May - June, 2011



Apparao Galleries, Chennai
Depths of Field: Glass Sculpture and Installations by Anjali Srinivasan
April 4 to May 30, 2011
Anjali Srinivasan is known to be a Glass Artist. Having been educated and worked a large span of her life in United States, her works are a perfect blend of Indian and American style of Art. At the same time, her works are quite unconventional to India. She has brought new ideas and creative angles to a medium often relegated to unsung craftsmen or industrialised factories. Being a difficult medium, it requires technical competence in addition to creative meanderings.

Her concepts of work are somehow interesting. She has already used her favourite medium Indian glass to exhibit extensively in several countries. This show is her first debut venture in India.





Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi
Something I've been meaning to tell you: A Group show curated by Sunil Gupta and Vidya Shivadas
April 15 to May 20, 2011
What's becoming increasingly apparent from the history of Indian photography is the preoccupation with the family portrait. The considerable formalities of the studio portrait have given way to the snapshot and the more intimate subject matter of art making. As the extended family is under stress, pressure is increasing to divulge its secrets. The multiplicity of relationships that individuals have, are often managed by a cloak of secrecy about real and/or imaginary feelings about siblings, parents, children and others. How and what to reveal seems to be one of our paramount contemporary concerns. Meanwhile society itself is changing; now more accepting of a range of a family structures from one individual alone to same-sex families. The title of the exhibition comes from Alice Munro, a Canadian writer of short stories that extensively explore this sensitive and difficult terrain.

Anusha Yadav's online 'Indian Memory Project' where people are asked to upload a photo and relate the story of the relative takes the personal archive into a contested public space. Clare Arni's extended portrait of the Belgian woman ascetic Meera as she emerges from her thirty year spiritual retreat spent in a cave in Hampi.  Gauri Gill's extraordinarily evocative witness of the short life of Jannat from rural Rajasthan- not a sociological study nor a memorial. Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi's record of his father battling brain cancer, in the words of the writer-photographer, 'have me thinking about not only my father's end but also my own and how I will meet it.'

Sarindar Dhaliwal's video piece, 'Olive, Almond and Mustard' a diaspora artist's reflection on the Punjabi village of her birth, the memory of her mother's tales and the nursery rhymes of her adopted homelands. Priya Sen's video project 'Antecedent Garden', takes her through a continuous museum of places and childhoods - both simultaneously becoming signifiers of the future, as well as a constantly changing past. Nandini Valli Muthiah's series, 'Remembering to Forget' where children enact, in fancy dress, roles chosen by their parents - a performance that for many will remain with them through their adult years. And finally Sunil Gupta's ongoing project, 'Country', investigating the traces of his father's family in rural Uttar Pradesh and its three hundred year trajectory into the modern world.





Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai
Morning At The Window: A group show
April 19 to May 14, 2011
Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke's upcoming exhibition, explores the multi-dimensionality of the urban space. The show, which is titled after TS Eliot's homage to the idea of the city, features a diverse array of work by Prasanta Bandyopadhyay, Sheetal Gattani, Rajesh Kargutkar, and Buddhadev Mukherjee. Through the work of Gattani and Kargutkar, Morning at the Window explores both the boxy and cramped physical spaces that are uniquely inherent to urban space. Though very different in style and technique, Prasanta Bandyopadhyay and Buddhadev Mukherjee's paintings each address the multiple levels of social versatility, chaos, complexity, and speed that one finds only in the urban landscape. On a larger scale the range of conceptual elements, media, and style in this show are all metaphorically indicative of the unbridled heterogeneity that one finds in the urban space.





Seven Art Limited Gallery
Venue: Lalit Kala Akademy, New Delhi
“Tolstoy Farm  Archive of Utopia” curated by Gayatri Sinha
April 27 to May 19, 2011
In the 1890s when Gandhi was thrown off the train at Pietermaritzburg, South Africa an extraordinary chain of events was set in motion. Hermann Kallenbach, a South African architect friend donated a piece of land where Gandhi in 1910 conceived of the idea of a shared utopia. Tolstoy Farm as this experiment in community living was called inspired Sabarmati ashram on his return to India.  Gandhi's influence on Martin Luther King and the American Civil Rights movement also spiraled into the freedom movements of Africa. Nelson Mandela has written eloquently of the inspiration of Tolstoy Farm on the South African freedom movement.

In the wake of the Egypt uprising, of 2011 El Baradei spoke of Gandhi as a driving inspiration.  

A hundred years after the inception of Tolstoy Farm, the idea of utopia may not have a leader or a location. It may, as Sunil Khilnani writes, be organized by Al Jazeera and CNN, fuelled by Facebook and Twitter revolutions. Equally, it is challenged by its full and absolute opposite, dystopia.

Today Tolstoy Farm outside Johannesburg stands as a disused site, on land owned by a brick company.

List of participating Artists include eminent personalities like Arpita Singh, Bharti Kher, Gigi Scaria, KP Reji, Manjunath Kamath, Ranbir Kaleka, Riyas Komu, Vivek Vilasini et al. The exhibition will be inaugrated by Union Minister of Culture Smt. Kumari Selja.





Aakriti Art Gallery, Kolkata
Tales from Tagore: A group show
May 9 to May 31, 2011
The exhibition titled, Tales from Tagore is a tribute to the eminent poet, writer and artist Rabindranath Tagore. To celebrate his 150th birth anniversary the exhibition will open its door on May 9, which is the birthday of Rabindranath Tagore. Concept of the show is somehow offbeat. Each and every artworks present in this exhibition are based on any of the writer's short stories. Those stories include Khudhito Pashan, Sompotti Samorpon, Tota Kahini etc. Each participating Artist have interpreted the story in his own sense of creativity which makes the exhibition even more interesting.This exhibition will feature well known artists like Aditya Basak, Abhijit Gupta, Chandra Bhattacharya, Chhatrapati Dutta, Sekhar Roy, Rajesh Deb, Probir Gupta. Sourav Jana.




Prague Biennale 5, Czech Republic
Crossroads: India escalate
Curated by Kanchi Mehta
May 19 to September 11, 2011      
The title of the exhibition is Crossroads: India escalate. A crossroads is "An intersection of two roads, a place where ideas, both physical and abstract converge or diverge." This juncture is a threshold for anyone to make the decisions that lead to transformation, aware of what is left behind and what is to come.

The main underlying theme of the exhibition is to expose the fact that the shift in contemporary art and culture practices in India in the last few years is the sheer evidence of the changing mindset of the country and have become a paradigm for the standing of Indian art internationally. India has been undergoing a global metamorphosis, and has stirred all areas including economy, culture, business and education. This significant change reflects the escalating nature of the nation and the way it is perceived by the rest of the world. Artists have been boldly inspired by this very transformation. The have been listening, questioning and observing this phenomenon and have developed an aesthetic through which they are documenting it.

Lists of the participating Artists include some eminent personalities like TV Santosh, Riyas Komu, Sudarshan Shetty, Ranbir Kaleka, Gigi Scaria et al.