Home is where the art is: Mumbai's residences turn art galleries

Bringing in the new: Summer shows

I first met Sandra Khare when, as curator of the Birla Art Gallery in Prabhadevi, she charmed us with her enthusiasm in showcasing relatively unseen artists she'd sourced from around the country, presenting their first solo shows in Mumbai. Now as director with Shireen Gandhy's Chemould Prescott Road, one of the oldest and most respected galleries not just in Mumbai, but in the country, Khare continues the tradition of allowing fresh voices to be heard through her curation.

Two shows in June and July, historically slow months for art shows, will be mounted as Chemould Prescott Road's "Summer Shows". Going by last year's efforts these should lure in the art lover for a satisfying respite from the summer lull. 

Bringing In the New, the first show running from June 18 to July 6, features Manoj Sinha, Arun Peje, Himanshu S and Ritesh Meshram. Ritesh Meshram's work "Kabir and Scooter" seen first in Fractured Spaces (an annual exhibition, expected this year in August, see below), will remorph into an extended artwork for this presentation at Chemould Prescott Road. Apart from this, Meshram will also present one motorized sculpture, ten assembles and a projector run artwork. The exhibition will be further built by drawings in charcoal by Arun Peje, drawings and paintings by Manoj Sinha and photographs and watercolors by Himanshu S. 

This will be followed by Reverie from July 12 to July 31, featuring five women artists: Shubhalakshmi Shukla, Rupali Angre, Nekshan Dabu, Rakhi Peswani and Shruti Mahajan. The show idea started with a poem Shubhalakshmi Shukla brought to Khare which got them thinking of ways it could be built upon. 

Art pockets: Fractured Spaces

Fractured Spaces is another project supported by Chemould Prescott Road, ideated and curated by Khare. Using loaned spaces in the corridors and waiting rooms of friends willing to extend support to a concept still new to the city, Khare shows artworks outside of a gallery space. Offsite so to speak. Being site specific therefore, artists have to respond not only to the space but to the constraints of the space not being a white cube art dedicated area.

Says Khare, "The thought of fractured spaces emerged when I had enough of working only within a gallery space for what seemed like infinity. The 'gallery' as I see it has an overwhelming power of security, in terms of demands being set, laid and animated. Space within the gallery undergoes a morphosis, mental (obviously) and in many ways physical. Fractured Spaces is seeing art pockets as interventions within our normal functioning but all over the map of a city/country. This was the larger picture.

"Starting from scratch, I looked at office spaces which saw the most in flow of people from all the levels of society. (It is the middle order that interests me). Their reaction to art when they find it in unsuspecting places. Not many go to galleries so I decided to take art to them, to insert it in their rhythm and watch if they do react to it. Obviously my concern was also to introduce young minds like Ritesh Meshram and Nekshan Dabu in an unconventional way to the art and artist fraternity."

Khare soon realized that in a busy city like Mumbai "it was quite an effort to have people just visit. I realized this needed a makeover, that this idea was not a dead one but one that had not yet arrived."

The space loaned comes with the generosity of the loaner. Khare spares no effort to present the artist well and gives the artist the freedom to totally distress a wall if necessary or change the sources of light as per the piece.

"Premal Sanghvi's office in VT proved just right. A tight and challenging space, Premal generously offered us a small room and a cabinet that he could spare for a month. Ritesh and Nekshan crafted their work out of the space and not vice versa, the latter being what happens in a gallery."

Premal Sanghvi who works in the finance world but is a passionate collector of art and an ardent supporter of the young, lent the waiting area of his stockbroking firm for the first two projects. He found that the people walking through his office, and ones who would normally not enter a gallery space, would stop intrigued by the strange installation or a conceptual sculpture and actually engage with the work and follow it up with questions.

In those terms, one of the premises of Fractured Spaces in drawing in the "middle order" proved successful.

Fractured Spaces will return for a new season, somewhere in the city -- or country -- in August or September. This year Khare has asked artists to participate with concepts explained over 12 images or photos and shown online, in a virtual space under the aegis of Chemould Offsite Projects which will go online at the Chemould Prescott Road website and will be an active window on the gallery Facebook account. 

"Artists will work on the idea of fractured spaces," explains Khare, "and would document their projects in 12 images. But, if required, I would attempt to also have physical spaces for artists whose work absolutely requires it within their city or the city of Mumbai."

If you are animated enough by the idea and would like your office, garden, terrace, courtyard, verandah, factory, warehouse or even your closet to be part of the project and to interact with art lovers and others trooping through, contact Sandra Khare now. Art outside of a white cube can be invigorating for the viewer, the artist and the artwork itself.

Chemould Prescott Road, Queens Mansion, 3rd Floor, G. Talwatkar Marg, Fort; 11am - 7pm (Mon - Sat); Shireen Gandhy and Sandra Khare,  +91-22-22000211; art@gallerychemould.