The all-women exhibition of over twelve women artists at Gallery Blue Spade reflects many contemporary shades.
Suchismita Sahoo's “Irresistible Lure” with parakeets hovering near a table with red chairs that has apples wrapped in plastic and “Wants to Make a Home” with a pair of eagles on a tree branch with a paraphernalia of junk seem like commentaries on environment and the space of being.
Dimple Shah's works on objects in a plain black canvas seem to be slightly surreal and quirky. The black canvas ensures that the viewer gets the full effect of the objects in the painting. “Dream Machine” depicts a sort of weighing scale on strings connected to the mouth of a balloon with a ship inside while “Ooz Sound” has a frog sitting on the weighing scale connected to a trumpet through strings.
A series of drawings of a pair of different objects — a bed, a shoe rack, a chair, a window with a curtain, and a cupboard — one in disarray and one tidied up in a sort of “Before and After” way draws attention to the act of tidying up. These drawings by Sonal Joshi, titled “Drawings for my mother” bring in whiff of the homeliness of home that a mother is instrumental in creating.
“Without Bound”, a flowing flower without a shape and “Handkerchief in the sea” reinforce the contemporary feel of the exhibition through their exploration of “space”.
“In ‘Without Bound', I was trying to explore what it would be like if an object had no outline, just like the sea has no shape without land. In the other painting, I have tried to depict the handkerchief with the holes of a drain absorbing everything. The drops in the painting are my teardrops.
Through my works, I was reflecting on the idea of boundaries and how a nation is bound when land is divided and how universal growth has no boundaries, like how a seed grows into a tree,” says artist Minal Damani.
The pair of paintings on tempera silk, “On Synthetic Crusts”, by Sharmi Chowdhury have a dream-like quality about them with a construction site and objects flowing out and around. There is one woman in each of the paintings who is connected to these objects. Ritu Kamath's patterned acrylic work puzzle the viewer almost like an optical illusion while Mousumi Biswas's “Double Enders” evoke a sense of imprisonment and its conflict. The same sense of imprisonment is reflected in Priti Vadakkath's black and white watercolour works. In “Chance is a message”, three children are sitting down with some coloured marbles in front of them as hazy adults occupy the background. The hazy faces of adults also appear in her other untitled painting of a girl surrounded by dragonflies.
“My work revolves around the relationship between children and their parents and how this dynamic affects children. I feel that the children who are free-spirited are always reined in by their parents. These thoughts struck me when I became a parent and felt that I see my own childhood reflected in my child,” says Priti.
The exhibition is on at Gallery Blue Spade at The Chancery on Lavelle Road until October 15. Call 22221696.
