part of global modernity, on a par with Britishness, Dutchness, Frenchness, Europeanness, Americanness, etc.
The exhibition will present India as an intrinsic part of ‘our’ world cultural heritage—wherever we live—based on a different specificity from that of Europe and America; not anchored in the past but caught in an evolving present.

Since the Nineteenth century, when Varma adopted the medium of oil painting and the Western conventions of Salon painting—which he hybridized with his own cultural tradition—the History of Modern Indian Art, has seen a number of phases; when artists have taken inspiration from, emulated and assimilated elements from the Modernists traditions of Europe; albeit with different emphases.

These borrowing enabled artists to open up the visual language which had been available to artists during previous centuries, when Art was at the service of the State, Religion and the ruling castes. What strikes me, today, is the capacity of Indian artists to avoid a slavish imitation of the West, and their confidence in combining Western Modernism with Indian elements in a productive dialogue; developing a new form of inter-culturalism which remains to be acknowledged by the History of Art, and points the way forward. For in spite of an increasing presence on the international Art Market, and given the Euro and Western bias from which the History of Art is written, contemporary Indian Art remains on the periphery of written Art History; more like a 'dialect' or a regional or exotic form of Artistic Discourse rather than as an equal partner in steering the course of World Art and Art History.
One aim of this exhibition is to challenge these assumptions and to provide an open ground to redefine the Contemporary on expanded cultural grounds, whilst highlighting the contribution of Art to understanding our place in a world of cultural diversity, in the wake of globalization.

At a time when aggressive forms of Western consumerism promote Global cultural values against local/regional ones—a high price to pay for individual freedom and modernization—the arts become a site where conflict of values and identities arising from the impact of GLOBALIZATION can be enacted and fought. Alongside artists trained in art schools, I plan to include other artistic voices—tribal voices—which are presently marginalized (in social, political, cultural and economic respects), but who can make a significant contribution to the identity of multi-cultural India, if given the respect and the rights they deserves.

However serious or tragic the subject-matter of the works, pleasure —the ‘Pleasure of the Text’, according to Barthes; arising from the form and materiality of the works—is an intrinsic part of the experience of engaging with art; whether as artist or as viewers.

Trusting that there are enough galleries and exhibition spaces to display established Asia artists, I have decided not to follow existing curatorial paths and not to adopt the ready-made agendas of curators and galleries in India, Pakistan and elsewhere [including galleries showing South Asia Art in the UK, Europe and America].

This does not mean that I dismiss their approach, nor that I wish to by-pass the current debates in art theory and art criticism; quite the opposite. My choice simply expresses the wish to explore parallel avenues and test hypotheses on the basis of my experience, research, personal reflexions and encounters, in DIALOGUE with artists...

GM Coventry 25.09.07

'NEW ART from SOUTH ASIA'

Friday, 26 October 2007

PROVISIONAL itinerary

3 comments:

Contributors

Start here

Latest posts

Blog Archive

Reflections about South Asian Art