The Southern Command

Contemporary in theme,the works of these artists are rooted in tradition. Sharan Apparao,director of Chennai-based Apparao Galleries,says,The rich heritage of the south provides stimulus to the artists. Sunitha Kumar Emmart,owner of Bangalore-based Gallery SKE,says the neighbourhood has become the perfect pad for artists. The pressures of the market are not looming on their heads, says Emmart.

Balasubramaniam,Shettar,Harsha,Thomas and Tallur have all come into their own in this environment. They have contributed to art,both in India and internationally. They also come from south India,but that is not what defines them. Each of them have a different vantage point, says Maithili Parekh,deputy director,Sotheby’s,with a focus on Indian art and business development for global Indian communities.

NS Harsha,42

NS Harsha hates the limelight with a passion,so much so,that he avoids being photographed when interviewed. I don’t like people to know me by my face, says the Mysore-based artist,who won the Artes Mundi in 2008. Visitors at Rome’s Maxxi museum last September had a rare opportunity to see him at work,when Harsha spent days painting its concrete piazza. The work titled Strands was a garland of over 700 faces,for which Harsha drew from traditional Indian miniature techniques and the contemporary social scene in India,with each figure engaged in a different action.

This wasn’t the first time Harsha made a site his canvas. In 2006,he was at the Singapore Biennale,painting a matrix of sleeping figures atop the Sri Krishna Temple and in Manchester,last year,he converted the John Rylands Library into a spiritual space where visitors could borrow garlands,like a book. The inspiration came from vishvaroopa darshana,a popular Hindu imagery in which the universe is depicted with one body and multiple heads. It merged the global with the local much like Harshas celebrated canvases Mass Marriage. Auctioned at Christies for HK$ 6.4 million (approximately,Rs 4.2 crore today) in 2007,it had scenes from Indian marriages to depict the complexity of human relationships. Last year,he was in Sujata village in Bodh Gaya,working with 300 children. Technically,I failed in science,so I joined art. It has been 14 years since I am involved in community projects. I feel it is just an extension of my studio, says the MS University,Baroda alumnus.

Inspired by masters Bhupen Khakhar,Gulam Mohammed Sheikh and Nilima Sheikh,his earlier work mainly depicted everyday realities while locating his larger concerns in Indias dialectics of internal and external identities. Harsha is now taken in by the idea of the absurd and meaninglessness.

Credit Line:Solos in London,New York,Japan,Bangalore; exhibited at Biennale Jogja,Indonesia; Sharjah Biennal; Singapore Biennale; Fukuoka Second Asian Art Triennial,Japan; Liverpool Biennial; Mori Art Museum,Tokyo; National Museum of Contemporary Art,Seoul,Ethnogaphy Museum,Geneva.

Navin Thomas,38

Navin Thomas finds art in objects discarded as trash it could be an old PCO telephone or a PA horn from a mosque. If the artist is to be believed,electronic junk has an afterlife that he salvages. He spends hours placing his finds with birds and insects to examine how they react to seemingly domestic magnetic fields. In the much-acclaimed 2010 solo,From the Towns End,transistors emitted white noise in a room where pigeons perched themselves on antennas and a floor fan metamorphosed into an insect trap with ultraviolet bulbs. It falls under the area of what I term electro-acoustic ecology,the ecology of things and how,you and I and everyone else co-exist within it, says the Bangalore-based artist. The project won him the Skoda Prize 2011 but also got him into trouble with environmentalists who accused him of violating animal rights. Thomas reaction is as unconventional as his art: Im grateful to the people out there saving elephants from being beheaded,and sperm whales from being sent to big tuna mincing mills,but as for the local vigilante,who live in their parents homes with a bunch of smelly cats,I suggest they leave home as soon as possible,and go out there into the world and save themselves first. The Skoda award took him by surprise,he says,I stood in the non-smoking section,had my drink made the way I like it and smoked a cigarette. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to sit up front,it looked a bit stiff, he says of the award ceremony in Delhi in January.

His first solo in 2004,In Transit,was an audio piece with music from across India,to document urban street music in the country. Delhi was represented by qawwali,Kolkata had poetry dedicated to the first train that comes to a village and Chennai’s notes depicted its infamous heat. In hometown,Bangalore,Thomas recorded blues music perhaps a choice dictated by memories from the early 90s,when he was part of a heavy metal band. Now,sonic art and ecology keep him occupied. It might not be commercially viable but Thomas is not driven by market diktats. I have always pretty much done as I pleased, he says. What made him turn to art in the first place? I was promised a life of no moral values,lots of pod resin and good feta,I was quick to sign the deed, he says.

Credit Line:Residency projects in France,the US and Sri Lanka. Exhibitions in Paris,Berlin,Vienna and Warsaw.

Alwar Balasubramaniam,40

Alwar Balasubramaniam’s work is the best introduction to the artist. After all,he moulds not just his thoughts in them,but also his physical resemblance. In 2002,he created a white fibreglass prototype of himself,sitting,with his head penetrating the wall; life-size busts safely ensconced in glass cabinets were cast two years later,in an untitled work. It reduces the gap between who I am and what I do, says the Bangalore-based artist.

