To express is a basic human need, fulfilling a desire to communicate. In the arts, the medium of clay has been a basic material used universally in all cultures all over the world. It is so various and adaptable that each culture and each succeeding generation finds in it a new means of expression. In the course of contemporary art practice, the potent symbolism of using clay has been of my interest, particularly in addressing issues that are relevant today.
In this work I want to present the premise of making art with public participation from all walks of life, coming together to make a collective expression, affirming to their belief in existence of unity in diversity. A ball of clay is to be offered to each willing participant who in enclosing into a fist ends up creating an impression of the enclosed palm as their own identity. Everyone is able to make the shapes as they are guided by their own action and their palms act as individual moulds, requiring no skill of `art making` techniques. Authentically, the clay ball picks out their individual fine lines in the making. A signature is taken separately on paper along with their occupation and place of origin details to record and acknowledge in making of the work. These fist pebbles are to be collected in the course of the year (initiated August 2010), fired in kilns to stoneware temperatures and eventually displayed/expressed as a riverbed.( November 2011, Gallerie Alternatives, Gurgaon)
I do look forward to participation from everyone and seek support in crossing over from my artist’s space into incorporating the everyman’s. Will such participation by the non artist add to its appreciation or wider understanding of such non representational work that some art has developed into in addressing today’s time? Will the use of a ‘traditional’ material like clay transcend barriers and association to function and craft and be applauded its legitimate contemporaneity of expression? Will it dialogue on the issues of skill required or hired in making art today? Most importantly, what is the purpose of art making today if it is not understood by the common man even though it may be aptly speaking of Him?
Will it make a difference to reach out in the making of this work? Beggaring focus on the increasing intolerance today in our society, fragmented by discrimination, race, regionalism, gender, caste, class, color, creed, greed………
Is Unity in society `water under the bridge`?
Thank You ---- a tenuous stream of collective pebbles
Trupti Patel, November 2011, Vadodara
As a student artist, Trupti Patel was amazed that despite a living tradition of Indian terracotta, fired clay was not accepted by contemporary art establishments. However, it didn’t diminish Trupti’s feeling for clay with regenerative powers and earthy nature. For her, concept and reality of ceramic offer practical participation and unique material transformation. Her dedication and persistence present a meditative perusal of clay, be it modelling for plaster mould, working with terracotta or thrown shapes or building figures, in moulded and modelled earthenware or stoneware to realize conceptual, practical and socio psychological relationship of the self and culture of people adoring rituals of the forms and functions in society.
The present work, Collective, presents a symbolic will of widening participation from a variety of people as a metaphor of cultural renewal. This work differs from her installation 101 Sips… Walking, seen as a spiritual journey of emblematic oblation to mother nature with spiral of 101 ladles made in 2000-04.
Trupti’s images exert a mystic vision with symbolic function of ritual significance as she moulds, marks, pushes and paints the human figure like a meter. Her exploration of clay, lends substance to her images through an array of works as small or life size pieces be it vessels or paper which offer allusions of space, people and society. Trupti’s care and concern reveal rhymes and reality of all consuming fire toughening her curiosity and desire for collective participation of people in creative endeavours.
Trupti Patel was born in Nairobi and brought up in Baroda and Mt. Abu, before obtaining her Masters in Sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda (1974-1982). In 1983-85, the British Council and Charles Wallace Scholarship allowed her to pursue an M A in Ceramics at the Royal College of Art in London before she began her work as a freelance artist until her return to Vadodara in 1997.
