Popularart - From Nehrus Democracy to the Networked Multitude Visual Art Exhibition Opening at the Nehru Centre London, UK May 25- 29, 2005

The artists of popularart play with the shifting nature of social, cultural and political forms in a globalised environment, using and blending different kinds of media, such as drawing, text, painting, performance, video and installation.

London, UK (PRWEB) May 8, 2005 -- May 25-29; the Nehru Centre, 8 South Audley Street, London W1K 1H F; the exhibition opens on Tuesday May 24, 6.30 pm;

Exhibition timings after inauguration: Wed - Sat from 2-8pm, and Sun from 12-4pm; viewing at other times by appointment only.
www.popularart.co.nr

Featuring the work of Galia Armeland, Caspar Below, Robert McKay-Forbes, Errol Francis, Roselina Hung, Mark Molloy, Parvathi Nayar, Kevin Quigley, Frank Selby, Simon Mitchell and James Melville Thomas, Dominic Thomas, Kelly Warman, Susie Wong and Oliver Walker.
The show is conceptualised and curated by Parvathi Nayar and Caspar Below.

popularart is an exhibition where a group of contemporary artists based outside India engage with a key idea of Indias first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru -- democracy -- in todays globalised setting. popularart underlines the belief that art is a way to raise provocative questions without proselytising: of the kind of people we are, and the community we live in.

The group of artists lives up to the high-level of globalisation: most of the contributors have a background in migration or life as an ex-pat. Their work engages with their social network and the shared experiences of their surroundings. For example Galia Armelands Sleeping draws on a memory of Indian railway stations, where individual identity in the collective is explored through multiple sleeping figures; in Collective Fragments, the iconic image is questioned by Parvathi Nayar, who works with 16 Singaporean children to reconstruct an image of Nehru on 'boxes through fragments given to each of the children; Caspar Below recreates" the world within London in The Global Map of London, to comment on communal living conditions; Mark Molloys Democracy is Good ironically juxtaposes found images and text; Robert McKay Forbes plays with the democratic model of sharing in Games without frontiers and Kevin Quigley arranges a series of debates and drawing events in Drawing bridges.

The overclocking market dynamics changing almost any aspect of our art, community, identity and livelihood intensively influenced the curatorial process. Globalisation spreads through local structures around the globe in two very basic and general ways: The first is through establishing a network of structures organising power and the markets. Secondly, globalisation also means the emergence of new networks of communication and cooperation across nations allowing an infinite number of encounters. The latter can work as a potential check and balance to the hegemony of the former- one of the interests of popularart, but Art" need neither be a solution provider nor influence peddler -- its role is to open things up.

Nehru staked his claim for human growth in the idea of democracy -- a collective right of the people to live in the world of their choice. popularart offers a chance to actively foster an understanding between communities by the very nature of its method and content -- to use non-Indian artists (apart from the co-curator of the show Parvathi Nayar, based in Singapore) to talk to a largely Indian audience at the Nehru Centre, about the larger reach and relevance of a core Indian idea -- democracy -- and thoughts about one of Indias founding fathers -- Nehru. Its a cliché to talk of it as a meeting of the so-called first and third worlds: rather it is seen as a way of fostering understanding between disparate communities, of different groups of people in and around London, the community of resident and visiting artist, the resident and visiting Indians, audiences wishing an understanding of the two, the middle class urbanite and the out-there-on-the-edge artist.

Artists occupy a strange role as incidental researchers" providing an unrequested service -- the artwork, the exhibition -- thereby converting the audience into accidental experimenters and producers of meaning. A thematic" collective exhibition created by artists working out individual ideas is itself an interesting macrocosm of the singular individual moving in a realm of movements.

As is the social organisation that Negri/Hardt explain as (t)he multitude is composed of a set of singularities - and by singularity here we mean a social subject whose difference cannot be reduced to sameness, a difference that remains different." (Negri/Hardt). If planning has failed to represent us democratically, perhaps then, dis-organisation, drifting and improvisation are the keys to a peaceful future and holistic social change.

Choice is subjective, not objective and true, yet it originates from a network -- of ideas, influences, books and articles, conversations and encounters. Roland Barthes spoke of the Death of the Author, that no ideas are originary. In a sense its true -- the idea of the multitude builds on the classic idea of democracy, for example. But then again, being artists is to have the mandate to play with these ideas; to take them a little further, to places unintended, even to those whose existence was unsuspected at the beginning of the journey.

More information on the artists, the venue, the curators and the concept can be found on www.popularart.co.nr

Cobra Beer sponsors the exhibition opening of popularart. A publication accompanying the exhibition will be available on the opening night and throughout the show.

For interviews/use or request of low-res/high-res pictures contact
UK: Caspar Below +44 7762297456, institute@postmaster.co.uk
Singapore: Parvathi Nayar +65 96817814, parv@parvathinayar.com

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