It appears that installation art, where artistes arrange things in their own way to communicate their ideas innovatively, is catching on in Mangaluru.
Prasad Art Gallery showcased the first show a week ago and on Saturday Urwa Church Hall near Ladyhill showcased some of the work.
Though the installations seemed to be lacking the standards, which some Mumbai artistes – including Sudarshan Shetty of Mangaluru-origin – have raised it to, the good news is that the city has begun to think beyond the paint-brush-canvas.
Two installations greet you at the entrance of the hall. The Swachh Bharat installation, by Renuka and Asha Shetty and others, show two tall figures – broom-wielding men made of dry leaves – busy cleaning up a mess, the other showcases hundreds of palettes arranged by Jayashri Rai and others to form an inverted cone with a large half-used paint tube on the top.
Inside, a giant cobweb attracts attention. There you have the installation called SOS (save our soul) by Thilak Attavar – showing how man’s greed has been damaging environment and how posterity may have to fight wars for water. Rajendra Kedige’s installation on the Nethravati suggests that it would dry up because of its diversion for the benefit of parched district.
By placing one boulder from the river on a raised platform and several other smaller stones around, it suggested that the stones preserved from the rivers would be a prized possession later.
Other installations include The Faith by Sharath Haolla, The Key to Success by Kotiprasad Alva, Hyper by Jeevan Salian nd an unnamed installation by Reshma S. Shetty.
Paintings by artists, including Ganesh Somayaji, Permude Mohan Kumar, M.P. Rao, Veena Srinivas, Syed Asif Ali, were also on display.
They range from line drawings of Mother Theresa, by Sapna Naronha, to an unnamed large painting by Santosh Andrade, which showed a boy, in an elegantly sketched rural surroundings, wheeling away a bicycle tyre as an aged woman stands looking on.
The mood of evening is unmistakable.
