Stay Serene Stay Creative
The relaxing stints at art residencies in India are also an opportunity for artists to network and show their work.
The French windows of this charming cottage serve as perfect frames for the splendid view of Lake Vadivali in Maharastra’s Kamshet,85 kilometres from Pune. However,the air inside Shut Up at Calmshet,an art residency,is charged with a flurry of activities as it gets ready to play host to a group of visual artists from Canada.
With Shut Up at Calmshet,Karthikeyan Ramachandran,a 34-year-old graphic designer and owner of this property,offers what an artist seeks the most — silence. He opened this in October to give artists an inspiring work station and to collaborate with them. “When an artist applies to stay here,we look at his or her portfolio before extending our invitation,” he says. “We also look at possibilities of an art collaboration where the artists can display their work at my gallery.”
The concept behind Shut Up at Calmshet is not unique in India. A good number of such residencies have opened in the recent year keeping the creation and promotion of art in mind. The list includes the Bengaluru Artist Residency One (BAR1),which holds a non-profit exchange programme,Lemon Grass Hopper and Studio Verve in Ahmedabad,Gowry Art Residency in Thiruvananthapuram,Global Arts Village in New Delhi and Kala Bhavanam near Alappuzha.
These residencies are turning out to be a huge draw for the artists. In March 2011,Center for Alternative Photography (Goa-CAP),located at Goa’s Calangute,hosted its first residency — a two-month-long ALTlab Photography Residency in collaboration with India Foundation for the Arts. “We had received 80 applications out of which we selected only four. The idea was to look for alternative ways of image creation and printing,including the gelatin silver process,” explains its owner,Edson Dias,who experiments with analog media. The residency is equipped with a darkroom,a lab that supports pin-hole,daguerreotype,wet plate collodion,albumen print and cyanotype processes. Each residency ends with an ‘OpenLab day’,where the artists get a chance to share their work and ideas.
Bangaluru-based visual artist Shreyasi Kar,22,was one of the four photographers selected for ALTlab Photography Residency. “I was interested in learning alternate ways of developing images and there was nothing available beyond the online resources. I wanted to use cyanotype and other processes,which is when CAP’s programme came my way.”
Despite their serene settings,art residencies are not about relaxation. Delhi-based artist Manisha Parekh spent a week at Ahmedabad’s Art Reverie in a paired residency with Lin Holland from Liverpool. Asked about the challenges of such a set-up,especially when followed by an art show,she says,“At times it is a bit of a rush,but mostly it is stimulating and gives a lot in a capsule of time.” She issues a caveat: residencies can’t be treated as junkets and one needs to plan a visit well. “I wouldn’t do more than one in a year,” she says.
In Guwahati,an art residency founded by Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukaillya,called Periferry,floats on the Brahmaputra. Established in 2007 on an old ferry,this provides a space between a studio and a lab. “The residency is not about renting a place to stay. It’s a month-long collaboration where we get artists from varied backgrounds working on different projects. We get artists from all over the country and even from places like Bangladesh,Indonesia and the UK. There is no pressure to deliver work on deadline and we engage local artists too,” says Madhukaillya.
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