Route Map of Experience, Jayshree Chakravarty
11th – 20th September 2003

In her Route Map of Experience, Jayshree Chakravarty takes us through a journey in time. Her expansive canvas with large areas of serene white with sudden flashes of brilliant colour, on which are juxtaposed minute details that make her maps, guiding the viewers as they travel down this memory lane.

The various motifs and symbols in her works form an indispensable part of this interesting process of mapmaking for Jayshree, as each one of them holds a special symbolical meaning for her. Recalling and re-encountering visual experiences is an integral part of her strategy as an artist. She has a complex style that conceals as much as it reveals.

Commendation for Best Show - Painting

Paintings and Drawings, Viswanadhan
1st – 7th December 2003

Gallery Espace presented a collection of paintings and drawings by the eminent Indian artist Viswanadhan at the Visual Arts Gallery, curated by Madhu Jain. Viswanadhan’s mode of expression varied from abstract paintings to film to ink drawings on paper, where it ultimately became about his skill in using colour and light as a means to recognize the universe that surrounds us. His paintings reflect strength and spirituality and have an indefinable, mysterious quality that goes beyond nationality. His technique of using casein as a medium for the natural pigments, and the paint superimposed in thin layers lends an interior light to his works.

Khadi - New Works on Cloth and Paper, David Schorr
21st – 30th January 2003

That American artist David Schorr shares a fluency with India is perfectly illustrated in his exhibition, Khadi - New Works on Cloth and Paper held at the Visual Arts Gallery in January. He redefines the concept of canvas by using khadi as its alternative in his works, a material that every Indian but few others know well. This homespun Indian cloth immediately associated with Gandhi and the movement for self-rule in India becomes the unconventional base for all of David Schorr’s works. The artist became familiar with the textile when a teaching assignment at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad in 1996 gave him the opportunity to discover a passion for cloth and drapery. Thus began an obsession not only with the tactile quality of the cloth, but also with its vibrant colours, design elements and the geometric patterns. Followed by a natural interest in the way this cloth is the basic garment for people of both sexes, especially among the lower strata of society, the many ways in which it is tied and the way people go about their daily lives wearing it as second skin made him examine the drapery in keener light, such that the fabric became his muse. Often, he began by stretching the fabric across a strainer and then taking elements from the cloth David creates a body of work that readdressed the way drapery is viewed as art.

Best Sculpture / Installation Show

Sudarshan Shetty
16th – 22nd December 2003

Upon entering the Visual Arts Gallery, the viewer was struck by the eerie light, sounds and expressions of those already there. Sudarshan Shetty’s exhibit, curated by Peter Nagy of Nature Morte Gallery, was filled with experimental, post-modern sculpture that took Delhi gallery goers by storm. Shetty usually exhibits his controversial sculpture in Delhi and Mumbai finding his best audience reaction in these two metropolises. However, many of them, even the regular gallery-goers, sought an explanation for Shetty’s seemingly morbid artworks that form a perfect example of contemporary Indian post-modern art, with clean lines and an accompanying starkness juxtaposed with a complexity and subtlety in meaning; accompanied by an underlying humour, an irony of postmodernism, that shone through to those who knew where to look.

Commendation - Best Sculpture / Installation Show

The Sleep of Reason, Anita Dube
3rd – 14th March 2003

Nature Morte presented The Sleep of Reason at the Visual Arts Gallery. The exhibition consisted of new works by the Delhi based artist, Anita Dube. The main attraction of the show was her installation titled, 'His Master's Voice', a piece that had been originally created for the Yokohoma Triennale, 2001 in Japan. The piece was an assemblage of furniture from the colonial era that had been covered in a thick layer of dust. However, the furniture had been stripped to its very basic leaving only the skeletal frameworks of many of the components, giving the installation a very fragile feeling. Other works on show included photographic images made by the artist for Oslo during a residency last year, a video installation and other multi-media sculptures.

Sculpted Images, Madan Lal and Rajendar Tiku
1st-7th December 2003

Gallery Espace presented an installation of sculptures by Madan Lal and Rajendar Tiku in the Open Palm Court Gallery. Fascinated by the images ‘created’ by water and their meaning and substance in our rituals, lifestyles and in Indian thought and philosophy, both the artists’ works reflected a large amount of synchronisation. Madan Lal’s works highlight the ‘growth’ of nature as suggested by flowers and vegetation and the life-giving source of water thereby eliciting a whole range of emotions, memories and processes of perceptions. The sensuous and subtle approach to the hues and textures as expressed in the works of Rajender Tiku, are a visual treat for the eyes and give us enough space for our own interpretation.

Commendation – Photography Show

French Urbanscapes, Atul Sharma
11th – 18th November 2003

In India one takes colour for granted: the pinks and greens of women's saris, the vibrant orange of fruit, the reds and yellows of a rangoli. Atul Sharma’s photographs of France remind us of this, the need for colour in the black and white of life. His images focus on the bits of colour that are scattered throughout the French urbanscapes. Colour pierces his images: a red and white umbrella on an other wise black street, a sunset contrasted with the depth of soft black shadows, a bit of street art backed by a wet, grey concrete wall. These slices of colour stand out against the mundane, the ordinary and the common place. Where colour is the norm in India, it is the extra-ordinary, the atypical in France. This persistence of attention that Sharma displays in his images is subtle and underlying, but permeates the exhibit. Perhaps his recognition of the relationship between people and their surroundings will provoke us to be more aware of what surrounds us.

