Made For Each Other

The artists’ community in Bangalore is a close-knit one, observes MARTA JAKIMOWICZ, as she delineates the city’s history of collective art and action.

Exhibition venue for Bar1’s Residency 2011, Mission Road, Bangalore.

Artists’ initiatives in Bangalore today receive much public attention and some have even transformed into important institutions. However, they remind you of two decades of individual and group struggle prompted by a lack of infrastructural support and market prospects for experimental art in the city. In the early ’90s, there were hardly any spaces for showing cuttingedge work, except for the Max Mueller Bhavan and the Alliance Francaise; galleries such as Kala Yatra (in the mid-’80s) and Sakshi Gallery (in the ’90s) mostly exhibited regular, eyepleasing works. Most art colleges were tediously academic in their orientation, but many artists remember how R. M. Hadapad, Founder and Principal of the Ken School of Art, encouraged ART Profile India The Art News Magazine of India December 2011 Volume XVI Issue III them to venture into the new. The Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath (KCP) too was fairly open to students’ and teachers’ projects.

As Sheela Gowda explored materials associated with agricultural labour and ritual in the early ’90s, the Visthar Farm run by C. F. John began to conduct workshops and mount collaborative installations. These were often interactive and their striking and ambitious optical effects addressed the rural condition, environmental degradation and communal violence along with the dynamics of perception. In the mid-1990s and later in the decade, while John Devaraj placed sculptural ensembles framing social protest in parks and lakes, and worked with underprivileged children, shows like Silence of Furies and Sorrows, Immaterial Material, Territory, I (as in India) and To be or not to be saw several participants like C. F. John, Sheela Gowda, Raghavendra Rao, Surekha, Ramesh Kalkur, Shanthamani M., M. C. Ramesh, Archana Hande, Ramesh Chandra along with the dancer Tripura Kashyap. Artists like Gowda and Pushpamala N., already familiar with the vibrant milieus of Santiniketan and Baroda as well as the Western art movements, began exhibiting experimental work on their own in the ’90s. Other artists gathered around them and friendships began to grow. The absence of an infrastructure made these artists rely on their own labour and resources and the generosity of families and patrons as well as on joint enterprise and new audiences. Due to the progressive reforms in the state, artists from lower caste backgrounds also came to the fore. Many of these artists as well as their privileged counterparts felt the need to speak about their roots and to engage with different communities, to show art in public spaces and to make sitespecific work. Slowly, commercial galleries such as Tasveer, Gallery Sumukha, Sakshi Gallery and GALLERYSKE began showing experimental work. In the last couple of years, NGMA Bangalore too has hosted various artistic experiments.

Umesh Madanahalli.
Artist’s Kitchen. 1.Shanthiroad Studio/Gallery. 2008. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY SURESH JAYARAM.

Many open-ended artists’ initiatives have led to the creation of formal organisations. Started in 2001, four years after Khoj in Khirkee, near Delhi, Bar1 (Bengaluru Artist Residency One), is a non-profit programme designed “to foster the local, Indian and international exchange of ideas and experiences through guest residencies in Bangalore”. Begun by Swiss artist Christoph Storz (Estee Oarsed in his Indian avatar), who lives between Bangalore and Europe, it has involved younger artists like Raghavendra Rao, Surekha, Ayisha Abraham, Prabhavathi Meppayil and Nanaiah C.R. These artists have been on residencies to Storz’s native Aarau, organised in collaboration with Wenzel Heller and the Kronenatelier there. The ten-year anniversary of Bar1 saw a month-long workshop in Aarau for Indian and Palestinian resident artists as well as artists from Switzerland and elsewhere – Katrina Zuzakova and Nesa Gschwend, to name two – and our own Tushar Joag, Mithu Sen, Zakkir Hussain and Shreyas Karle, among others, have participated in an artists’ exchange. As Storz puts it, “Bar1 believes in the notion of art as something not just tied down to physical art pieces – indexed and marketable – but directly related to the testing and celebrating of artistic processes and their contextualisation. Bar1’s intention is never to control or streamline the outcome of a residency.” Stressing its freedom and basic, minimal, low-profile character, he hopes to offer emotional and infrastructural support to “create, at least for a moment, the illusion for an arriving guest that life starts anew. I think it is a precious moment, even if it might mean that the artist has to finally grope back towards what she has been before. She can test her old routines and justifications. Will they hold here? First, she has to listen and imbibe. This can trigger off a process, intense but not necessarily secure, which almost certainly will be creative.” Many of the artists begin by engaging with life in the city – its people and their everyday activities; in fact, in one of its events, auto-rickshaw drivers were encouraged to explore their own aesthetic ventures. The holistic nature of the initiative’s engagement brings writers, musicians and sound artists into contexts that are visual. Some of its site-specific events have addressed Bangalore as a complex space; colonial bungalows have been transformed; and in one case, an open tent made out of discarded plastic bags and other discarded material has been built for underprivileged people and children to rest and learn meditation. In November, under its aegis, Smitha Cariappa organised a performance art festival with 26 Indian and foreign participants.