BENGALURU: Montage, a screening of contemporary videos by different artists is being conducted at Art Houz till Feb 24. Jayanthi Shegar, administrative manager of the gallery, claims that this is the first time in Bengaluru that a gallery is hosting a video screening. City Express catches up with the artists and speaks to them about their work. Excerpts:
The life of modern Indian family
Pushpamala N has been collecting recipes from her mother’s and mother-in-law’s books and always wanted to make some art out of it. She found some of the notes from the books to be funny. There were two 1950’s Independence Day recipes based on the colours of the Indian flag called Rashtriy Kheer and Desiy Salad. She hence, decided to name her film after these recipes. Pushpamala, who is known as the most entertaining artist-iconoclast of contemporary Indian art, tries to portray a playful and ironic look at the modern Indian family soon after independence. “The family was nuclear, especially that of an army officer. They keep moving to different places. They, even then, led a cosmopolitan life,” she says.
The film uses excerpts from the 1950s and 1960s recipe note books of the artist’s mother and mother-in-law, to create a montage of text, visuals and music between the military notes of the father, a Lt. Colonel in the army, the recipes and domestic notes of the heavily pregnant mother and the school boy son’s
homework, all found on the pages of these family scrap books.
The set is of an imaginary classroom. She says, “It is the classroom of the nation, where each character comes up in time to their own particular music and writes on a blackboard. The army official comes and goes out of the frame from the left side. The pregant mother through right and the son is seen running, writing and then going away, like an anarchic. The video begins and ends with the national anthem.”
Investigating the relation between fiction and reality
Ashok Vish feels in a country like India, opportunity is scarce and only accessible to the lucky ones. He tries to explore this idea through his video Detrimental where he shows children trying to climb stairs using an elevator that is moving in the opposite direction. He says, “I wanted to do work with children and show inequality. In the video, I juxtapose various shots one child with another walking up the escalator that is actually to be used to get downstairs. I thought it could be a metaphor to look at what’s possible and not possible in life.”
His interest lies in exploring the relations between human emotions and public and personal interests through photography, films and videos. Ashok’s other work Every Season is Fall depicts the bamboo grove in the city of Bengaluru, juxtaposed with concrete development along with the bamboo leaves rhythmically descending and piling-up through out the process.
Rapid change of public and private spaces are highlighted through the individuals sweeping the place. Shot in Cubbon Park, the practice sweeping the bamboo leaves tries to convey the need for change and acceptance in urban spaces. “My work has always been research based practice. Making videos to tell constructive narrative takes lot of planning and research. I had to find locations and children to shoot the video. It took about two to three months to shoot them,” he says.
Documenting environmental art
Bhavani GS has always been fascinated with forest and Nature. She travels to forests, especially in Western Ghats, for her environmental art. She says, “I usually do not know what I will be working on until I reach the spot. I look for some natural materials such as dry leaves and pebbles and work with them.” She then documents them as it is difficult to carry the installation back to the city to display in galleries. She is showcasing three of her videos Knot, Sitna and Cross Over. Knot shows her tying knots with the grass near a small stream. Sitna shows her making a design for something like rangoli with pebbles. She says, “It stays in water due to the fungi on it. The installation will be about 70 feet in length and 30 feet wide.”
Her recent work Cross Over shows her reflection and reflection of the bridge on the river cauvery while she crosses from one side to the other. “I feel intimate. I try to show my relation with river and nature. It shows the both the natural river and man made bridge.” Her medium being painting, she always wanted to explore the video medium. “I did not know how to make a video. I started recording short videos and learning in 2009.”
Human life is not more precious than others’
Using yellow yolk in the hands of the artist, he tries to explore two different bodies, one of a human and the other of a another living being. The idea behind the video is to show how the other being possess the human body giving an idea that both the bodies can co-exist. Murali Cheeroth says the way people looked at bodies as a subject of study as changed. “The new aspect of exploring the body shows how human life is not supreme than other beings. People respect other living beings and their connection with them is genuine,” he adds.
He got the idea for the video while he was sitting alone and he found an insect on his arm. “It kept coming and disturbing me. That’s when I realised how small things in life disturbs us initially but we learn to co-exist with them,” he says. He adds it was difficult to do the video as he had to take the shots about six times to keep the yolk moving without spoiling its shape. Murali studied painting and printmaking.
Stop motion graphics to show changing life
The trained painter and printmaker Venugopal V G got into video art in 2010. As he had also worked with stop motion animation, he started using sequential drawings and developing them to videos. His video Soliloquy deals with the changing facets of human relations and struggle for identity in urban space. It shows different facial expressions through the line drawings of his self portraits. “It shows how I perceive the city and its rapid transformation, being from a rural village. One picture merges with the next one. I clicked my pictures for reference and did sequential drawings of it, scanned them and got a technician to edit the video. It took about three or four months to finish it,” he says.
The other video Around the Platter is a comment by the artists on how the eating habits of people have changed over the years. “Our elderly used to say we shouldn’t do anything else while we are eating, but today, people do multitasking,” he says. This 5-minute video shows the seeds being spreading out and ends by forming into a world map.