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Mea Culpa Mea Culpa Mea Maxima Culpa

“But look at the lacunae- there are few good pedagogical institutions and art historians around. There is no forum for honest criticism apart from ART India and a few other magazines, and many critics are happy writing catalogues for ill-conceived and badly mounted shows.” (Abhay Sardesai- editor Art India Magazine) more »

Cover story

War in the East…..Rumours of a War

Shaheen Merali, the internationally acclaimed curator did a project ‘Everywhere is War (And Rumours of War)’ at Bodhi Gallery, Mumbai recently. With new strategies of curating, Shaheen presents a set of artists who deal with the issues of war, migration, dispossession, displacement and loss in the show. JohnyML visits the show and comes out with this cover story. read on »

UP CLOSE & PERSONAL

One who lives real fantasies

Up close and personal’ is a shared diagram locating lives of significant figures in Contemporary Indian Art over the last four decades. The locus of this diagram is drafted through first person accounts, situations, art works, projects, events, texts, issues, people, cultures and geographies thereby trying to articulate an ‘artistic context’ that is simultaneously personal and historical.
Kavita Balakrishnan, here portrays the life and artistic philosophy of the much acclaimed artist Pushpamala N. more»

Manju's Corner

Noted contemporary artist Manjunath Kamath, with his usual humour looks at the happenings in our art scene. He is a master in catching the flipside of a booming contemporary art market.
« Click on the image to zoom

Spring Board

Payal Bhalala

Boat and still life impresses Payal Bhalala, a very young artist from MSU, Baroda. She does experimentation with  transparent layering of colors. The artist wants her viewer to read the forms in her works individually as she believes it has many unconscious forms. more »

Photo Features

The Ethics of Encounter

I Dig, I Look Down

Keep Drawing

RE-VISIT - Rajan M Krishnan

Offbeat

From Poha to Public Art

Artist Shreyas Karle shares the inspiring factors and the working process of his work called ‘O poha khanewale bhaisab jara padhiye…’. This work was done during the Sandarbh Residency’2007 at Partapur. more »

Column

My TV, My Art

From this issue onwards renowned TV journalist, Sahar Zaman will be regularly contributing to Artconcerns in her column called My TV, My Art. Sahar has been reporting on Art on TV for the last seven years. She is sharing her experience of interviewing two big names of Indian Art scene, Subodh Gupta and M. F Husain. And she is also shedding light on the TV and Art relation. more »
Essays

Encountering of Cultures

Gallery Soul Flower, Bangkok recently presented a show of eight artists from India and Thailand. Titled ‘The Ethics of Encounter’, the show is curated by Dr.Pandit Chanrochanakit and Dr.Brian Curtin. Cultural interfaces are a necessity of our times to reiterate identity and difference in affiliation, says JohnyML in this essay. more »

Imagining (Hindu) nation through popular grids of
geopi-ety/ ty

V.Divakar is Bangalore based art writer. Divakar is reading the works of Balaji as reflecting the fragile nature of “geo bodies”. Which according to the writer is ephemeral and shows the tensions involved in maintaining its materiality. Divakar has further carried out the discussion by comparing with the popular cartographic anxiety of the colonial times, how Balaji’s works also deal with such an anxiety to interpret the nation’s map/ nationalism in the contemporary times. more »

Praise Undeserved is Satire in Disguise:
the Irony of Ved Gupta’s art

This essay is catalogue piece written by Diksha Nath for the first solo show of Ved Gupta. A very common, almost defining feature of satire is the strong vein of irony or sarcasm in Ved’s works, but parody, burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre, says the writer more »
Interviews

Indian Art Scene needs Change

Shaheen Merali, internationally well known curator was recently in Mumbai for the opening of a project curated by him at Bodhi, titled ‘Everywhere is War (And Rumours of War). JohnyML catches up with him and speaks to him about his curatorial strategies and views on Indian art scene. Excerpts »

An artist Driven by music

V. Ramesh is an artist with an inclination towards philosophy and Carnatic music. Madhu Jain had a conversation with artist to find out the articulation of emotion and ideas in his works and also about the choice of mediums. more »

A journey to the roots

Allan deSouza's parents were Indian who migrated to Kenya, and lthen to London. and later settles in New York. Allan is having his first solo show ever in India at the Talwar Art Gallery. Akansha Rastogi had a quality conversation before the opening of the show. This is a brief of the conversation. more»

