BANGALORE: An artist always seems to be alienated from his audience since the only place where people can access art are the public galleries. In an effort to make art more accessible, Chitrakala Parishath (CKP) alumnus Suresh Kumar has initiated a programme starting this Saturday.
The art project called Per-Fumes will be launched at BAR1 (Bengaluru Arts Residency One), Mission Road, on Saturday, March 10. There is no selection criteria to participate in this project and everybody is welcome.
When we asked Suresh about his latest project, he said,“ We will let artists, dancers, curators, video artists, painters, poets, singers and people from the field of art and theatre to shoot anything relating to their work for 15 minutes, make a 2-minute profile of themselves and compile it in a DVD. They can either edit the footage themselves or they can take the assistance of our professionals to edit it for them. We will screen eight artists in a month and send these DVDs to art schools around the country so that students can learn beyond what they are already being taught. We will start the first screening on April 7 starting with two artists every week.”
People not participating in the project, who have their personal documentaries and short films to edit, too can make use of this free editing studio space. He added, “People below 30 can use the studio free of cost and the ones above 30 will be charged a very nominal fee. Movies made for commercial purposes won’t be entertained.”
Suresh, who started out as a sculptor, is currently involved with perfomative arts and is a guest faculty at CKP. He is looking for contributions from funding agencies to bear the expenses for the studio and is always looking to do projects which is Bangalore-specific.
The idea behind this initiative is to give free space to all kinds of artists through community art projects that aims to create installations in public spaces and involve general public in the entire process. Earlier, he had initiated a project called Samuha, in 2009 which ran for 414 days. The project facilitated art space by encouraging contemporary artists to exhibit their work and interact with the locals.
Suresh said, “Art spaces are very expensive where you end up spending upto Rs 4,000 for a single day to showcase your work in an art gallery. But in Samuha, the artists had to pay just Rs 24,000 for an entire year where they got a chance to exhibit their work for 17 days at a space we identified on J C Road.”