JOIN USA new cultural exchange project, ‘Sleep on the Left Side’ is bringing the artworks of three leading contemporary Australian artists to India. Kate Daw, Emily Floyd and John Meade who have spent time in India are showcasing their latest creations influenced by their experiences and the people they have encountered.
The exhibition takes its title from the Cornershop song of the same name and alludes to the dualities, dichotomies and the sense of politic that each of the artists engages in different ways and through different sets of relations and conditions. Kate Daw through everyday artifacts and narratives, Emily Floyd through social politics and John Meade take particular historical monuments as his starting point.
According to John, his creation is based on his travelling experiences in India. “Travel broadens the mind but travel in India broadens the heart also and balance between the two is essential. As a sculptor I work with form, colour, surface and volume. India encourages me to take risks with these elements because each day spent here is vivid, complex and beautiful.”
Brought to India as part of the Oz Fest, the biggest Australian cultural festival ever staged in India, ‘Sleep on the Left Side’ has been curated by Vikki McInnes, Director, Margaret Lawrence Gallery.
Another artist also shares his experience, “I first came to India in 1995 as an artist in residence at the Faculty of Fine Art, MS University, Baroda. As a young artist, I was struck by the experience of being independent, alone in a new country and the sense that the future was unknowable and open. My current work revisits this place and time, as well as includes thoughts and feeling of today, as well as including paintings of Indian and Western floral designs.”
Through this project, Kate, Emily and John hopes to extend their own cultural and artistic understanding of the places and times each have inhabited. It is a project that endorses reflection and contemplation as well as a desire to foster ongoing dialogue between the two nations.
The exhibition which comprises sculpture, text, sound and video as also paintings opened at Seven Art, Greater Kailash - II mid-December and will run till January 19. The gallery is closed on Tuesday, 1 January.