Art Buzz (Bangalore) Somersault in Muddy Waters - A Creative Journey - a talk by Atul Dodiya

Practices in Contemporary Art & Architecture

CoLab-Goethe Lecture Series

Picnic with Picabia, 2010

Oil,auto body solder, museum magnets & gold leaf on oxidised mild steel with two mild steel stands

Somersault in Muddy Waters - A Creative Journey

A talk

by

Atul Dodiya

on

Tuesday, 5 April, 6:30 pm

at

Goethe- Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan

716, CMH Road, Indiranagar 1^st Stage, Bangalore - 560038

About the lecture :

Artist Atul Dodiya’s talk will be about the diverse influences, references and quotations in his work; why he chooses a specific genre; shifts and change in the media that he uses, and the ways in which he addresses the political, social and personal traumas within his painterly practice.

About the speaker : Atul Dodiya

Atul Dodiya (b. 1959 ) studied at the Sir J J School of Art, Mumbai and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris.

Dodiya’s allegorical paintings on canvas, paper and metal shutters draw on diverse traditions in painting and text. He works with unusual materials and techniques and brings to the viewer a palimpsest of images and a collage of experiences. Dodiya’s art is marked by kaleidoscopic quotation and his pictorial narratives are taken from iconic images from global visual culture- cinema stills, cartoon strips, popular oleographs, the homegrown version of MAD comics-all intertwined with autobiography. His intricate and multi-layered pictures work like a jigsaw of ideas that have been put together with humour and irony.

Atul Dodiya has had 25 solo shows in India and abroad, and this includes a mid-career retrospective at Japan Foundation Asia Centre, Tokyo in 2001 and a solo show in Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid in 2002. Dodiya participated in the 1st Yokohoma Triennale, 51st Venice Biennale, Documenta 12, 7th Gwangju Biennale & the 3rd Moscow Biennale. Dodiya lives and works in Bombay, India

About the lecture series : Practices in Contemporary Art & Architecture

Practices in Contemporary Art & Architecture Lecture Series has been initiated by CoLab Art & Architecture, Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore in collaboration with the Venkatappa Art Gallery, Bangalore. Spread over a year with one lecture a month, the visual art series focuses on practitioners who look at both ‘reconstruction’ and the ‘historical turn’ from the perspective of contemporary artistic practice: the revisions and re-readings that take place when images, works or events from the past circulate in a changing set of configurations ; the lectures on architecture will attempt to look at the radical shift in the imagining of the public space and the notion of spatial equity, and the questions thus raised.

Aspects of Contemporary German Photography

Real Space - Conceptual Space

To continue the exhibition series, 'Aspects of Contemporary German Photography', the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen now presents this show (curator: Ute Eskildsen) of German photo art from the 1990s. The title of the exhibition, 'Real Space Conceptual Space', subsumes three different working methods, the common content denominator of which is public space.

Real Space - Conceptual Space, an exhibition of the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V. (ifa)/Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, opens on March 11, 2011 at the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath and continues till March 27, 2011. We are proud to welcome Heidi Specker, one of the artists featured in the exhibition, to Bangalore. Heidi Specker will give a presentation of her work at the Inauguration on March 11, 6.30 p.m. The Exhibition will be inaugurated by Abhishek Poddar, Founder, Tasveer.

Event: Photo Exhibition: Real Space - Conceptual Space

Date: Inauguration with Talk by Heidi Specker on March 11, 2011, 6.30 p.m.

On Display: March 12 to 27, 2011

Timings: 10.00 a.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Venue: Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath

The following exhibition has ended, but as promised, here's a photograph & a brief about the works.

Charlotte Salomon– Life? Or Theatre?

Event: Exhibition: Charlotte Salomon – Life? Or Theatre?

Date: Feburary 25 to March 9, 2011

Time: 9.30 a.m. - 6.30 p.m.

