Listen outside this house is built around the idea that words have a way of opening up possibilities for a world of images that may be ever-shifting in their meaning and evocation. And the fact that the meaning of the objects are bound to change with time is built into the making of them. This in many ways highlights my belief that there is artifice involved in the making and mounting of the objects for a show and that I have no choice but to infuse them with a context and meaning. However, both these positions are not mutually exclusive.

Words become a pivot from where the work enters into a world of objects that perhaps suggest part of an event that may reside in one's memory or imagination, and yet are mere references and may never be real in the experience of it. Each of the single line narratives, however seemingly fictional, have their origins in my own past. They are written from a deliberate distance and as the narratives unfold almost breathlessly, they suggest the meaninglessness in the act of its writing and the resultant objects become redundant. Contradictorily, the relationship between the objects and the words may evoke multiple interpretations of its meaning and purposefulness.

Sudarshan Shetty

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