Art Plural Gallery is pleased to launch its Emerging Artists Programme with the solo exhibition of Indian artist Siddhartha Tawadey. Titled Siddhartha Tawadey: Sans Souci, the exhibition comprises twelve fine art photographs. The exhibition will run from 7th August to 7th September, 2012.
Art Plural Gallery established the Emerging Artists Programme in early 2012 to promote the work of promising artists at an early stage of their career. The selected artist is offered his first solo show in the unique space of the gallery, the publication of an exhibition catalogue in his namesake, and the possibility of fringe events in partnership with educational or social institutions. The Emerging Artists Programme is inclined towards artists with a distinctive identity, and who have a unique visual language to put forth critical content in their oeuvre. Art Plural Gallery’s commitment to emerging artists is made possible thanks to the support from corporate partners Gereje Corporate Finance and Vandaalen Wealth Managers, private partner Ian Dunderdale, as well as official sparkling partner Chandon. “We see it as our commitment to the regional arts scene to propel the careers of up-andcoming artists,” comments Frédéric de Senarclens, CEO of Art Plural Gallery. “Siddhartha Tawadey is a talented artist and we are very proud to share his compelling and evocative works with a larger audience.”
Siddhartha Tawadey is the first artist to be exhibited under this programme. Hailing from Calcutta, India and educated in London’s Central Saint Martins, Tawadey’s multicultural experiences are the primary fodder for his photography. Though rooted in the ordinary, his images evoke the realm of memory, desolation and existentialism. His oeuvre is a multifaceted contemplation on the relationship between our physical environment and internal psyche, across boundaries of space, time and cultures.
At Art Plural Gallery, Tawadey will be premiering his photography series Sans Souci, literally translated from French as ‘without worries’. Shot in an abandoned mansion on an undisclosed location, Sans Souci creates an ambiguous space in which to explore notions of beauty, memory and history. The series of twelve prints present a compelling portrait of a place in time and a way of life at once fading and being reinvented with each new season. Poetic focus on relics of an indelible past draws from the viewer a sensation or memory, allowing fluid narratives to form in a visual setting of stasis and decay. Making historical reference to the summer palace of the same name of Prussian King Frederick the Great, who wished to live out his personal and artistic interests there ‘sans souci’, Tawadey wanted to create his own palace of artistic interest and illusion through this inspiring residence.
“I have an inclination in my art to delve into history and recover the old, the tarnished, the rusted, the unnoticed and bring it back to life. To claim a ruin is often to exalt it,” says Tawadey. “Beauty is often hidden in the most unlikely of spaces and the series wants to uncover it, through the imagery of the mansion as an art object.”
The artist will be revealing the conceptual details of Sans Souci at the Artists’ Talk, Space for Conversation, on Thursday, 16th August at the exhibition space. He will be discussing the “sabi” notion of beauty, and ideas of space, history, memory and transience that underlie the mystery of Sans Souci.
For more information, please visit the gallery's exhibition page.
