Home and Away: Gallery Sumukha hosts group exhibition 'The Sky The Sea The City' in Bengaluru

As residents of a bustling metropolis such as Bengaluru, with no sea beaches in close proximity and the sky cut into small cubes by the cityscapes, we hardly find the time or inspiration to romanticise life as did the pastoral poets. But when have such reasons stopped artists from finding beauty in the mundane? As yet another testimony to that, this week, Gallery Sumukha is set to host a group exhibition of photographs, titled The Sky, The Sea, The City. Featuring photographs of Ayisha Abraham, Surekha and Pushpamala N, the photographs reflect pieces of nature trapped in urban landscapes through human narratives and vice-versa. We talk to the artists to find out more about their works at the exhibition. Excerpts:

Ayisha Abraham
My work is titled The Difference Between Then and Now Is Like the Sky and the World Under the Ground. These photographs are narratives in two sets. They may be read as documents or even fiction as they are connected yet very distinct. The first set are stills from a short film One Way (2006). The film looks at a changing city from the perspective of a security guard, Shyam Bahadur, who lives in the basement of an apartment building.  It maps his journey from the mountains of Nepal to Bengaluru and ultimately to the basement of the apartment, where he has found work and also a home.

For the second set, titled The Return, I gave a camera to a relative of Shyam Bahadur, another security guard travelling back to his home in the Bajhang district of Nepal, where they both came from.  This security guard returns eight months later with the rolls of film that contain images of their walk back home in the mountains and the eight months of seasonal change in the village that faces a single mountain range. These two sets, spanning the basement and this mountain range, push two opposing and yet interconnected readings of the landscape. In doing so, this work reflects my personal involvement with the characters. I was interested in how one extrapolates the world and tells stories about the world through individual people, often those who have not been acknowledged for what they do.

Surekha
The photographs of mine to be featured at the exhibition were shot in Mauritius, a country termed as Paradise on Earth due to its ecstatic beauty. I had heard the story of a friend s grandmother who had migrated there from India, in search of a better life. When she was older, she would constantly gaze at the sea waves. Her gaze was to compensate for her unfulfilled desire to revisit her homeland beyond that horizon.

Sea Watchers has been created as an ode to people watching the sea, in anticipation. Even the empty chair in the water becomes an active trigger to this anticipation. It is the saga of refugees and migrants who left their homelands in search of a prosperous life. This sea in Mauritius, is also the historic site of many colonial expeditions, migration and diaspora. The sea metaphorically becomes the passage to explore a new life as well as the contemporary dilemma of the everlasting mirage.

Pushpamala N
The City, the great metropolis, is the site for the adventures of  the irrepressible artist. In my work to be showcased at this exhibition, the Return of the Phantom Lady (Sinful City), the Phantom Lady rescues an orphaned school girl and exposes the land mafia in a photo-romance set in cinematic locales in the city of Mumbai. The other work, Paris Autumn, is a film constructed of still images. It shows the artist as a flaneur investigating the violent history of the city that is known as the centre of civilisation and culture.

Entry free. On till February 24, 10.30 onwards. At Gallery Sumukha, Wilson Garden.

Email: prattusa@newindianexpress.com
Twitter: @MallikPrattusa 

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