Art Around Town

NEARLY three months ago,Anupa Mehta,manager of art space The Loft in Lower Parel,approached curators Zasha Colah and Sumesh Sharma of Clark House,Colaba. She suggested that many alternative art spaces in the city come together and do something. “I’ve been in the art world for a very long time,and I’ve noticed that we,as a community,need to open up various art spaces to the people in Mumbai,” says Mehta.

Last year,several South Mumbai galleries started an event together,called Art Night Thursday,by which,on every second Thursday of the month,they stay open until 9.30 pm instead of the usual 7 pm. A number of such events have ensured that most art enthusiasts in the city know of,and have possibly visited,each one of these galleries. But in all of this,the alternative art spaces that consistently do interesting work continued to remain lesser known.

So when Mehta made the proposal,Clark House agreed immediately. “We decided to do something that includes the alternative art spaces across the city and not just in South Mumbai. So this starts in Bandra and continues till Colaba,” says Sharma. The final list of participating art spaces now reads CAMP and Last Ship in Bandra,The Loft in Lower Parel,Space 118 at Dockyard Road,Mazgaon,Mohile Parikh Centre in Kala Ghoda and Clark House and Mumbai Art Room in Colaba. What sets these art spaces apart from the various galleries in the city,Mehta says,is their approach to art. “These spaces allow the viewer to see the artist at work — for instance,at art residencies or artist studios — as opposed to only the final product,as is the case with galleries,” she explains.

Once these art spaces came together,they decided to pool their resources and settled on the name ‘Umbrella’. The events,which began on Thursday,continue till Sunday. The first of these was a discussion between artists Tushar Joag and Prabhakar Pachpute at Clark House,a two-year-old place that hosts art shows and talks. On the same evening,Mohile Parikh Centre organised the screening of Art21 — Art in the Twenty-First Century at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA),Fort. This was the Mumbai premiere of the award-winning television series,produced by Art 21,a non-profit organisation based in New York that calls itself a “chronicler of contemporary art”.

“At Last Ship”,an exhibition of new works by its current residency artists — Vaibhav Raj Shah,Shubhalakshmi Shukla and Chandni Vora — will open on Saturday. That day,CAMP,founded in November 2007,will screen films from and related to cinema in Afghanistan. “Afghan Films is an archive of 100-odd films that is being made public on our website pad.ma,” says Shaina Anand,co-founder of CAMP. Two more events will be held on Saturday. The first is a discussion with British artist Andrea Zapp at the opening of her exhibition,“Third Skin”,at Art Loft. The second,at Space 118,is an interaction with contemporary Kalighat artist Kalam Patua.

On the final day of Umbrella’s inaugural edition,the scene shifts to Colaba. At Clark House,a discussion between artists Sharmila Samant and Prabhakar Pachpute and Sharma will be held. At Mumbai Art Room,Sunday is the final day of the ongoing exhibition,David Shrigley’s “Drawings”. The British visual artist invents scenarios and situations that reveal an absurd and mordant sensibility,and on this day,the art space will screen all of his animations.

Though the organisers have not decided on a date yet for Umbrella’s next edition,the plan is to hold coordinated art events every three months.