All you really need is to be an artist.
From the skywalk on Kasturba Road, the pond around Venkatappa Art Gallery is visible, dotted with water lilies and surrounded by a large garden open to everyone. The guards don’t stop you as you enter. Even if you don’t buy the 25-rupee ticket to visit one of the permanent galleries on the first and second floors, you can go in and browse.
The ground floor is open to all — a large expanse sectioned off into three galleries and an auditorium. The doors open to Gallery One, the biggest space open to visitors and local artists, and on the day the LURU newsletter team visited VAG, the space belonged to Still Moving, an exhibition put up by former students of Chitrakala Parishath (CKP).
Home is where the art is
VAG was mostly empty, like galleries tend to be on random Friday afternoons. The space was a pocket of quiet in the chaos that the city often is, but its open courtyards, endless stone benches, and the smiling faces of the artists allowed us to browse — and really stay with the works of art on display. Our visit coincided with the visit of a Kannadiga family of four — a husband, wife, and two children under the age of 10.
The motley crew that we were, listened patiently as the security guard at Venkatappa’s gallery on the second floor decided to play guide and explain to the children why Venkatappa is important because of “how much he did” and that those really are his veenas on display, all big and grand. From Venkatappa’s life and works that showcase the pride of the state, the family (and LURU) climbed up to Hebbar’s gallery on the second floor, a reminder to one and all that modernism isn’t a thing that happened only in England to the English painters.
Vocally local
But while the permanent exhibits remain anchors, artists and the non-artsy folks visit VAG for the expansive ground floor that remains open to local artists in ways that private galleries often don’t. Latha, a First Division Officer in the Department of Archaeology, Museums and Heritage said that to have one’s work featured in one of the three ground-floor galleries, “you just have to be an artist.” She compared the rates offered to corporate organisations (that go into the thousands) to the 750-1,500 rupees that an artist has to pay per day. If you’ve done some work, the gallery is all yours. “Corporates have to pay a lot,” she emphasised, but this space belongs to the artist.
Artist Mohit Mahato, who recently completed a 10-day exhibition Great, As The Sun Goes Down with a group of Bangalore-based artists, described the day VAG finally opened to the public after a long renovation. “It was so fun to see that everyone was taking pictures of the empty wall, I could feel the happiness on them, that the fighting was real,” he added. VAG stands testament to the efforts of local Kannada artists who prevented the gallery from being privatised several years ago.
Earlier this year, Gallery One saw an exhaustive display of archival material from the years of the protest. From stay orders to lists of demands, the fight is written into the walls of the space — and you can feel it, every time you enter the gallery and no one stops you — it belongs to the public.
“After watching the exhibition of something, you can just walk, stick around outside. They have put benches and it’s really good. Like, I was sitting there till 8 pm. [After] the show got over and my friends had come, we just wanted to sit somewhere, and so I was like, where are we going?” Mohit laughed. They decided to just hang around there.
The final strokes
Akhila, one of the artists of Still Moving, sat in a corner of the gallery during our visit. As we entered the otherwise empty space, she stood up immediately and began to wait in case we wanted to speak about her work. She described how easy it was to rent out the space, for an amount of only 16,000 rupees for 10 days, compared to many private galleries that don’t necessarily have the option to begin with.
As we spoke, her hanging exhibit stood before us — an allegory on space and how one thinks of emptiness. She looked excited, “It’s in the centre of the city no,” she told us, describing the decent crowd they would usually see. Mohit later told us that his show saw some 150 people on a weekday, a number that’s fairly unusual for a space like this.
He described “[feeling] really good that [the artists] did it, they stood for it,” because now we have this space that we can go to any time, whether you’re someone who enjoys looking at art or making it.
The details: Venkatappa Art Gallery is on Kasturba Road and is open to visitors from 10 am - 5 pm. If you are an artist, head to the VAG office to enquire about rental charges.
Drishti Rakhra is the Senior Editor at LURU.
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