Venue: Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore

Charlotte Salomon was born in Berlin in 1917 and grew up in a well-integrated Jewish family, the daughter of a surgeon and a singer, as a. The events in 1933 dramatically changed the life of the family and in 1939 Charlotte fled to her grandparents in southern France. In 1943 she was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Auschwitz, where she was later killed little. Shortly before her arrest, she offered her work to a friend by saying, "C'est toute ma vie! This is my life! "life? Or Theater?

The 1325 gouache was painted between 1940 and 1942. In the despair and loneliness of exile projected Charlotte Salomon their lives in an imaginary inner stage, where she wrote her true story as a lyrical drama.

Of particular interest to students of German is the combination of Charlotte Salomon's personal history in pictures and brief written comments. The original exhibition is at the Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam. The exhibition at the Goethe-Institut 62 shows gouache and comments.

Call for Entries for a Comic Strip

From the Goethe-Institu/Max Mueller Bhavan -

We are happy to announce a Call for Entries for a Comic Strip, to be
published on "Art & the City", our Online Journal on Contemporary Indian
Art: www.goethe.de/artandthecity.

If you are a Graphic Novelist, Illustrator with a penchant for
story-telling, or simply someone with unlimited talent to create Comic
Strips or Sequential Art, this call is for you! COME PARTICIPATE IN A
NATION-WIDE SEARCH FOR the next big Comic Strip Artist TO BE SHOWCASED
IN ART & THE CITY the new online journal and platform for exchange
between artists. Art & the City publishes authored articles by experts
in contemporary Indian Visual, Performing and Experimental New Media
Arts.

SELECTED ARTISTS AND THEIR ENTRIES WILL BE FEATURED IN ART & THE CITY SO
HERE'S YOUR CHANCE TO SHOWCASE YOUR TALENT AND BUILD AN AUDIENCE!

Eligibility: Resident in India
Theme: India - Life in the City
Quantity: Single strip
Size of Strip: Horizontal layout of 600 x 200 pixels
Submission Deadline: July 10, 2010
Email your entry to: artandthecity@goethe.de with the subject line 'A&C
Comic'. Only email entries will be entertained.


All these details are also available on the Art & the City website:
www.goethe.de/artandthecity

An arts education initiative

(By Nalini S Malaviya)

It cannot be denied that arts education in our country requires the necessary impetus in order to facilitate a more holistic environment for learning. Most schools follow the archaic system of having one or two classes of ‘music’ or ‘drawing’ in a week, however these are stand alone sessions that are not really integrated with the process of learning. The integration of arts education at the school level is a matter of grave concern and to address this issue, an arts education conference is being organized by the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore and the India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) later this week on 11 - 12th of December.

In the recent past, the film Taare Zameen Par, helped dramatically in creating awareness about the importance of arts in the process of learning. Although, the film highlighted the role of arts in facilitating learning in children with special needs, in fact, music, fine arts, theatre, puppetry and other creative practices are important tools that assist in the overall development of a child. And, with a little bit of an effort these can be adopted as part of the curricula in a conventional schooling system.

In the background note released by the IFA, according to the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, Paris in 2001, ‘Culture and the arts, in their broadest sense, are a critical mediatory force in the quest for understanding, empathy and dialogue between divergent thoughts, dogmas, ideologies and world-views.” This conference is an extension of Kali-Kalisu project that deals with the empowerment of school teachers through arts pedagogy training workshops, and through it the organizers hope to articulate frameworks and directions for arts education in the country. Some of the topics that will be discussed include the current legislative scenario and arts education, the structures of the arts education, arts and early childhood education, language, poetry and creativity, puppetry, music and movement arts.

In my opinion, an initiative such as this will not only help in creating the basis for supporting arts education, but also in creating wider awareness that will help in the actualization of various proposals that focus on the holistic development of every child. Legislations, children’s rights and bills, and proposals to ease pressures of examinations are all steps towards the right direction, but these have to be combined with a broader approach that stresses on the role of arts in providing quality education.

(Published in Bangalore Mirror)