Homing In

Setting up a home is never easy. Filmmaker and artist Aradhana Seth is well aware of that.

Setting up a home is never easy. Filmmaker and artist Aradhana Seth is well aware of that. During her career as a production designer spanning over a decade,she has painstakingly created several homes period and contemporary on the movie sets,paying attention to the minutest details. Her idea of a home is also imbued with theexperience of living in different houses across the globe,apart from visiting and studying hundreds others. All these experiences have come together as she turned the sprawling Chemould Prescott Road gallery in Mumbais Fort area into a home for her first solo art show,titled Everyone Carries A Room About Inside.

This site-specific installation,which opened its doors to the public on November 7,demanded meticulous planning. This was evident when Seth pointed to 12 transparent tiffin boxes each neatly labelled as staircase,lobby,library,bedroom and so on. As she opened the boxes,she admitted with a mock-guilty look,I am very organised.

The experience of the show starts from the point of access the wooden staircase that leads to the gallery. The wall of the staircase are draped with images of the vehicular world. At the end of the ascent is a doorbell and a CCTV on the top of the wall facing it. All these are paintings on metals, says Seth. In fact,all the works on display at the show,barring the study room that showcases her photographs,are done on metal instead of canvas. This is because Seth has always been drawn to the rawness of plain paint and metal. Since most of my paintings are in the form of signage,I have chosen metal surface over canvas, adds Seth who has been a production designer for films like Deepa Mehtas Fire and Earth and Hollywood venture The Bourne Supremacy,among others.

Inside the gallery,the real space is merged with Seths vision of a home. Its library walls adorned with paintings of books,sofa and bookshelves. The living room has a painting of a huge sofa flanked by images of a Blackberry and an iPad,interpreting modern-day communication. On a wall diagonally opposite are six images of as many chairs of various shapes and styles placed next to each other with a coffee tray and cake. There is a dialogue going on here with these chairs,old and modern,put together, she says. Adjacent to

the library is the dining area which leads to the study,then the kids room,master bedroom,kitchen,storage space and toilets.

I have used every inch of the gallerys space, she adds.

As she does to build film sets,Seth has created most of the exhibits with the help of her assistants even though the concept is hers. I have created some of the objects from memory. Some are photographs converted into paintings, she says.

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A documentary filmmaker,Seth always took photographs wherever she travelled,and preserved them. Some of the photographs on display were taken nearly a decade ago. Seths show has unwittingly become an excuse for a family get-together. On Friday,before her exhibition opened,her brother Vikram Seth attended the second edition of Mumbais Literature Live festival for a preview of his next book of poetry,The Rivered Earth. Their parents Leila and Prem Seth were in town too. Its nice that the family was together for both the events, she says excitedly.

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