COURTS

Life term for killing wife
Our Correspondent

Sonepat, February 12
The District and Sessions Judge of Sonepat, Mr B L Singal, yesterday convicted an accused Raj Singh of Mokhra village in Rohtak district under Section 302 IPC and sentenced him to life imprisonment with a fine of Rs 5,000 or in default to undergo further two years rigorous imprisonment for murdering his wife Mrs Rajbala on the night of June 27, 2002 at Bindhrauli village in the district.

According to the prosecution story, the couple arrived in the house of Mrs Sheela, wife of Mr Ram Karan of Bindhrauli village on June 27, 2002 and went to sleep in a room at night.

During the night, the couple had a quarrel and Raj Singh assaulted his wife Rajbala with a knife. She raised a hue and cry and Mrs Sheela and her husband’s brother arrived there. They saw that Raj Singh was assaulting his wife with a knife and Rajbala was seriously injured. They locked both of them in the room and went to the house of the sarpanch in the village for giving information about the incident. The sarpanch immediately informed the police about the incident but the alleged assailant, however, managed to escape before the arrival of the police. Mrs Rajbala succumbed to her injuries when the police arrived.

A case of murder was registered against her husband, and he was consequently arrested in this connection.

Rape accused acquitted

According to another report, the judge acquitted a youth Rakesh of Sonepat in a case of kidnapping and rape registered under Sections 363, 366 and 376 IPC against him by the city police. According to the prosecution story, the accused had kidnapped two sisters Suman (19) and Seema (17) from their house on December 5, 2003 and taken them to Ashok Nagar (kutche quarters) and later on to Shimla where both of them were raped by the accused. After two days, the accused and both the sisters arrived at their houses.

Thereafter, the police arrested the accused and sent his challan to the court.

CULTURE

ARTSCAPE
A bouquet of flowerscapes
Ravi Bhatia

In the nature along with the master-Leonardo-da-Vinci - A painting by Sanjay Bhattacharya. Getting on With Life - the workmanship of Bikas Poddar.

All these flowers are for you’ is an exhibition of recent paintings of Gogi Saroj Pal, which began at Dhoomimal Art Centre in Connaught Place on February 10. The exhibition will be on till February 18.

According to critics, the visual exuberance of flowers carpeted on canvas is, of course, instantly striking in Gogi Saroj Pal’s recent works, but there are secrets within that are not as immediately revealed.

Women and flowers share many metaphors - of beauty, delicacy, sweetness, fragility, perfume, embellishment, eroticism and sensuality. In her image making, Gogi has made a shift from her composite mythic imagery such as the

bird form in Kinnari and the cow in Kamdhenu, but continues to express the `experiences of the feminine’. She has always believed that living traditions need to be challenged. Hence Indian traditional nayikas (heroines) get transformed in her hands by infusion of fantasy and satire. Gogi has painted the features of ethnic female in different skin shades to highlight her experience of having lived in different regions of India.

“It made me understand that ‘Indian’ is a plural concept and does not have any specific features, it is hardly uniform or homogenous,” she says.

In the present series, Gogi locates her nayika amidst the full-blossomed nature that seems a perfect place for retreat from the hectic world into a self-possessed space. For Gogi, a modern woman who herself was relocated from a small village in Himachal to the urbanity of New Delhi, there is a certain nostalgia about traditions that has been displaced with the accelerated pace of modern life. Certain values and aesthetics seem to have fallen into disuse.

Sufi & the Ochre Robe - By Satish Chauhan. Jeevan Dhara - A painting by Jayasri Burman.

One of these has been the tradition of `Shringara’ that highlighted the erotic and sensuous. The ‘rasa’ has been richly evoked through the fabric, dress, make-up, posture and surroundings. Gogi draws upon the established past artistic traditions, where there are fine examples of this ‘rasa’. For instance, in the Mughal and Rajput miniatures, the design and the intricate pattern within the fabric has enriched the two-dimensional form while the dress has highlighted the interplay of revealed and concealed sensuality.

Later, Gogi also found in Raja Ravi Varma a seductive sensuality in the oft-used transparent and slippery drapes of his heroines, suggestive of unspoken intentions and desires. And all this through their dress, posture and props.Gogi works in different mediums ... installation, painting, sculpture, graphic print, ceramics, jewellery, weaving, photography, computer, writing & limited edition books to achieve creativity. Since 1965, she has organized 31 solo exhibitions abroad and more than 75 group exhibitions in India.

She was invited to participate in the 5th and 8th Triennale-India in 1982 and 1994. On both occasions, she contributed her multimedia creativity, utilizing “installation” as a medium for expression.

She won an award in the Cleveland Drawing Biennial in 1996. She was awarded the National Award in painting by Lalit Kala Akademi in 1990. She also won an award in the International Biennial of Plastic Arts at Algiers in 1987 and the Sanskriti Award in 1980.

