An extravagant oeuvre of graphic art, ranging from paintings to calligraphy, maquettes and comics will be on show at Adishakti on Saturday.
The event, scheduled at 7 p.m., lights up the third lantern of ‘The Krr Krr Graphic Arts Festival’ initiated by Malavika PC, an artist who has set up a studio near Auroville, and features a pop-up exhibition, a performance and a special dinner.
The first was Vanam, an exhibition of 16 paintings at Maiyam Past Food in Kuyilapalayam and the second was Kudai Kaalam - Canopy Season, a collaborative installation of Manushi’s Tamil poetry and Malavika’s typography at the 150-year-old Thumbai House in Edayanchavadi.
Both venues can be visited by appointment till March.
The third part of the exhibition is peppered with representative past work of the artist while exploring graphic art through picture books from The Krr Krr Project, initiated in 2017 as an arts practice grant from the India Foundation for the Arts, Bengaluru.
Under the ‘Krr Krr’ project, Malavika has sought to redefine the idea of children’s book, its standard fairy-tale approach and the canonical understanding of their production where the children’s book is imagined to have a simplistic understanding of their surroundings.
The exhibits from two picture books will showcase paintings, drawings, prints, blocks, accordions, calligraphy, maquettes, collages, posters, comics, photographs, manuscripts, installations, sketch books, studies, stationery, tools, notes, practices, two abstract offset printed picture books and a selection of drawings from previous workshops that have defined the course of the artist’s exploratory journey. The performance of the night is an experiment called ‘The Ringarotus’, a long form drawing demo based on three hand-painted large-scale picture books. It explores the ways in which the eyes are habituated to pause, capture and make meaning, it explores the idea of studying length and abstractions in picture books.
Adishakti has planned the event as a family visit by throwing in a special dinner by Maiyam Past Food, a concept restaurant whose menu is dictated by organic flavours, hand-picked from home-grown soils.
