He painted one picture every day, for 365 days. One day, it was a pregnant woman; on another, it was a butterfly with jet planes shooting out from its extended wings. Artist Shinod Akkaraparambil has put them together as a collage titled ‘Point Blank 365’. Displayed as part of group art show ‘Scaffold’, the collage is done in shades of brown — the colour of earth. Shinod feels that it is earth that nurtures life. The paintings, often abstract, reflect Shinod’s emotions, observations, and conversations over the day. Figures such as hammers, nails, bows, trees, and elephants emerge from the collage. “I’ve sometimes depicted the taste of what I ate a particular day, such as fish or bananas,” he adds.
Marthandam, the lush, quaint hometown of artist Sujeeth Kumar Sree Kandan, makes its appearance in one way or the other in his works. Even though he left the town to pursue higher education in Chennai, it continues to supply “visual inspiration” to him. In his installation, he has piled cylindrical blocks of wood to form a triangle. The exposed base of each block bears green prints of images associated with reproduction in human beings and germination.
Chopped wooden blocks were a common sight in Marthandam, explains Sujeeth. “There were plenty of rubber plantations where I grew up. The blocks were piled onto huge trucks; the trucks looked ferocious to me with all the wood on top of them.” Sujeeth associates them with birth, as every tree felled was replaced with a new one on the very spot.
In another installation titled ‘Changing Seasons’, Sujeeth attempts to convey the minute changes in various seasons across the year through slices of paper arranged to form a wave pattern on a bed of sand. On one end, he projects video slices of waves caressing the shore.
Artist Vijay Pichumani, also from Marthandam, has captured a slice of greenery in his collage. Cormorants, moor hens, egrets, cuckoos, and pitta abound in his lush world painted in various textured layers of green. The birds have amazing details — perhaps due to the artist’s keen observations during his various jaunts into the wild with Sujeeth.
‘Scaffold’ is a collective of 10 artists form South India. “We’re called so since we are a platform using which artists can climb up,” explains Shinod. The team is doing just that by inviting other artists to talk about their works at the exhibition. “We are also bringing students from various schools to our show,” adds Sujeeth. “This is not just to give children an opportunity to visit an art gallery, but to encourage them to express themselves honestly.” Scaffold is on at Lalit Kala Akademi, Greams Road, till November 30.
