Three hours south of Chennai, a township of international origins has been honing itself for 50 years now. Chief among its people are artistes of every hue. From ceramicists, to painters, printers, sculptors and craftsmen, Auroville has nurtured a wide variety of traditional and experimental creators. As part of the month-long ‘What is Auroville?’ festival in Chennai, dozens of artistes showcase their work in solo or group exhibitions at galleries across the city. Esther Elias speaks to an artist each from eight participating galleries for a cross-sectional taste of Aurovillian art.
Bark to Life
Birgitta Volz
Birgitta Volz’s art takes you into the “magical kingdom of bark beings”. On the barks of trees, she sees a million, myriad microscopic creatures cramped together in the natural carvings of the wood, and her ‘bark prints’ bring these to life. It’s an art she first honed on wood cuts from 1982 in Germany, and continued on live trees from 2004 in Auroville. Each bark print takes her over a month, just to stabilise the bark, add shades of ‘ecological oil pigments’ or charcoal onto the tree and make their print onto paper. “I work alone in Auroville’s forests for hours together, and the tree that I’ve used to print from most is the madhuca longifolia,” says Birgitta. At Lalit Kala Akademi, Birgitta showcases work from the past year, her most recent piece completed just last week. They include nine pieces on the longifolia, and lengthy white banner bark prints as well.
On as part of a group show at Lalit Kala Akademi till March 20.
Texture and colour
Adil Writer
Architect Adil Writer found his way to Auroville in 1998 for a break to study ceramics at Golden Bridge Pottery, intending to stay merely the seven months of the course. That stretched to a year, another year, and soon he settled down in Auroville to make a life as a ceramic artiste, creating both functional pottery as partner at Mandala Pottery, known for its “colourful, happy glazing”, as well as sculpt clay for the gallery. At Dakshinachitra though, it is Adil, the lesser-known painter, on display. “I’ve been painting since I was three. With ceramics, you surrender what you make to the fire, and you get what it gives you; with painting, you get to make your art exact in its textures and colours - what you see is what you get.” Adil’s largest work at Dakshinachitra is one among the ‘Barcode’ series - eight feet high, and 12 meters long - canvasses wrapped around wooden frames to make a gigantic barcode - his comment on consumerism. The work seems cast in clay until you come up close, and touch its grainy surface, brown with the ball clay, china clay, sand and grog that Adil mixes into his paint, the ceramicist in him blending into his painter side.
On as part of a duo show at Dakshinachitra till March 21.
Power of paper
Auroville papers
There’s nothing Luisa Meneghetti can’t make out of paper. From unicorns to lampshades, bowls and jewellery, the paper mache design studio she set up in 1996, Auroville Papers, experiments with everything. At Focus Art Gallery, Papers exhibits over 15 pieces that reflect the vast possibilities of paper. A piece called ‘Black Forest’, for instance, is made of hand-printed and dyed paper and banana stems; while their large amphora jars mix paper and carton mache with sand. “The way we lay our paper sheets, is a bit like weaving cloth; we can weave in all sorts of fibres, from flowers to leaves, to create different textures.” All their works tell of the beauty of Nature. And that’s an aesthetic that stems from working out of Auroville, says Luisa. She first founded Papers as a press with a friend, expanded to a publishing house, a bookshop and now a design studio with 10 artistes, mostly Italian or French, alongside workers from the villagers nearby. “The Auroville Project is my raison d’etre. It’s a state of mind that very different, that frees one to create as a part of one’s being.”
On at Focus Art Gallery from March 19 - 31.
Pottering about
Priya Sundaravalli
“I was always meant to be a ceramicist,” says Priya, “It is only here that I lose a sense of time.” With a degree in medicine from India and two American degrees in advanced engineering, Priya discovered ceramics while doing her doctoral studies in the States. She learnt a technique of hand-building ceramic art from her Native American guru, which involves an abundance of hand-done “pinching work”, rather than moulding at a potter’s wheel. “My work today, has little to do with the scientific; it is about the poetry of things that move me.” At Apparao, Priya displays over 30 pieces, alongside a handful of installations as well. In her platters and bowls, is that delicate touch of petals, leaves and flowers; Nature appears again in the recurrent patterns of sea-kissed sand, and as coral-shaped ceramics. From the seasonal changes in Auroville’s forests, Priya takes motifs of falling flowers, open seed pods and landscapes; and from her love for the ocean just beside, she draws an abundance of sea life. Aurovile, Priya says, is the source of all her inspiration, “It is a place of freedom, optimism and hope for life itself.”
