While working on them, I took the liberty to work freely, without preconceived narrative or definitive meaning. The process involved creating in a style of free association, in an attempt to create a sort of ‘compositional gibberish’, abstracting both time and space, articulating spaces of both anxiety and dysfunction.

 

The works are created in an analogue collage medium.

The book is from the series titled “Red Brick Residency Project” and measures 7.5 x 8.5 inches (Book Size)

This work became a way to archive the building’s surroundings, objects and memories.

 

The technique of cutting and pasting materials together has played an essential role in the formal resolution of many works. To me, the medium of collage acts like a springboard, a model for more extensive work in painting or sculpture. The fragment can be a bit of a newspaper or a theatre ticket, a found object or a readymade one. The fragments themselves propose a dislocation in time and place.

 

The images take off from the photos I clicked at the house named the Red Brick Residency at the Sarat Bose Road, Kolkata, while others were collected from the internet and local newspapers and magazines. The images created are heavily invested in the exploration of materials with rice papers of varied transparency and translucency, which I’d bought from the Baithakkhana Paper Market. To me, the creative process synthesised the disciplines of painting, drawing, photography, and collage into a cohesive whole. The images are also an overflow of information of sorts, conveying multiple viewpoints simultaneously, in an attempt to communicate the intensity of the city. In essence, the results are both inexplicable and familiar.

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Text Edited by Tom Vater at Kolkata, 2019.

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