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One-dish party
This is an event that identifies the current generation of artists. The three-dimensional artworks draw meaning out of the potential communication between objects and their representation in our lives and demonstrate an engagement with aesthetic form that has to do with the experience of living. And as such, it is the most interesting art event coming our way for a considerable time.
It all began about a year ago when Amin Gulgee asked some of his fellow artists to make an individual statement/artwork based on a satellite dish. The intriguing challenge was taken up by a group of twenty artists and the resultant pieces were originally to have been shown in the vicinity of the Sadequain Gallery. Violence in the city put an end to those hopes, but in the tradition of the true Karachiite who carries on regardless, the venue was changed to the Amin Gulgee Gallery in Clifton.
Working within the confines of the dish the artists have incorporated an assortment of materials, focusing on context and placement, to put their views across. It is a proof of their powers that obvious traces of the artist’s ‘hand’ are discernable in the individual pieces. The installations range widely in their degree of complexity and offer an insight into a broad art experience.
Mixed autobiographical allusions emerge, informed by reflection on intricate cultural issues. For example, Munawar Ali’s giant sized, tempting apple turns the dish into a fruit bowl. His message: “You can see it and you can eat it but at your own risk”.
Abdul Jabbar Gull added a dramatic, assured form, to the display, and in his singular, urbane approach of minimum ‘fuss’, the sculptor likens the phenomena of the satellite dish to a ‘beggar’s bowl. Whatever is thrown in, he contends, is accepted without a reservation.
A bright and beautiful Lollipop, painted with confectionary colours and decorated with glitter and wrapping paper, is the work of Ayesha Khan. Here, she interprets the “glitter glamour of the satellite world...”
Tapu Javeri collaborated with Mehnaz Diwan on an eye-catching assemblage titled Pollination. Created from fibreglass, photographic paper, silicone and acrylic paints.
Sumaira Tazeen’s dish stands decorated with pictures of Shahrukh Khan in various styles and poses spread all over its surface. Titled Aur baat badal gai, it reflects the post-9/11 reality on the TV front when everyone was so engrossed watching entertainment all the time, and then suddenly current affairs took over, and the Indian channels went off the air.
Rehma Iqbal’s installation takes the form of a social parody, Domestic Fittings to help one relax. Inverted satellite dishes become parasols shading tables and chairs that offer rest after a day’s hard work.
Danish Raza’s hologram printed plastic sheets were incorporated to create symbolic imagery for the Magical Neon Lights of Electronic Equipment.
Rabia Tahmina Shoaib’s installations: Target and Pie of Hours reflected this intelligent artist’s concerns with global communication of violence, and guilt for the temptation to ‘waste time’.
An intricately surfaced piece is the work of Roohi Ahmed who maintains the satellite dish has mutated into an organic entity. “It is at once a shield trying to ward off the onslaught of the media and a receptor for the same...”
Muna Sidddiqui titles her work Bouquet, and uses as media hand-cut tiles “inspired by the mosaic work of ancient Persia.” Her message is hopeful: “Communication through art may be the gift this world of turmoil is looking for to bridge differences.”
Velvet cloth and a computer key were utilized in Rizwan Ahmed Malik’s interesting piece, This is an Ad. There is as well, a long list of ‘sensations’ to clue us in, beginning with “Life, fear, hunger... and ending in escape.”
“One of the great things about myths is their ability to reflect on society,” Khurram Khan tells us suggesting that myths change with the times. “...there are numerous active levels of interpretation.”
Cotton, mirrors and colour pigments are the tools used by Shaikh Naveed Akhtar in a social narrative articulated as End of Deliberate Ignorance. Far from living in a global village, he says, “...we are becoming isolated from one another and are not working together for global peace and democracy...”
“We take a small peep into other worlds, as the many different cultures invade our homes and broaden our horizons”, is the viewpoint expressed by Manizhe Ali.
Sairah Ali Dada is essentially a printmaker but for the satellite dish project, she carved a face from plaster and used the inverted iron dish as a platter: Herod’s Head’. Her issues are concerned with mortality, the process of aging and the importance of learning life’s lessons’. “While I was carving the face it kept changing form and growing older with each hit of the mallet”. Alternately, Sairah offers her work as the ...”revenge of St John the Baptist” with Herod’s head being the one demanded by Salome.
Hussain Aftab Halai depicts in his installation the “...constant change and advancement that occurs in technology.” Hussain declares himself inspired by ship scrap and describes his work accordingly. “...this piece is a blend of recyclable metals and other found objects and explores the energy that lies within these objects.”
Masood A. Khan continues his theme of ‘transparency’ using charcoal and fixative as his media. Unver Shafi Khan was due to contribute a piece he called: Dish It Out, which had not arrived at the time of the preview.
This, of course, promises to be an event that will be enthusiastically received by sculptor David Alesworth, whose fibreglass dish was a kaleidoscope of colour and movement. Event Horizon reflected the pop culture of the day with references to ‘Disney’s World’, McDonald’s, and other symbols of the times.
“The dark electric rose presides over a morphing of signs and logo-types journeying between cultures, their mutability a potent symbol of resistance to the certainty of a world becoming ever more influenced by mega-corporate interests...”
An experience of Japanese culture is assimilated into the aesthetic philosophy of Noorjehan Bilgrami, whose haiku describes her work:
Through the window
Blackened, charred, uprooted tree
The grey, rusted landscape
The artist’s imagery, stark, strong, elegiac, creates a commanding foreboding. Someone please set this piece up at the UN building in New York.
And, finally, Amin Gulgee, the inspiration behind and organizer of the splendid exhibition. The exuberant sculptor is a strong part of the developments that are happening around him in the form of an ambience that has been missing since the ‘70s — camaraderie among artists.
Amin’s Inquisition is a powerful sculpture that consists of a metal portrait, pierced through the forehead with an arrow, set against a wonderfully worked surface. ‘A man is guilty until he is proved innocent’, it appears to say. One of the artist’s interpretations of ‘inquisition’: an investigation conducted with little regard for the individual’s rights.
This is the exhibition that should travel. Is there a philanthropic art enthusiast in the house? One who could make it possible to show this exhibition at the Shakir Ali Museum, Lahore, for inastance?
One should hope so.
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