Chemould Prescott opened simultaneously with two of its established artists - Gigi Scaria on its own premises and with Anant Joshi in collaboration with Gallery Maskara.
Scaria’s multivalent practice covers the gallery space - its seems to be intimidating to artists showing at Chemould to leave space; rather an urgency to fill space often detracts, too many works skip a tighter edit, as is seen here once again. Videos are interspersed closely with large paintings and suites of drawings, the journey through this landscape is a constant busyness till it becomes a blur. It need not be, concentrate on just the videos, then circumambulate once more to see the still renderings. It’s a better way of taking it in.
In ‘Expanded’, the largest video projection, Gigi Scaria continues a pre-occupation with time. Dealing directly with a present global situation, the artist’s hand is evident in the construct, yet, like most “Citizen Artists” (to borrow from Geeta Kapur) of our time, the politics are attended to. The Syrian crisis of the last year has foregrounded the not so new phenomenon of migration. Contemporary cinema has been reflecting on migration over the last few years in all its diversity, whether it is the illegal attempts at the crossing of borders (The Golden Cage, Sicario etc) or in Nguyen’s horrific War Child on the plight of child soldiers in Africa and their subsequent fleeing to safer ground. Cinema captures the journey, often closing on the transient landings and holding grounds where those journeys end. For Scaria, it’s the beginning of his work: in ‘Expanded’, time is held titularly just as the migrants are held in the temporary structures shown. In his treatment the subject is never seen, the transience compounded in a scroll over 3.15 minutes, of tents and prefabs that are the vessels of precarious life. Still images of refugee camps from around the world are sharply edited, they segue relentlessly from camp after camp, unfolding into a long distance landscape of a disastrous age. Nothing seems to have changed over the millennia - once man moved to new hunting grounds, in the 21st century, security is needed from man himself.
Talking about his recent work, ‘River of Fundament’(2014), Mathew Barney talks about the behaviour of material in a discussion with Homi K Bhabha who explores 'the memory of the substance itself in material, and the process ... also the larger cultural/ritual of making." Barney looks at it as behaviour: “Materials have a behaviour, material process has its own behaviour. When that becomes a collective effort, each of those individuals has a behaviour. So all of those things go into a piece … Everybody can react to that behaviour in a subtle way and that creates the spirit of a piece.” Collectively aggregating still images thus, Scaria shows a universality of security needed, even with diverse causes, refugee camps are beset with a sameness of strife. It’s effective in creating the “spirit of the piece”, using a scroll -- an image from another time to remind us not much has changed, the collective images create the enormity of the situation in the present tense.
In other works such as ‘The Ark’, Scaria resorts to the fantastical as a device to critique this post apocalyptic world of parched terrains devoid of human life. In a previous work, ‘Fountains of Purification’, 2011 a public art work in a show The Yamuna-Elbe: Public Art and Outreach Project, curated by Ravi Aggarwal, a towering block fashioned as a fountain, was imagined to suck polluted waters up from the river till clear water appeared at the tips of this man made mountain. Similarly allegorical Arks abound in many avatars here, a ‘tbt’ symbol from Biblical times they are summoned in sci fi fantasy constructs. Saviours of species in a technological age, they spew print outs, play video games, await a salvation perhaps never to come atop mountains or arid plains. In abandonment, it could be a terrain on the moon or Mars, alluding to the barrenness a rich living earth is being driven to. In 'Shadow of the Ancestors', a giant log of wood steam rolls in a slow loop - shadows of buildings it will be used to build, emerge, get imprinted on, burn life briefly till the cycle begins again - horizons made, unmade in the cycle of the ages.
This reiteration in video and painting and drawing, tweaked re-interpretations, don’t really add up collectively to a cohesive spirit. The paintings interspersed between renders a deep engagement in the video works to be constantly interrupted. The paintings and drawings in sombre, assured execution pitched against small screen layouts of the video do nothing to enhance a ‘diptych’, the scaled video vs painting stutter. One wishes an edit after a while. The paintings in their diagrammatic precision and even toned execution do not build up the anxiety of disaster that is sought.
Gallerist Shireen Gandhy explains the concurrent shows; this is a longer story than the newish phenomena of gallery collaborations. Joshi made this work eight years ago. The work grew in scale, changed in medium and finally with 200 sculptures he wanted to arrange them in a very specific way. "Our space seemed not to be adequate because of the way he envisaged the display" says Gandhy. "He needed a continuous area without a wall. So instead of hiring a space like a Famous Studio (or old space in the erstwhile mill lands) I thought it better that it gets seen in a gallery with a regular attendance ... Abhay Maskara's Gallery Maskara seemed perfect."
Anant Joshi at Gallery Maskara uses time and scale in prolific production. A body of work, re-iteration in display, a dissimilar similar builds the scale. ‘In Trembling Hands (of the clock)’ he floods the gallery with curious hybrid creatures. One enters what seems to be a production line, the sameness of tables with miniature sculptures, arranged like a sweat shop, manufacturing cheap toys - which is often the base of these sculptures. Joshi renders the behaviour of the material Barney talks of through a process of alteration transforming them into faux table top “bronzes”. Not the formal lines of a Dhruva Mistry sculpture or the sensuous curves of a Chola bronze but a very contemporary hybrid of melding readymades together. Innocuous or menacing they oscillate between humour and threat, a battlefield or a playpen, it leaves one to conjecture. Over eight years material was worked on in sand-cast bronze. Everyday objects are melded together resulting in man-machines, part animal part human; it invokes myth and mystery and possibilities are rife. A bronze cast “terracotta army”? deranged ‘Power Rangers’? Are they finished fossils or poised for war in Kalyug?
It is this unexpected ambiguity that stimulates strange imaginations, a tour de force of studio practice casting real shadows in the open, that in stasis electrifies possibility. Together, it works terrifically, there’s stealth andmenace, isolated as ‘stand-alones’ they’d probably be fun. They invite the gaze and the touch, this is material that as Barney suggested one reacts to in subtle ways that creates the “spirit of the piece.” Joshi has long been engaged with table top tableaus and shadow play - ‘Black to Play and Draw’ (2003) used the small space of the then Philip’s Contemporary well, (small created objects filled table tops in a semi-dark room, projected light from a low angle threw large shadows on the wall) creating a mind altering space with the same preoccupation with small readymades and manufactured alterations. Using toys, found and created, he creates illusory mise-en-scenes that insiduously engages with the violence in society and leave an imagery to ponder. One walks away waiting for war games to start, much like what’s outside on the streets today.