GALLERYSKE presents

RECENT WORKS
by Navin Thomas, Srinivasa Prasad, Sudarshan Shetty, Zakkir Hussain

Opening 15th December.
On display from 17th November, 2008 to 10th January, 2009

PRESS RELEASE

With reference to his three, inkjet prints on aluminum sheet works, Navin Thomas speaks of his generation as witnessing the birth of colour television and growning up alongside "the expanding hydra of cable TV in this country."
"On Sunday afternoons, when there was still such a thing as national tele-vision, most of us, would be lounging in our living rooms watching obscure foreign films with even more obscure subtitles. Then during the trend of marathon film festivals in the city, we subjugated ourselves to at least three to four foreign films a day! I usually crawled out a little after the interval, beginning to function only in sub-titles...
These days, I often find myself passing out, while watching one of the world cinema channels on the box. I usually wake up trying to make a connection between two entirely different films - rather like reading across newspaper columns. Also more interestingly, are the intrusions that happen when one is half awake or half asleep: for instance, the narration of the weather report and the forewarning of heavy traffic blends in with an old pop tune, resulting in impressions that are often spectral and sometimes even phantasmagorical!!! A combination of 'fantastic', 'orgasmic', and 'magical'.... (NAVIN THOMAS, August 2008)

The series of works by Srinivasa Prasad titled Payana (a word in old Kannada which means ‘journey’) stages an evocative tableau with resonances of a spiritual journey from birth to death. The works construct an implied narrative of the desire for a journey – not just a physical one that covers geographical spaces but also at a more metaphysical level – the psycho-emotional journeys one undertakes in the span of one or several lifetimes. While documentation of the individual pieces may occasionally feature the artist performing the piece, the artifacts themselves when displayed, are conspicuously missing the traveller undertaking these journeys. This person is physically absent, and only implied by his/her personal belongings, in order to underscore the fact that the ideas being evoked are not bound by the specificity of individual personalities or wishes but the over-reaching human desire for a physical and metaphoric journey, which is often into the unknown.
Featured in this group show is the piece which comprises a miscellaneous collection of household chattel and clothes clad in and made from recycled gunny-sack material. This piece may be seen as an extension of the preceding 'Payana' pieces, which were made using kamblis or local hand-woven blankets. In this case, the skin cladding the assorted objects, has itself journeyed from its original function of packaging grain, soap and the like, to being transformed into it’s current avatar as an art object. 
The History of Loss, photographic series (a set of 42, 23" x 15" photographic prints) by Sudarshan Shetty features images of crashed, cast aluminum Volkswagen Beetle car replicas. The replicas are deliberately rough and not to scale. These ‘toy’ cars were painstakingly cast for the express purpose of being destroyed. This work inadvertently refers to futility and meaninglessness inherent in the act of making an art-object while framing the performative artifice involved in the extended act of art display.
“The shape of the Beetle resembles that of commonly available tin toy cars that I played with and dearly longed for as a child," says Sudarshan. "This was much before I realized that it could have been derived from the VW Type 1 design. Over the years now the shape has come to hold iconic, aspirational associations for me. It has come to be a symbol of desire." Sudarshan has also been interested in the idea of the 'journey' an object makes, from being the object of someone’s internal world through to the evolution of this idea into an object in the market place.
The artist refers to this ‘journey’ or evolution in an earlier, single channel video (No Title, Love - Morphing heart video, 2006) which comprised a 3D animation of the diagram of a biological human heart morphing into a mechanical heart that morphs into a pink ‘valentine’s day’ heart which morphs back into a biological heart, ad nauseam. The Beetle replica in this work has a drawn out ‘journey’: from being the object of a young mind’s aspiration and desire it is, over time, realized as a toy effigy by the empowered adult. In what is akin to a ritualistic performance, this effigy is consciously broken down, the damaged remains scrupulously recorded and displayed like a wall of trophies.

Based in Kerala, Zakkir Hussain's visual vocabulary draws much from his immediate socio-cultural contexts. His works may be seen as visual articulations of his negotiations with the society he inhabits. In a note in the catalogue for his 2006-07 solo of drawings and paintings, Emerging from the Womb of a Scapegoat, Zakkir refers to speaking in a broken tongue, as he "searches futilely for the existence of words, meanings and relationships." Certain images like that of hospital equipment (especially stretchers), nerves that branch out ad nauseam, houses that similarly repeat, animal forms conjoined with human forms, are leitmotifs that take on unique significations in the context of each work.
Featured in this show are seven etchings on paper, made between 1997 and 2005.