Visual Art Collective

Visual Art Collective (VAC) is a charitable trust registered in Bangalore that is operated from 1Shanthiroad Studio/ Gallery, consisting of a non-for-profit art gallery and residency studios for local and international artists. VAC is administered by a four member Board that oversees the management of the 1Shanthiroad space and allocation of funds. 16 years ago, 1Shanthiroad emerged from a need to emancipate art practice in Bangalore beyond the confines of primary art market and extend artistic interactions into a larger network of artists and communities. It aimed at transforming public art by focusing on process rather than product. 1Shanthiroad, under the purview of VAC, has been regularly hosting lectures, artist talks, exhibitions, film screenings, book launches, artists’ residencies, music events, dance performances and panel discussions over the years. 

In the Curated Artistic Engagements under Project 560, VAC will conduct eight different art projects in Bangalore in fifteen months. 

Project 1 is an art exhibition titled City as Site, in which six artists selected through an open call, would respond to the idea of city as a palimpsest. Working with images collaged together, of the contemporary juxtaposed with the past, it will look into the personal and political histories of the city. 

Project 2 is a comics and zine-making workshop titled Written on the City, in which young artists will be taken for a walk in the city with established artists followed by a brainstorming session. Bangalore based comic artists like Appupen, Anil Kumar and Amitabh Kumar will be involved along with the collective Paagal Canvas to mentor young artists to weave stories on Bangalore and its formation - those harvested from folk tales, history, oral traditions, and imaginative contemporary science fiction. The young artists will  be encouraged to find their own voice and language in their work.

Project 3 is titled Bangalore/Bengaluru-Picture Postcards - A Contemporary Retake in which 10 photographers will work with new images of change and conflict in the city. They will relook at old postcards and photographs of the city’s landmarks from the archive and juxtapose them with contemporary photographs/images. This will trigger curiosity and comparison of the then and now, memory and loss of the city’s social and cultural landscape. This will be a collaboration between these photographers and graphic designers. 

Project 4 is titled Bangalore Mapping Project, which involves looking at archival maps of Bangalore and reproducing them on clothes. These cloth-maps will be exhibited in public spaces like parks, where the public will be free to interact with the maps through stitching colour-coded knots that will result in a public art event and conversations. 

Project 5 is titled Tree for Life involves children and young adults drawing trees that they can identify botanically and locating them in the landscape of Lalbagh or Cubbon Park. 

Namma Ooru, Namma Jana is the title of Project 6, which can be translated as Our Place, Our People. This is an interactive community project that will document the public through photographs and record their origin as well as their aspirations for the city. This will be a collaboration between photographers and the public where the professional portrait will be digitally transferred to the mobile phones of the sitter, or a digital photograph will be given as a gift for participation.  

Project 7 is titled Lalbagh Tree Guide - a collaboration between Abhishek Khan, a Bangalore-based graphic designer and botanical experts, to create a digital guide on selected trees in Lalbagh, as an open source movement for different experts on botany to contribute. 

Project 8 is a curatorial project titled Revisiting Rumale, in which a group of young art history students will be mentored by Suresh Jayaram, to curate a show of paintings by the impressionist landscape painter Rumale Chennabasaviah (1910-1988) along with the botanical drawings of the trees he painted. It will be held in Rumale’s home/ studio in Rajajinagar. A digital print version of the exhibition will travel to Lalbagh/ Cubbon Park, as an attempt to revisit the legacy of and pay homage to a modernist painter of the city.  

In each of these projects, methodologically, VAC will make use of community art, workshops, collaborations, mentorships and participatory art in order to activate these events thus making processes and outcomes manifestations of collective approaches. VAC’s deliverables to IFA with the final reports will be a detailed textual and illustrated document of the curatorial process and outcomes, photo and video documentation of the events, comic, maps, botanical guides and exhibition catalogues. 

IFA felt that it is important to entrust VAC with this Project 560 grant, as 1Shanthiroad has been a platform that has activated the arts and cultural scene in the city of Bangalore for nearly two decades, and this grant would enable them to extend their curatorial practice to deeply engage with the city, outside the confines of the studio gallery.