Friday, April 5, 2013

IPL gets an artistic touch

India’s cricket extravaganza, IPL, found a new and sort of exotic touch in New Delhi, the national capital city, just ahead of the 6th edition of the yearly sporting event that draws both criticism and mass support. Indian Premier League witnessed country’s fifteen top artists unveiling their unique bat art’, especially in support of Delhi Daredevils team. They flagged off a public installation project, ‘Batting for Art...Khelo Front Foot Se’.

The project is a joint promotional public campaign by the team franchisee and Arts4All. It brings art and cricket under one umbrella aimed at raising awareness about contemporary Indian art and carrying it to a wider cross-section of people as a viable commercial enterprise. Done on massive wooden bats in bright hues, the installations will be presented at the venues where Delhi Daredevils will play their matches including the historic Ferozshah Kotla Stadium, at the Indira Gandhi International Airport’s Terminal-3 and other venues that will draw maximum viewership, according to Archana Bahl Sapra, co-curator of the project.

Sapra was quoted as saying in an IANS news report: "The idea originated a couple of years ago. We had started Arts4All with residencies comprising young and talented artists from India’s smaller towns to let them work and train in Delhi. But we realized that we required funds for this including their travel. We happened to come across the Delhi IPL team by chance and thus the idea to merge both the fields was germinated."

The painters, who form part of the captivating cricket art project represent, all the regions where the team plays its matches. The names are some of the best from India like Paresh Maity, Chintan Updhayay, Jayasri Burman, Sanjay Bhattacharya, Seema Kohli, Thota Vaikuntam, Neeraj Goswami, Yusuf Arakkal, Farhad Husain,Kachan Chander, Binoy Verghese, Khem Vaishnav, Satish Gupta, and Dileep Sharma.

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