Lalit Kala Akademi in Northeast

The hon. Deputy Secretary of Lalit Kala Akademi, M. Ramachandran, had taken out his precious time to give Rikimi Madhukaillya an interview. He being a representative of the organization Lalit Kala Akademi, had answered Rikimi’s queries on the Art scene of Northeastern part of India. more »

Artistactivist -Ashim Purakayastha

Busy artist Ashim Purakayastha and Artconcerns’ Asst. editor Rikimi Madhukaillya had a longish talk, discussion and had shared their loves, hatred and agonies in the art field. Coming out from the same region (Assam) and same institution (Kalabhavan at Santiniketan) they shared common nostalgias and pains. The piece is a brief of the 5/6 hrs long conversation over miscellaneous thoughts. more »
News
Of Myths and More » »
Bricks and Mortar » »
ALLAN deSOUZA-A Decade of Photoworks- (1998- 2008) » »
Keep Drawing » »
Concepts and Ideas 2008 » »
'Six Degrees of Separation: Chaos, Congruence & Collaboration in South Asia » »
Features

Public Art and our Aesthetic Experience

A day to day experience of seeing bad work of art in public places irritates most of us. But in lack of interest in interfering in these issues or rather we don’t even know what could be done to rectify these faults. Oindrilla Maity with her own style is pointing at some examples of bad work in Kolkata and questions the common aesthetic sense of people more »

Auction Time !

Three big Auction houses, Saffronart, Christie's, Sotheby's are fastening their belts for their upcoming auctions scheduled in September. Anubhav Nath offers this piece for the Artconcerns' reader waiting for the auctions. more »

A process of re-appraisal

Eminent artist Alex Mathew recently had a solo at Bombay Art Gallery. Renu Ramanath looks into the lack of interest in slide shows and discussions in the gallery circuit through Alex’s slide show and panel discussion at the same venue, which was well received by the visitors. ‘Sources of Energy’ is an interesting work consists of portraits of different influential personalities by Alex.  more »

India Art Summit’2008

Delhi had witnessed the first Art fair ever in India from 22nd to 24th August’2008, a most awaited event for the Art lovers and the buyers. Artconcerns’ team visits the Summit and the Forum. The piece is a reflection and opinion on the event. more »
Reviews

Lonely amongst the crowd

Shiva Sanjari is an artist from Tehran and is currently living in India for more than three years.  She is been exhibiting her work internationally. Her drawings were on display at the Jehangir Art Gallery in the first week of August, 2008. Shubhalakshmi Shukla visits the show and wrote this review »

Two Poetic Shows

Kavitha Balakrishnan visits to quite interesting shows at Gallery OED, Kochi, ‘Revisit’ of ‘ORE-substance of earth’, a solo show by Rajan Krishnan and ‘letter from an unknown girl’ by two up coming artists Koumudi Patil and Poorna Rajpal. ‘Revisit’ is a memory of an eventful and immediate past in the life of an artist, whereas ‘letter from an unknown girl’ is a search of two artists to explore the various possibilities of intimate materials, says Kavitha »

Imagined Futures

John Xaviers visits 10 ml of contemporary Indian art show at Travancore House and Filament at Vadehra Art Gallery. Both the shows consist of the new generation artists showing different styles of working in the same space. John, as he said has put both the shows under a microscopic scan and come up with the piece. more »
Book Reviews

Art India - Reviewed by JohnyML »
Other Columns

Delhi Sketchbook – JohnyML »

Mumbai Sketchbook - Abhijit Tamhane »

Kolkata Sketchbook - Oindrila Maity »

Kochi Sketchbook - Renu Ramanath »

Version True - Uma Nair »

Damien Hirst: Social Symbol Or Real Artist?

"Business art is the step that comes after Art," said Warhol the Prophet, and, thirty years later, we know whereof he spoke.
 At best a stew of the restless and the sedate-Damien Hirst's works at the Oberoi’s Ballroom was the stuff of gossip and culture vultures. Damien's debut in Delhi was exciting, specifically because it speaks of no barriers in connectivity in the art world. After Christie's preview last week that was kind of humdrum with the usual Sotheby's decided to up their antennae and bluster a whole host of Englishman on Delhi gentry. more»
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JohnyML + Dilip Narayanan initiative