Ashish Avikunthak returns periodically to his personal footage archive and frequently uses the same images in different films. He treats his footage with the reverence an archaeologist might have for an excavated site. He is preoccupied with Indian religious, philosophical and pictorial traditions, and treats these in a unique fashion which is neither reverential nor satirical.

Ashish Avikunthak's "Vakratunda Swaha" was shown at Chatterjee & Lal in Mumbai, in May and June 2010.

The work in BROWNation draws on official government photographs and posters, virtual architectural images, and Bollywood and arthouse cinema. The project encompasses digital, manual, material, and monumental worlds; it merges visual spectacle with socio-political concerns.

Vishal K Dar’s “BROWNation” was shown at Gallery Espace in New Delhi in October 2010.

The recent works of Arunkumar H. G. explore the concept of land and all that it entails and elaborates upon: metaphors for the human and social bodies; questions of ownership and usage; the migration of rural populations to urban centers; environmental consciousness and abuse; the production and distribution of food and the resulting consequences of health, markets, real estate and waste management. His solo exhibition consisted of sculptures in varied materials: sugar, silicon, wood, polythene and steel.

Arunkumar H.G.’s “Tract” was shown at Nature Morte in New Delhi, in September and October 2010.

Jitish Kallat has made several interventions within the space of the Bhau Daji Lad Museum: intricately carved bamboos that resemble scaffolding, a Tristan Tzara poem on the walls, neon-lit Roman numerals along with several seminal art works spanning his career. Kallat’s latest solo show is conceived as an open laboratory where, during its five month run, Kallat will continue to engage in an extended conversation with the collection of the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum, its architecture and its library. One of the areas of focus has been the pre-history of the museum. In the library and in the Maharastra State Archives, Kallat has been trying to trace a violent episode in the life of the museum at the moment of the Great Indian Mutiny that threatened its near extinction, before it was moved from the Town Barracks to its current location in Byculla.

Jitish Kallat’s ‘Fieldnotes: tomorrow was here yesterday’ is being shown at Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai and will continue to be on show till October 10th, 2011.

Settings in Kolari’s black-and-white photographs vary – coalfires that continue to spew poisonous fumes, a valley of enchanting beauty now forever scarred by strife, a coastline that lies ravaged by a monstrous wave – but in each instance he brings to light the human face of the tragedy. Kolari consciously shoots using subdued light, human suffering being the underlying motif of his body of work. Given Kolari’s anxiety to don the role of a chronicler, the adoption of a picture-narrative format is unsurprising. Each photograph is accompanied by text that is carefully researched and puts the life and times of the subject into perspective

Srikanth Kolari’s “thereafter… Journeys in Jharia, Kashmir and the Tsunami Coast (Tamil Nadu)” was shown at Institute of Indian Contemporary Art in Mumbai in July 2010 followed by other venues in Bangalore, Kolkata and Delhi.

Madhuban Mitra and Manas Bhattacharya’s collaborative photographic project explores the ruins of India’s first and only still camera factory, National Instruments Ltd. in Jadavpur, Kolkata. From the late 1980s, the company dissolved its workforce, was declared a sick industry. At the time it was shut down, the factory had been developing the National Reflex 2000, which would have become India’s first SLR camera. Today, the place where the camera was born is a silent, eerie and dusty repository of broken camera shells, spare parts and debris. In the absence of the workers, the factory bristles with objects of personal significance scattered on worktables and in the workers cupboards. Rather than invoking a nostalgia for that which is disappearing, the project attempts to excavate a certain history of labour and of technology and their slow but inevitable passage.

“Through a Lens, Darkly” was shown at Photoink in New Delhi, from December 2010 to February 2011.

Nai’s preoccupation with unusual textures began in the year 2000, when his father owned a small wholesale business selling jute cloth. Nai evolved a method of incorporating the actual jute into his paintings by drawing on paper; scanning and digitally manipulating the drawn images; projecting and tracing these onto jute stretched over canvas; and replicating the drawings as patterns on jute through a painstaking removal of threads. Pushing his practice further, Nai utilized the jute threads left over from these ‘paintings’ to create his very first sculptures. Taking forward his preoccupation with textures, Nai transferred one of his most intricate drawings onto the wall of his studio, making the wall look like it had been scratched by a sharp object. He controlled the light and dark areas aided by Photoshop, and the process led to his actually painting the fragile illusion onto a wall of the gallery for his solo exhibition.

