Dateline:
Bangalore
n

ew industries and galleries are making Bangalore
india’s fastest-growing centre of contemporary art
words Suman gopinath
bangalore is on the itinerary of nearly every curator who visits india today, and the city ranks
alongside erstwhile ‘leading’ centres Delhi and Mumbai. Bangalore’s emergence in the artworld has coincided
with the transformation of the city since the late 1990s from ‘pensioners’ paradise’ to ‘silicon valley’ – in fact,
probably as a result of it. Economic liberalisation and the proliferation of software companies have made
Bangalore one of the fastest-growing metropolises in Asia. The city has yet to come to terms with this change
– glass, glitz and opulence abound on the one hand; and contested spaces, the hardships of the dispossessed,
persist on the other. The material, architectural and cultural transformation taking place in the city has become
the subject of enquiry and practice among a number of artists who live, work and exhibit in this city.
Unlike Mumbai, which has a gallery district, in Bangalore only a small clutch of galleries exist within any kind
of proximity, most of them near the trendy Mahatma Gandhi Road and Brigade Road area: Galleryske in the
city centre; Time and Space; the photography gallery Tasveer; the Venkatappa Art Gallery; and further afield
but still in walking distance, the Crimson Art Gallery. Galleryske represents a number of artists who exhibit
internationally, such as Sheela Gowda, who works in installation and drawing. At a time when India is making
the headlines as a financial tiger poised to spring, her work reminds us that there also exists an India where
people are still fighting over borders and religion; where people still live on the margins, and a disenfranchised
migrant labour force lives permanently in transit in temporary homes.
Minutes away from Tasveer, whose name means ‘photograph’ in Hindi, is the public Venkatappa Art Gallery,
shaded by the canopies of the flowering trees of Cubbon Park, one of the oldest botanical gardens in the
centre of the city. The gallery is named after K. Venkatappa, a well-known Bangalore artist of the early
twentieth century who came from a family of court painters to the maharaja of Mysore. This year has been
designated Golden Karnataka – the 50th anniversary of the formation of Karnataka State (of which Bangalore
is the capital) – and there are plans in progress to transform the gallery into a lively art centre. The gallery is
currently hosting an exhibition of K.K. Hebbar, a post-Independence artist from Karnataka, on its first floor.
The largest private gallery in Bangalore is Sumukha, which opened in 1996 and expanded to its present 1,500-
square-metre space a year and a half ago. Sumukha works with both emerging and well-established Indian
artists. Recently Pushpamala N., a Bangalore-based photo-performance artist, showed her film Paris Autumn
(2006) there. Made when Pushpamala was on a residency in Paris, it is a work of fiction in the style of a gothic
thriller and draws inspiration from the story of Gabrielle Estrées, the mistress of the French king Henri IV, who
was killed days before she was to be made queen. The film’s action takes place at various locations in Paris that
Pushpamala, stroller and detective, assembles into a strange map. Past and present, fact and fiction, intermix
to produce a journey from the sixteenth century to the present using a montage of references from French art,
film and literature; in homage to Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962), it is made entirely from still photographs.

Soon Bangalore will have its own National Gallery of Modern Art, following Delhi and Mumbai, at the
Manickavelu Mansion, a crumbling but palatial colonial-style building that once belonged to the crown prince
of Mysore. The building is to be completed in the next year.
Artreview 162
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