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Posts tagged with Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum

Public Art installation by Reena Kallat at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai

March 14, 2013

Hena Kapadia takes a look at Reena Kallat’s latest public installation at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai

Bhau Daji Lad Museum, interior, Mumbai

Bhau Daji Lad Museum, interior, Mumbai

Mumbai: Created by the artist, Reena Kallat and curated by the Bhau Daji Lad Museum in collaboration with ZegnArt/Public, this impressive ‘Untitled’ installation captures the viewers’ attention at once. Several rows of over sized rubber stamps form a cobweb covering the entire facade of the colonial era museum. Instantly invoking ideas of bureaucracy and the passage of time, each stamp on the web bears on it the name of a street which has been changed in the city of Mumbai as part of the renaming and decolonizing of the city. Like the museum itself, originally named the Victoria and Albert Museum, the city of Mumbai as well as the country as a whole has undergone a reclaiming of public spaces through the renaming of institutions, roads and even entire cities.

Reena Kallat's installation at Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum

Reena Kallat’s installation,“Untitled (Cobwebs/Crossings)” at Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum

Kallat is able to visually recreate the cobwebs of the past that continue to crowd our spaces, and will eventually be forgotten with the passage of time. Kallat’s project was chosen from a group of seven artist’s proposals including projects from Gigi Scaria, Hema Upadhyay and Sakshi Gupta by the curators of the museum and ZegnArt Public. A separate gallery space gives visitors an opportunity to see the proposals for projects that might have been.

Reena Kallat's installation at Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum (detail)

Reena Kallat’s installation at Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum (detail)

A gargantuan effort, this project ties into the Museum’s focus on the contemporary. Under director Tasneem Mehta, the museum has been host to a series of curated exhibitions in which contemporary artists are invited to respond to the Museum’s collections. Among several artists who have exhibited here are this year’s Skoda Prize winner, LN Tallur, Ranjani Shettar and Sudarshan Shetty.

Reena Kallat's installation at Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum (detail)

Reena Kallat’s installation at Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum (detail)

Read more about ZegnArt Public.

Hena Kapadia is a Mumbai based art professional, who has a Master’s Degree in Modern and Contemporary Art World Practice.

JITISH KALLAT | Ian Potter Museum of Art at The University of Melbourne

January 3, 2013

Medha Kapur shares a note on Jitish Kallat’s first solo exhibition in an Australian museum.

Melbourne, October 2012 to April 2013: Renowned contemporary artist Jitish Kallat reconfigures his remarkable installation, Circa, first produced for the Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai. Circa was created as a response to the museum’s history and archives – a playful exhibit that appropriated the buildings architecture and intervened in the display cases.

Circa is Kallat’s first solo exhibition in an Australian museum, the Ian Potter Museum of Art. This exhibition is conceived as an evolving narrative; an experiment of multiple interventions across several spaces within the institution. Here the artist reshapes the work against the structure of the museum and the antiquities in its collection.

Ian Potter Museum of Art

Ian Potter Museum of Art

Over the course of the six month exhibition, which is on view from October 2012 to April 2013, some works will appear for a few days, while others will remain on display until the end of the exhibition. Still others await conception when the departure of interventions makes space for them as part of an evolving entry and exit of ideas.

Kallat has skillfully constructed a sculptural conversation within the museum in order to explore notions of duration and restoration, and evoke unexplained narratives. Kallat’s interventions include a 120-part sculpture titled Circa, which evokes bamboo scaffolding; two interventions using mirrors, titled Footnote (mirror 1) and Footnote (mirror 2); drawings on the glass of museum vitrines; a video projection on the building’s facade; and sound and inscriptions of found text on the walls of the gallery. Kallat’s interventions in the Classics and Archaeology Gallery are installed in relation to a display of ancient Indian carved stone sculptures and colonial-era maps from the University of Melbourne as well as private collections.