While the realisation that he wanted to pursue art came early,it took three attempts to get admission in the Government College of Arts,Chennai. The interim period was spent in libraries,reading on European and Indian art. He trained as a printmaker ― which he studied in the UK and Austria ― but got attracted to sculptural installations due to the multi-dimensionality of the medium. A wall up to four feet is good but if it becomes 10 feet,it turns into a prison. One can only specialise as much,its important to explore, says Bala.

Metaphysics interests Balasubraminiam greatly. The urge to experiment has led to several fascinating works often bringing together science and aesthetics. Playing on the Biblical temptation of Eve and Newtons laws of motion was the 22-karat gold apple placed on an acrylic pedestal in In Energy Field (2006). Those tempted to touch it were to realise that it was wired. However,it was Balas disappearing act that left the art world in raptures. In 2004,in an exhibition titled Into Thin Air in New York,he cast a lifesized bust of himself in solid air freshener a material that slowly evaporated when exposed to air. In some ways,this also depicted Balas philosophy in life: Work is a byproduct of life,there are several more important things. The belief has stayed with him since college,when he met a swami in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu,whose teachings left a deep impact on his art. His next set of works reflect on nothingness. Even nothing can be beautiful, he says.

Credit Line:Solos in New York,Vienna,Cadaques,UK,New Delhi,Chennai; exhibited at Mori Art Museum,Tokyo; International Cairo Biennale; International Biennial of Drawing and Graphic Arts,Gyor,Hungary.

Ranjani Shettar,35

She holds the distinction of being the only living Indian whose work is part of the collection at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). When the contemporary museum inaugurated its Rooftop Garden in 2009,Ranjani Shettar’s Me,No,Not Me,Buy Me,Eat Me,Wear Me,Have Me,Me,No,Not Me was placed alongside stalwarts like Louise Bourgeois,Joel Shapiro and Ellsworth Kelly. The immanent aspects of her sculptures are central and the viewer is meant to discover,or realise,something that is manifested by them, says John Zarobell,former assistant curator of painting and sculpture at SFMOMA.

Long before he spotted Me,No,Not Me… the artwork made news at the Sharjah Biennale in 2007. Discarded cars were used as metaphors for consumerism,as Shettar wove baskets from metal strips that she salvaged from discarded automobiles in junk yards.

In her works,hand-moulded beewax balls and turmeric meets new-age media like stainless steel and silicon rubber. If she used neemwood in the 2003 work Transitions,in 2004,for In Bloom,Shettar approached craftsmen in Bangalore to make purple lacquered beads. In her first solo in Australia last month,at the National Gallery of Victoria,she displayed a teakwood wheel gleaming with orange tearshaped nodules. The title Flame of the Forest referred to the plant of the same name considered sacred by Hindus.

Less than 400 km away from the bustle of Bangalore,she finds inspiration in the forests of the Shimoga district,where she lives with artist husband Srinivas Prasad. The woods allow me to concentrate, she says.

Credit Line:Solos in New York,Singapore; New Delhi; exhibited at Museum of Modern Art,New York,Carnegie Museum of Art; Liverpool Biennial,Lyon Biennial,Sharjah Biennale.

LN Tallur,41

LN Tallur’s first international trip came in 1999,when he was invited to New York to receive the Emerging Artist Award at Bose Pacia gallery. Twelve years later,Tallur is a global icon,known for his towering installations. Critical acclaim for his work came early,even before he went to the Leeds Metropolitan University for his postgraduation in 2001-02. With Made in England: A Temple Designed for India an inflatable phallus-shaped Shiv temple he had indicated the nature of his art practice,which often borrows from Indian tradition and mythology,merging the past with the present and global with the local.

But Tallur dismisses claims that his career has been entirely without struggle. Back home,I tried to become a teacher unsuccessfully and struggled working full time as an artist, he says. Family reasons now make him shuttle between Korea and Karnataka. This year though,he spent months at the Bhau Daji Lad Museum,Mumbai,at the invitation of art historian Tasneem Mehta. The result of his engagement with the museum collection was the critically-acclaimed exhibition Quintessential,where Tallurs reproductions of 19th century artefacts depicted modern day concerns ATM was an anger therapy machine where the frustrated could vent off their anger while tugging a punkah. A museum normally exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment. I believe,when an object of art is museumised it creates a fifth dimension; which is a further addition to Einsteins fourth dimensions (time-space), says Tallur.

This wasnt the first time the MS University,Baroda alumnus had made spectators participants. One of his most travelled exhibitions is Chromatophobia: The Fear of Money. The central piece enables people to get rid of their phobia by nailing a coin on a wooden log pivoted by two statues of goddess Lakshmi. In December 2012,the work will be seen at the Asia Pacific triennale in Brisbane. Tallur,meanwhile,has a packed schedule. Lined up is a residency in Switzerland,participation in Art Basel and a solo in New York in January 2013.

Credit Line:Exhibited at Shanghai Biennale; Busan Biennale; Museum of Modern Art,Paris; World Socialist Forum,Brazil; The Armory Show,New York; solos at Seoul,New York,Mumbai,New Delhi,Cheonan