Curatorial Excellence

Tiranga - Rights and Responsibilities
15th – 19th August 2003

The Jindal Foundation of Performing and Creative Arts brought forth Tiranga - Rights and Responsibilities to showcase the Indian flag. Showcasing works by artists Pablo Bartholomew, Subodh Gupta, Samar Jodha, Jitish Kallat, Reena Saini Kallat, Bharti Kher, Surendran Nair, Shibu Natesan, Sudhir Patwardhan, Manisha Parekh, Ram Rahman, Raghu Rai, Gargi Raina, Rekha Rodwittiya, Nataraj Sharma, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, Nilima Sheikh, Dayanita Singh and Vivan Sundaram, as each of them explored the citizen’s right to display the flag through diverse styles and media. The exhibition delved into the symbolism of the national flag and expressed pride to be Indian. It communicated the feelings of the artists for the national flag, the freedom as well as the responsibility that comes with its display and the expressions of what it means to be an Indian.

Commendation - Curatorial Excellence

Performative Textures
4th – 10th September 2003

Performative Textures curated by Dr. Alka Pande and presented by Apparao Galleries - focused on presenting works by artists using texture as a language in the dialogue between the painting and the viewer. The exhibition showcased works by Carolyn Fitzpatrick, Farhan Mujib, Gopika Nath, Bose Krishnamachari, Kanchan Chander, Naresh Kapuria, K. Muralidharan, Rajnish Kaur, Ravikumar Kashi, Sandeep Paradkar, Shantha Mani, Smriti Dixit, Sujata Bajaj, Suhasani Kejriwal, Surendra Pal Joshi and Stephen Cox. Throughout the ages texture has been employed in art as a medium to express emotion, to create layering and achieve a high point in abstraction. The works in the show have expressed a fascination with texture and its role in the art practise.

Habitat Commendation Award

Kiripuraniji, Tiwi Art
26th June – 11th July 2003

Kiripuraniji, an exhibition of Australian Aboriginal Art of the Tiwi people was presented by the Australian High commission and curated in New Delhi by Caroline Fitzpatrick. The exhibition was a part of a program to celebrate the culture of Australia's indigenous people and included walk-around tours of the exhibition, an insightful lecture on ‘Continuing the Dreaming: Permanence and change in the Australian Aboriginal Art’, performances of Aboriginal didgeridoo music and a workshop in didgeridoo performance and making. 'Kiripuraniji', a Tiwi word that means to "cleaver with our hands" was brought to India for the first time in the form of canvases, works on paper, ceremonial spears, bark baskets and vibrant textiles of the Tiwi. A tradition of Tiwi art is to create original designs from abstract patterns, influenced heavily by ceremonies of life and death. All the artists possessed an individual style, even as some adhered closely to tradition, some used western art tools and yet others created an entirely new language.

The Scenographer’s Art, Nissar Allana
18th –31st October 2003

The Scenographer’s Art, an exhibition of the Czech Scenography and theatre stage design. This exhibition showcased the works of avant-garde designers and scenic painters of the 20th century. It takes us back in time into the theatre world of the yesteryears, to the highly stylised and dynamic sets that drew inspiration from the French art of Cubism to the Expressionism of the German art. A synthesis of various visual art cultures in the replication of reality by the scenographer, a freezing of a moment in time and recreating it in another, is what makes this art unique.

Habitat Jury Award

Abu Abraham
1st – 9th October 2003

As a tribute to the revered cartoonist Abu Abraham an impressive retrospective of his drawings opened at the Palm Court Gallery. At a time when the art of cartooning is finding itself at the crossroads, the show has a special significance. The solo show included about 150 of Abu's best drawings, from his days in England to his final cartoons in India. It also showcased his travel sketches and caricatures, moments captured by the cartoonist in his atypical style that brought back to life the golden age of political cartooning. The exhibition traces the artist's journey from his nationalist days to the unsurpassed phase of his career as the political cartoonist in Britain for The Guardian and The Observer. His bold, crisp lines continue to penetrate minds of the viewers in every generation, even as his cartoons continue their reflection of the world.

Crossroads: Traditional Wisdom and Modern Technology, Raj Rewal
23rd December 2003 – 2nd January 2004

The Visual Arts Gallery hosted a retrospective of architect Raj Rewal’s work from the past four decades, works that combined the beauty and wisdom of traditional Indian knowledge with the modern technologies, materials and sensibilities. And we see the striking synthesis in the flow of indoor and outdoor spaces, in the geometry of the visual facades. Rewal’s buildings display a personal, a subtle and modern translation of the traditional Indian concept of rasa. The self-curated exhibit contained delicate and detailed models of some of Rewal’s most successful buildings and structures. Broken up according to the phases of his life and artistic styles, it included didactic panels that explained the particulars of the modelled buildings along with Rewal’s general philosophy on his work and architecture.