A steel of a show

A steel of a show

Mumbai seems to be witnessing a gradually-developing trend of art philanthropes wanting to share their collection with the public at large. Be it industrialist Harsh Goenka with his keen eye for winners young and old or one of India’s largest collectors of contemporary Indian Art, Jehangir Nicholson hoping to gift his entire collection to the public art seems to be graduating from the stand of personal and acquisitive. Adding to this list are Sangita and Sajjan Jindal.

This industrialist couple is doing its bit to informalise art and bring it to all lovers. In fact, it was Sangita who orchestrated the hugely successful sculpture camp, at the first international artists’ residency, initiated by Jindal Art Foundation at the JISCOs plant, Vasind, earlier this month. So what’s the big deal, considering one hears of many camps and workshops with extravagant lunches, doing the rounds of artists and collectors? The difference is that it was conducted at the factory itself, using the steel produced by the plant, with the workers participating in the creative process. The second aspect that makes this venture special is that the steel installations created by the artists will not be hoarded. Sangita is holding talks with the BMC to lend all the works for a city-wide sculpture exhibit, so that Mumbaiites can enjoy them. Pramod Navalkar has also shown interest in this show, a first for Mumbai. He agrees with Sangita that artists should treat the city as a canvas. Instead of confiningart to the studio, the aesthetics of the city could be helped. Also, Sangita will gift three of the works as permanent exhibits to embellish traffic islands and parks.

So art is no longer all about large, skylit and nearly empty museums and galleries. Old, dark canvases inside their heavily carved and gilded frames hung at the Louvre and the Met. The difference between the empty dusty museums of those many years ago and the bustling ones of today is the changed perception of art in our prosaic lives. Art has started gaining celebrity status the world over and it has finally begun to emerge from behind the velvet rope, stiff upper lip atmosphere, on to the streets. This trend is spreading to India too. Some years ago, the Jindals had visited Austria’s Voest Alpine, a plant at Linz. Sangita was enthralled to see artists working at a steel plant and decided to do something similar at their plant in India and spark the dormant creativity of the workers. She got in touch with Triangle Arts Trust’s Robert Loader in UK and he made the Jindal Arts Foundation a member of the Resartists Association (a German foundation), which hold residency programmes worldwide. Sculptors JohnGibbons from UK and Vincent Barre from Paris (who is taking a worker from the Jindal plant back to Paris, as he has shown immense artistic talent) received sponsored tickets to travel to India and participate.

The residency programme focuses on building a worldwide linkage, to be held once a year. It is an attempt to promote artistic expression in the medium of steel. But more significantly, it offers artists the opportunity to exchange ideas and work processes and learn from different international experiences. Artists from around the world will be invited to visit the plant and interact with our own creative minds. And in turn, some of our painters and sculptors will attend similar residencies abroad to bring back new ideas and artistic impetus. Studio facilities will be created, with accompanying residential accommodations in the Vasind steel works. Artists will be able to work with materials like steel and stone, which are not easy to handle at studios.

One of the primary objectives of a residency programme like this is to link the art movement in India with institutions worldwide. Talks are on with the French Cultural Attache, Laurent De Gaul, to organise an exchange program with French artists, following the successful completion of this camp.

This recent event has been a unique experience. There was an in-depth interaction between the students who had been invited from the JJ School of Arts the collectors and the artists. The studio visit and discussions at the plant, also were encouragement for future camps, workshops and shows at this venue. Maybe through this precedent, other manufacturing plants like those producing rubber or cement would also invite artists to use their materials to create art. If all corporates open their doors it could help bring art to the people and at the same time, open new creative vistas.

NISHA JAMWAL