‘Nature and Life - At Play’

Art Alive Gallery is presenting `Nature & Life - At Play,’ an art show based on the theme of nature and life and their interplay, through the works of Yusuf Arakkal, Sanjay Bhattacharya, Maite Delteil, Jaysri Burman, Bikas Poddar and Jai Zarotia. The show has been curated by art consultant Sushma Bahl. It will be held for a week from 14th to 20th February 2004 at the Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre, in New Delhi, to be followed by a display at the Art Alive Gallery from February 22 to March 15, 2004.

Nature, in all its hues and manifestations has been a central theme for artists over the centuries. Nature nurtures and man depends on air, water, sun and vegetation for his existence. But the same life giving nature turns into a destroyer when rivers begin to overflow, storms start to turn things upside down or volcanoes erupt. And what games does man play with nature? How does man treat this life-giving resource?

All the artists have tried to communicate in their respective works this play of games and the relationship between man and nature.

Yusuf Arakkal’s works oscillate from abstraction to figurative, making both explicit and implicit links between man and nature. Sanjay Bhattacharya’s watercolours and oils explore the beauty of this intimacy and the impact nature has on human existence. Maite Delteil, who grew in rural France, tries to capture the beauty of flora & fauna and its life-giving resources.

Jayasri Burman looks at their interplay through mythological microscope while Bikas Poddar’s works focus on small stature and helplessness of man in contrast to the vastness of nature.

Jai Zarotia takes it to a dreamland where human existence merges in to leaves, trees, birds, and becomes part of the nature.

Oh! to be in London

An exhibition of drawings by F N Souza from the profile of decades that he lived and worked in London from February 11 to 28 at The Queen’s Gallery, British Council.

In leaving for London in 1949, Goan artist Francis Newton Souza was to find a fecund environment for his powerful work. His early work in India was a rebellious onslaught against the hypocrisy of religious institutions, the clergy and the conventional mores of society.

During the two decades that he lived and worked in London he was charged with a demonic frenzy in his work against the dehumanization of the individual and his total alienation from society. In his heads, his figures and his nudes he unsheathed the upper covering to lay bare the sinister evil that lurked underneath.

In many ways his macabre works had an affinity with artists like Francis Bacon and Richard Hamilton and shared their vision of the dehumanized man.

His work was widely shown and reviewed in London and found its way to several public and private collections.

His book, ‘Words and lines’, a collection of essays, was published in Britain in 1959. A biographical work on him, written by Edwin Mullins, was also published in 1962.

The forthcoming exhibition of drawings from the Nitin Bhayana collection, curated by Yashodhara Dalmia, covers the prolific decades that Souza lived and worked in London.

Exploring possibilities

Anant Art Gallery is presenting ‘Fleshed Out and Lifting Off: Painting into Relief,’ a group exhibition by Kriti Arora, Samit Das, Sheila Makhijani, Bindu Mehra and Mithu Sen from February 14 to March 7, 2004.

“Fleshed out and Lifting Off” explores the multiple paths that artists are taking to expand the techniques and dialogs of painting itself. Always starting with two-dimensional structures, these are then built upon, pierced, made transparent, or transformed in some way to bring them to something which is not quite painting, not quite sculpture, certainly collage and exciting new possibilities for relief. In part, these strategies may arise as a need to render painting both new and relevant, as it becomes increasingly competitive with and challenged by the disciplines of photography and video.

Mithu Sen explores the transparency of fabrics and the delicacy of materials to create strangely layered pools of mages and shapes. Samit Das extends the forms of the book, the photograph and the architectural model into an aggressive hybrid which can only be thought of as a new form of painting. Sheila Makhijani has begun to elaborate the delicate line work, organic forms and refined palette of her miniature paintings into three-dimensional works which use a range of unconventional materials. Kriti Arora’s works in ceramics have led her to mount them as sets into boxed frames, exploiting their iconic status and physical richness. Bindu Mehra combines drawings with webs of glue that hover above and cast shadows, which become part of the imagery. In all cases, the artists are unafraid to combine different types of materials, both conventional and unconventional, so as to create their own personal vocabularies and highly arresting art forms.

Duets

Apeejay Media Gallery presented a unique exhibition titled “Duets,” showcasing the works of renowned new media artists who have blended video art with live performance on February 7 and 8.

The exhibition comprised ‘Scheherazade at the White House’ by Ein Lal and Anusha Lal, ‘The Net of the Pas de Deux’ by Ella Christina Fiskum and Sudesh Adhana and ‘At Play’ by Smita Bharati and Lucia King.

Colours of Sufism

The Canadian Deputy High Commissioner, Mr. Brian Dickson, inaugurated Sufi and the Ochre Roabe, an exhibition of water colours by Satish Chauhan at the Santushti Shopping Arcade. The exhibition will continue till February 19.

A graduate from the Delhi College of Art, Chauhan started his painting career as a landscapist but was later drawn into the mysticism of Sufi teachings. His works are embellished with bright hues of orange, red, and green, apparently reflecting the “divine dispersal of rays emanating from an eternal fountainhead”.