artwork
city6
They are maps of Mumbai & Bombay both.
6 signifying the 6th largest populated city in the world.
7 volumes refer to the seven original islands…the 8th an unknown connection between all. The series is a sort of chronological depiction spanning all the way from the ‘primordial house or shelter’ (depicted in 1) and after slowly applying a series of layers representing ‘progress or complexity’ eventually arriving at 8.
9 doesnt exist in present time and but depicts the possible return to the primordial….the completion of a cycle or process.
They are constructed using processes that have built the city. Local carpenters & polishers, printers, ….artisan. They represent the importance of a means of production and involvement of various systems as well disturbing the traditional conception of the artist as sole creator or master of the work. The layers are stacked using recycled materials or ‘leftover waste’ which would have been discarded . In terms of its relationship to metaphor, the city6 is quite pristine and beautiful superficially in the eye of the spectator but behind the guise of its layers lies its true nature through which it is able to be presented.
city6 does not look anything like what we experience of our city but it contains all of it just the same.
The works opened at the Museum Gallery September 20th 2010 as part of a group show curated by the Fine Art Company.