INTRODUCING AN INITIATIVE

Tamal Bhattacharya. Stoneware.

LOCATED IN THE SOUTHERN SUBURB OF Baruipur, 23 Kilometres from Kolkata, ArtSpace is an artists' retreat - the only one of its kind in Eastern India. Since 2003, the goal of ArtSpace has been to provide proper accommodation for artists. Set in the semi-rural environs of greater Kolkata, it offers a gallery, an open-air theatre, and ceramic and enamelling studios. In September, ArtSpace hosted a Ceramic art show at its City Gallery, featuring ten young and mid-career artists.

The artists in the show addressed the interface between old and new ceramic practices - some in a manner that was generic, while others in a manner deeply contemplative and highly personalized. While Tapash Konar, who is essentially a painter, chose the plate as a familiar two-dimensional surface that tempts decoration, Tamal Bhattacharya, Monoj Kumar Das, and Dipankar Karmakar, leaned more towards ceramic sculpture, drawing on folk and tribal craft practices to develop figurative and animal motifs in relief and in the round. For others, the simple philosophy that has governed the unbroken tradition of the potter's craft in India since time immemorial - the pot as a receptacle of life itself - provided the inspiration. While Partha Dasgupta's vessels echoed the divine union of genders in Hindu philosophy, Anupama Jalan's receptacles were celebrations of erotic rituals. Pallab Das and Tonmoy Das conceived the pot as a burgeoning womb. And finally, there were the minimalist, elemental vessels of Prasun Ghosh and Debajit Chakraborty, who seemed to have arrived at the point where the making of a pot became a meditative act that was neither art, craft, nor design orientated.

Evidently, ArtSpace is interested in engaging with and providing a platform for emerging art practices - while ceramic art remains an area of enduring interest, in October, ArtSpace successfully put up twenty-four international and Indian artists participating at the Khoj International Artists Workshop, Kolkata.

PAULA SENGUPTA

GLASS PLATE DRESSING

Kim Kyoungae. Moderato. Glass platter.20". 2006.

THE SPACE ARTISTS STUDIO IN BARODA Organized a week-long glass workshop with ten resident and twelve non-resident artists. The purpose of the workshop (co-sponsored by Alembic Glass) was to introduce glass as an alternate medium for painting.

For most artists in the workshop, with the only exception of Anuj Poddar perhaps, glass was a completely new medium. They painted on 20 and 30-inch glass platters, which were then baked in the Alembic factory furnaces for colour fusion and such-like results. Most of the artists (not fully aware of the vagaries of the technical process leading to variations in colour) were disappointed with the results when the platters came back after the initial firing. As the workshop progressed, discussions with fellow-artists and technical persons reduced these problems substantially.

Kim Kyoungae re-worked her platters half a dozen times till they met her exacting standards. Poddar, Sudip Dutta, and Raju Patel, went with the time-tested sand-blasting method while Prabhakar Alok, Ajay Sharma, and Heeral Trivedi experimented with decal stickers used on household glassware. The more 'experienced' painters such as Nikhileshwar Baruah, Arunanshu Chowdhury, Debraj Goswami, Farhad Hussain, K. P. Reji, Rajib Chowdhury, Alok Bal, Sajal S. Sarkar, printmaker Kodanda Rao, and ceramist, Vinod Daroz, tried their hands at reverse painting directly on the platter. Then there were artists like Ajay Lakhera, Uday Mondal, Sudarshan Biswal, Sharmi Chowdhury, and Nirmala Prabhakar, who made the canvas-to-glass transition quite effortlessly and began their work right away on the large 30-inch platters. An exhibition of the works created during the workshop was later held at the Space Artists Studio.

SANDHYA BORDEWEKAR