Around Goa in Eight Bikes

Artist and writer Neha Sarai writes about the Bike Art Project in Goa conceived by Khanjal Dalal of Lemon Grasshopper Gallery, Ahmedabad.

Eight artists were brought together for eight days in Goa. Time and place, as also the agenda were pre-set.  Within that, each artist worked on a sketchbook to his, or to her own rhythm.  Rules for this conclave were a shade different from those that seem to govern other similar gatherings in the recent past. Clearly, a lot of thought had gone into its making. Things were so arranged that one had ample opportunity to be with nature and explore its enticing nooks and corners. It was organized in the style of an expedition. Each artist had a bike to move and wonder. The pace and manner of movement, or its complete absence, were entirely the choice of each artist. When one moves away from one’s familiar-habitual environment, stimulus of sights and sounds in the new environment comes through with phenomenal intensity. And that allows for a certain meditative inward sweep. A good and suggestive frame to look at and reassess one’s work and the way of working,
 
One could argue that the setting was crafted to influence artistic perception in a certain sense and in a certain way. Yet, the overwhelming fact is that in the work of each artist, the same or similar were rendered differently. Perceptions of different artists may share often, common reference. But between the reference and the work several mediations intervene.  Foremost, the same is perceived differently because the sensibility, experience and memory of each artist are cast differently. Also, the medium through which the artist chooses to work exerts its own distinctive possibility of rendering and representation. There was something in the experience of being with one self while at the same time being in touch with the work of other artists, that lent to asking questions concerning the basics and basis of visual experience.

Unfettered and unhurried mobility seemed to open us to a different kind of visual sensation and experience. Perhaps it was the limpid languor of Goa’s natural rhythms that made riding the twists and turns of its quiet roads an experience akin to scribbles and strokes on paper. Its landscapes and colors were reminders of a palette almost unthinkable in the midst of a city studio. It was truly a place to reinvent learnt skills and allow sensations of the moment to flow into sketches. Most artists worked with water based mediums. That itself marks strongly the connection between the place, its aura and the sketchbooks. Around Goa, water is the pervasive presence. Its smell, sensation and sight are with you at each moment of the day and night.

The artists who participated were: Walter de Souza, Karl Antao, Valsan Kolleri, Veer Munshi, Nikhil Chopra, Neha Sarai, K.P. Reji and Indroparmit Roy. Their work during these eight days reflects individual memory, style and the texture of the chosen medium. Each work tells an individual story of an equation and play between the artist and her surroundings. In Walter de Souza’s works the land and its faith vividly stands forth. Its subject matter brims with a certain subtle and pervasive intellectual-political presence. Valsan Kolleri also seeks to relate to a certain order of things as it could be in the future. Valsan’s connection with water runs deep and profound. It is therefore not a surprise at all that his experiments were largely with and through water based mediums. Karl Antaos’ work is a reminder of the phenomenal experimental possibility, which inheres in the medium. He seems happily possessed by the world of sheer fantasy and imagination. Veer Munshi takes you to specific spaces and places. His sketches stand in a certain order, somewhat akin to the diary of a journey, or a visual dictionary.  Nikhil Chopra’s experiment with different mediums plays with the geometric notion of line and form. The script and the image in his sketches retain touch of the land, which was the site of the experiment. Indropramit Roy’s work is suggestive of quiet unhurried perception. It seems utterly unruffled by the noise and tumult of modern times.  Even so, his water-based sketches do register the times in which we are placed. K.P.Reji sketches record images as flow of events in a film. My work seeks to relate the geometry of spaces in relation to nature and time. The land, both as nature and as human habitation is a constant presence in the natural colors I use in all my sketches.  

Together, despite the enormous and vivid differences, the work of the eight artists does make up a unique kind of dictionary, a vocabulary of the self.  Signs and sensations first felt and known in those days would   stay and mark the years ahead. All this would never have happened but for the imaginative initiative by the artist Khanjan Dalal. To him is due the credit entirely of bringing together artists in a way that allows for both togetherness and freedom. It made possible a happy rewarding time of celebration of inner feelings and nature. In doing that the Lemon Grasshopper Gallery has placed a new kind of possibility for the doing of art in our time.