· Mutable is curated by Sindhura D. M. with Annapurna Garimella.
· This landmark exhibition will showcase 70 years of Ceramic and Clay Art traditions from diverse artists all over India sourced from institutions, collectors, artists and traditional potters.
The exhibit will display the works of artists such as Gurcharan Singh who is acknowledged as the pioneer of Indian Studio Pottery, Devi Prasad, and Pondicherry’s Golden Bridge Pottery, its founders Ray Meeker and Deborah Smith, among others. It presents artists who have created artworks using clay like K. G. Subramanyan, Laxma Goud, Himmat Shah, N. N. Rimzon and Mrinalini Mukherjee among others. It highlights ceramic and clay practices as they have emerged out of some of India’s art schools. It also focuses on hereditary potters Giri Raj and Bhuvnesh Prasad in Delhi, the B. R. Pandit family in Mumbai, Khumbar Adul Ibrahim and Khumbar Ramzan Ali of Bhuj and organisations like Fabindia, Neerja International, Gwalior Pottery, Mitticool Clay Innovations among others.
Piramal Museum of Art has also developed an eclectic set of public outreach programming around Mutable, where different types of audiences can engage with the exhibits through different touch points. The exhibition will open with a curators talk and walkthrough, followed by a musical concert performed using clay instruments (Ghatam) by musician brothers K. Dakshinamurthy Pillai and K. Kalishwaran Pillai. Through lecture demonstration and performance, the artists will also shed light on the making of ghatam and its intersections with laws of nature.
Over the course of the exhibition, arts aficionados will be treated to a range of events that include book launches, panel discussions, artist talks and artist and collector-led walkthroughs with collaborators such as Marg Magazine, Penguin, Indian Ceramics Triennale and renowned ceramists such as Anjani Khanna, Aman Khanna, Vineet Kacker, Madhavi Subramaniam, Ray Meeker and many more.
Corporate employees and professionals in and around the Lower Parel area can partake in lunchtime play-with-clay de-stressers, games and a range of workshops on pottery, diya making and clay sculpting. School students and families can visit the exhibition and engage with the history and materiality of ceramics and earth through special curriculum-led programmes, guided tours and workshops.
Talking about the exhibit, Ashvin Rajagopalan, Director, Piramal Museum of Art said,
“The Piramal Museum of Art presents art in a manner that is engaging, informative and educative to a wide ranging audience. Previous exhibitions at the museum have showcased a variety of themes ranging from contemporary and modern artists to Indian craft. The current show 'Mutable' presents, for the first time, a wide range of practices using ceramic and clay art in India and focuses on the rich history of Indian ceramics in the post-Independence era. This landmark exhibition represents over 80 artists from across the country and has been a collaborative effort with the works being borrowed from various collections, institutions and artists.”
Talking about the exhibit, Curators, Annapurna Garimella and Sindhura D.M said,
‘Clay and ceramic are vernacular, classic, modern and plural; they change and endure. Mutable celebrates seventy years of creative work with these materials, presenting an Indian history of ideas, art, design and technology.’
About the Curators
Sindhura D. M. is an art historian and curator based in Bengaluru, India. She heads a branch of Jackfruit Research and Design. As part of Jackfruit, she has led curatorial and writing projects on the artists Parvathi Nayar and Seema Kohli for Gallery Veda, Chennai and the under-35 section of the New Delhi-based Gallery Espace’s 25th-anniversary exhibition, Drawing 2014. She also conceptualizes and manages Jackfruit on the Ganga, a boutique for Indian craft based in Kolkata. She is the lead curator of Mutable | Ceramic and Clay Art in India Since 1947 (Piramal Museum of Art).
Dr. Annapurna Garimella is a Delhi-based designer and an art historian. Her research focuses on late medieval Indic architecture and the history and the development of art worlds in India after 1947. She heads Jackfruit Research and Design, an organization with a specialized portfolio of design, research and curatorial. She is also the Founding and Managing Trustee of Art, Resources and Teaching Trust, a not-for-profit organization that runs a public art library, conducts independent research projects and does teaching and advisement for college and university students and the general public.
About the Piramal Art Foundation
The Museum and the Piramal Art Foundation is a philanthropic effort by Dr. Swati Piramal and Mr. Ajay Piramal and the Piramal family to collect, preserve, document and exhibit Indian art. The Foundation has a library with rare resources on art. The Foundation also regularly supports archival projects, arts management programmes and important fine art exhibitions.
Piramal Museum of Art
Part of the Piramal Art Foundation (PAF), the Piramal Museum of Art is a 7000 sq. ft. museum space that is a repository for important, historic and rare collection of Indian contemporary and modern art. Established in November, 2015, the Museum has presented curated exhibitions featuring the works of well-known Indian artists such as F.N. Souza, S.H Raza, M.F. Hussain, K.G. Subramanyan and Raja Ravi Varma, amongst others. These exhibitions have been critically acclaimed for their research intensive yet lucid approach and unique exhibition design.
Confirmed attendance of artists/lenders for the preview on 13 Oct 2017:
- Mudita Bhandari
- Anjani Khanna
- Rekha Goyal
- Anuradha Ravindranath
- Parul and Mooshdir from Rayden Design Studio
- Anand Patwardhan
- Sudhir Patwardhan
- BR Pandit and family
- Thomas Louis
- Abir Nachiket Patwardhan
- Shalini from The Guild