Manish Nai’s “Extramural” was shown at Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke in Mumbai, in August and September 2010.

Sumedh Rajendran’s latest exhibition offers a series of stimulating works that deal with demarcations in domestic life. They are a reflection of Rajendran’s belief that, while we often see, we still fail to gauge the consequences that our fears and anxieties can have on our lives. The works make references to these changes, which propelled by fear, contribute to redrawing of existing socio-political vulnerabilities and even faiths. With this body of work, Rajendran attempts to explore these shifts in perceptions, beliefs, human behaviors and value systems that guide our life patterns.

Sumedh Rajendran’s “Dual Liquid” was shown at Vadehra Art Gallery in New Delhi, in September and October 2010.

RAQS Media Collective’s most important art work in the current show is a two-screen video installation that writes an oblique narrative of the relationship between metropolises and the world in counterpoint to Rosa Luxemburg’s ‘The Accumulation of Capital’, her critique of the global political economy,. RAQS trawls through a haunting, dream-like landscape straddling Warsaw, Berlin and Bombay/Mumbai to produce a diptych for video which is part-natural history, part-detective journal, part-forensic analysis, part-cosmopolitan urban investigation and part-philosophical dialogue so as to offer a considered and personal reflection on possibilities for radical renewal in our times. Also in the show were a series of photographs, sculptures from found objects and a light installation.

RAQS Media Collective’s “Capital of Accumulation” was shown at Project 88 in Mumbai, in October and November 2010.

Urban panoramas and their haphazard growth and deterioration are the references that drive the impulses of Sujith S.N.’s works. Through his works he aspires to explore architectural forms that create the ominous skylines of modern Indian cities. His paintings map the changing rhythms of urban landscapes in the modern times. By appropriating visually arresting images of contemporary urban life, Sujith attempts to explain the moments where architecture becomes political. In doing so, he specifically tries to address questions about the disciplinary powers and regulatory mechanisms of modern cities.

Sujith S. N.’s “Map is not the Territory” was shown at Latitude 28 in New Delhi, from September to November 2010

Paula Sengupta’s current body of work represents an eclectic mix of media; from serigraphy to woodblock printing, from nakshi kantha to appliqué, from table linen to almirahs. Memory and discovery merge in this show, bringing to the forefront questions about collective identity, history and about documentation. Paula Sengupta visited her ancestral home in Bangladesh and returned with an eerie sense of belonging, and an equally odd sense of alienation. The exhibition is an autobiographical exploration of a past never lived, yet one that is in need of recollection; a personal search for roots, a celebration of identity and the making of a public memoir. Merging the personal with the political, Sengupta’s body of work insightfully explores the role of public memory and re-discovers events that produced history more than half a decade ago.

Paula Sengupta’s “Rivers of Blood” was shown at Chemould Prescott Road in Mumbai, in August and September 2010.

In Aditi Singh’s latest solo exhibition, the charcoal rubbings and inky stains are darker, less ethereal, some almost violent in their outpouring. Singh has mastered the art of abstracting the recognisable image—most of her imagery comes from flowers, from nature—and she goes between holding onto something that can be recognised, and the abstraction of it. Some works are soaked through with black ink, others erased and then rubbed over. Even when restrained—in a few, the pencil has barely nicked the paper—there is an edge of violence to the discipline.

Aditi Singh’s “Let it be a Heaven of Blackred Roses” was shown at Chemould Prescott Road in Mumbai, from December 2010 to January 2011.

Srinivasan’s works, often humble artifacts, exhibit unusual behavior by challenging thresholds of human perception or activating an environment unexpectedly. She makes responsive entities: toys, tools, devices and installations, which are incomplete without human participation. They are evidences of ephemeral activities and entities. They remain unfulfilled without human presence. To this end, her studio practice discovers, assesses and restructures information held in a material or a situation – glass, spices, emergent technology and human gesture.

Anjali Srinivasan’s “Of Shifting Natures” was shown at Sridharani Gallery in New Delhi, in January 2011.