On as part of a group show at Apparao Galleries till March 22.
The world through a dewdrop
Claudine Vignes (artistic name Lalie Sorbet)
It’s the littlest things that have changed Claudine’s life. And she finds them through the lens of her camera, hidden in the nooks and crevices of Auroville’s forest. In the township from 2000, this French photographer says it is in her macrophotography that she finds life’s purpose. Claudine’s photographs at Sarala’s Art Centre are part of a series she clicked featuring creatures caught in dewdrops, over the last two years. “I wanted to focus on water, and the need to preserve this now-polluted resource,” she says. Dewdrops in Auroville are found only in the three winter months, so at seven every morning then, Claudine would be out in the forests capturing the world as seen through a dew drop. “I find it so inspiring, spiritual almost, to see what we don’t see with our bare eyes. In the refraction and reflection of light through a dewdrop, is a beautiful, marvelous world.”
On as part of a group show at Sarala’s Art Centre till March 14.
Clay craft
Angad Vohra
In the 40 years that Angad Vohra has made for name for himself as a potter of functional ware in Auroville, rarely has his sculptural work been on display. At Inko Cultural Centre, there’s just one platter of his work, ‘Dragonflies on Lotus’, but the story of its origin dates a while back - to the 90s when Angad grew fascinated by a family of glazes called celadons. Widely used in China, Korea and Japan, celadons have a remarkable property of colour variation: “while generally transparent, they can vary from pale blue, to jade to olive green, with the colour darkening by thickness. If you carve the clay while it is leather hard, and glaze it then, you yield a greenish tint that gives you the effect of water colours.” It is to this technique that Angad has returned to most often in his art. On the reverse of the platter, you will find engraved a set of initials - “R.G.” - which stand for R. Gopalakrishnan, a worker at Angad’s Mantra Pottery, who has been with him for 30 years and is the man who fires his pieces. “That’s a tradition I’ve maintained as part of Auroville’s culture of harmonising with our surroundings; it is part of giving the unknown craftsman credit for his work.”
On as part of a group show at Inko Cultural Centre till March 27. PLEASE CREDIT THE PHOTO TO Marco Soroldi.
Wax wonders
Paul Pinthon
It’s an exhibition made of 30 years of waste. From the inception of Maroma, an enterprise of perfumes, in particular aromatic candles, Paul Pinthon had noticed buckets of refuse wax piling in his studio. “With every candle made, there’s always a little overflow remaining,” says Paul, an Algerian pharmacist who migrated to Auroville in 1974. Three years ago, Paul began repurposing these leftovers into candle-wax sculptures, ranging from tiny cylindrical ones to those a meter high, or cubical ones almost 30 kilograms heavy. Since the leftover wax came in a myriad of colours and an assortment of perfumes, their combination leads to an all new texture and aroma that Paul terms “mille fleurs”, the smell of a thousand flowers. In this new line, Paul is also inspired by the idea of industry, refineries and the rejection of leftover parts there too. Thus these pieces combine wax with recycled nuts, bolts and parts of metal to symbolise a rebirth of refuse. At once a work of art, yet functional as candles, these sculptures “burn to bring light”.
On at Gallery Veda , Taramani, from March 15 - 28.
Sculpted beauty
Kratu
Italian artist Kratu has painted women from the mid-60s. In the 80s, in Auroville, he shifted to stoneware sculpture, but continued to create women in all shapes and sizes, except now, influenced often by the philosophy of the Mother at the Ashram. “I’m fascinated by the movement of womens’ bodies,” says Kratu, “When I touch the ceramic, I can feel a kind of form in my mind, which shapes itself into the sculpture.” Kratu’s solo show at Studio Palazzo features over 20 pieces, both three-dimensional sculptures as well as panel reliefs, all of which have the common theme of peace, beauty and love, he says. His works sport glaze rarely, and the occasional splash of colour is from his painting days, but for the most part, they are fired in a firewood stove, lending them a dark, burnt, bronze-like touch. Among these pieces is a series titled ‘Birth of Venus’ inspired by the Greek myth that Kratu began sculpting from a few years ago. Different images of Venus’s body lie side-by-side; in the first with eyes shut, later gradually open and finally, fully open. “These represent, to me, the process of consciousness entering matter,” says Kratu.
On show at Studio Palazzo till March 16.