Jitish Kallat, ‘Footnote’, 2012

Jitish Kallat, ‘Footnote’, 2012 © Courtesy Jitish Kallat Studio Photo: Viki Petherbridge, courtesy the Ian Potter Museum of Art Exhibition

Jitish Kallat: Circa

Jitish Kallat, ‘Circa’, © Courtesy Jitish Kallat Studio, Photo: Viki Petherbridge, courtesy the Ian Potter Museum of Art

Jitish Kallat, 'Prosody of a pulse rate', 2012

Jitish Kallat, ‘Prosody of a pulse rate’, 2012 unfired stoneware, wheat grain © Courtesy Jitish Kallat Studio Photo: Viki Petherbridge, courtesy the Ian Potter Museum of Art Exhibition

On 11 September 2010, Kallat presented a landmark solo exhibition, Public Notice 3, at the Art Institute of Chicago. His site-specific work brought together two events: the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, and the First World Parliament of Religions which took place on 11 September 1893 in what is now the Art Institute of Chicago building. The basis of Public notice 3 was an inaugural speech delivered by Swami Vivekananda at the Parliament calling for an end to fanaticism and a respectful recognition of all traditions of belief through universal tolerance. In 2011, Kallat presented Fieldnotes: tomorrow was here yesterday, an important project that explored the history and architecture of the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai, one of the oldest museums in India.

Jitish Kallat. Circa from Fieldnotes: tomorrow was here yesterday. 120-part sculpture. Partial installation view at the Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai. 2011. Image Courtesy: http://www.asialink.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/663382/Lemuria2.pdf

Jitish Kallat. Circa from Fieldnotes: tomorrow was here yesterday. 120-part sculpture. Partial installation view at the Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai. 2011.
Image Courtesy: http://www.asialink.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/663382/Lemuria2.pdf

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BMW Guggenheim Lab: Mumbai

December 20, 2012

Medha Kapur of Saffronart shares a note on the BMW Guggenheim Lab’s latest outpost in Mumbai.

BMW Guggenheim LabMumbai: A collaboration between the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the BMW Group, the BMW Guggenheim Lab is a travelling mobile laboratory intended to heighten urban consciousness. This well-meaning project began its journey in 2011 in New York, and will visit eight other cities worldwide. Part urban think tank, part community center and public gathering space, the Lab is a global initiative that gets people involved in and inspired about urban planning, art and ideas that will better their environment and community. The project is led by international, interdisciplinary teams of emerging talents in the areas of urbanism, architecture, art, design, science, technology, education, and sustainability.

The theme for the BMW Guggenheim Lab’s first two years is Confronting Comfort. The Lab will explore how urban environments can be made more responsive to people’s needs, how people can feel more at ease in urban environments, and how to find a balance between notions of modern comfort and the urgent need for environmental and social responsibility.

After hitting the streets of New York and Berlin, the Lab arrived in Mumbai in December 2012 and will run through January 20, 2013. Organized in collaboration with the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, the Lab will feature free programs including film screenings, tours, talks, and design projects at the museum and at multiple sites throughout the city.

The Mumbai Lab Team, an international group of experts and innovators, has created a series of projects, studies, and design proposals that reflect Mumbai’s unique conditions and challenges, in addition to neighborhood-specific public programming in satellite locations. The Lab Team includes Aisha Dasgupta, a British demographer based in Malawi; Neville Mars, a Dutch architect based in China; Trupti Amritwar Vaitla, an architect and urban transport designer from Mumbai; and Héctor Zamora, a Mexican artist based in Brazil who works extensively in public space.

Aisha Dasgupta, Neville Mars, Hector Zamora, Trupti Amritwar Vaitla.Image Coutesy: http://www.bmwguggenheimlab.org/

Aisha Dasgupta, Neville Mars, Hector Zamora, Trupti Amritwar Vaitla.
Image Coutesy: http://www.bmwguggenheimlab.org/

Mumbaikars keep an eye out for the activities organised as part of this incredible, interactive venture. In the long run it is very important for us to speak up and think about our city much more!

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