The Asia Triennial Manchester II features contemporary arts and crafts by artists from Asia, the UK and the Asian Diaspora. Two artists from India feature at the event.
Manisha Parekh is one of the few Indian artists who continues to explore an exclusively abstract language. She has developed an artistic practice that also pays reference to the craft and textiles traditions of her home land.
Born in 1964, and after training at M.S. University in Baroda and the Royal College of Art in London, she now lives and works in Delhi. She has exhibited widely and consistently in India since 1988 and held Fellowships in Germany, France and the UK. She has represented her country at Biennales in Havanna and Istanbul.
Continuing with her signature style of abstraction, she straddles painting, collage and drawing to create works that incorporate both the geometric and the organic. Her most recognized works are created by layering shapes cut from handmade papers into dense fields of pattern and energy, sometimes perforating the surface and adding other materials.
What makes Pushpa Kumari special as an artist is that although she is rooted in her centuries-old tradition, she has incorporated not only contemporary ideas and treatment but also an artistic intensity, an aesthetic ideal that is truly her own.
Her pictures depict a wide range of subjects and events: tales of brave warriors from ancient history, or universal primordial concerns such as birth and death, or contemporary issues such as the female foeticide prevalent in India. Her work has been exhibited regularly across India, and is represented in public and private collections in India, the UK and Japan.
New works by Alice Kettle and Lin Holland take a cue from the time have spent time in India in July 2011. Collaborating in extending individual practice and cultural dialogues they present new work made as a consequence. The works are made in response to and in collaboration with Pushpa Kumari and Manisha Parekh.
(Information courtesy: The Asia Triennial Manchester II)
No comments:
Post a Comment