Artists recreate Bengaluru through street art

The city came alive through white blocks turned into apartments and  slabs turned into hoardings displaying advertisements that have been put up across Bengaluru.

The artworks are part of an exhibition celebrating the city’s public graphic art culture that is being held at the Venkatappa Art Gallery. The exhibition is being hosted by Art in Transit, a public art project  in collaboration with the Venkatappa Art Gallery Forum.

 The ten-day-long exhibition entitled ‘To scratch the surface’  that began on Sunday will see ten city-based mural and gra­phic artists come together to create artworks that sho­w­­­­case essence of the city. The artworks are a reflection of the artist’s perception of the city.

The artists  will recreate different aspects of the city through their artworks. The participating artists include Amitabh Kumar, Annirudh Abhyankar, Anpu, Archana Prasad, Arzu Mistry, Badal, Chandranath Acharya, Dead the Duck, Geechu Gallus, George Mathen, Guess Who, Murugan Arts, Poornima Sukumar, Rajkamal Arts (K Chinappa), Rabbit Hole Radicals, Shashidhara Adapa, Shilo Shiv Suleiman , Stallone , Ullas Hydoor and  Yash Bhandari.

As part of the exhibition the visitor will have a personal experience of the city through a virtual tour and will get an opportunity to know the artists and their stories through an audio recording of their interviews.

“The exhibition has been curated with an aim to bring the city’s  street art  within the four walls of a room. The visitor gets to personally experience the city called Bengaluru using virtual reality medium and audio tools  along with artworks that capture the city’s identity,” said Amitabh Kumar, curator of the exhibition and an artist.

“The artists are provided 25 blocks to create their artworks. They can use the blocks in any way they can. Each artist will showcase his/her art on respective days.  After they have displayed their art, the artwork on the slabs is erased and the same slab will be used by the next artist to showcase his /her work,” said Kumar who will be displaying his artwork at the exhibition.

“This is a great platform for us wherein all of us are presenting our definition of the city through our works and are able to engage with people and share our experiences.” said Yash Bhandari , an artist and member of  Geechu Gallus (loose translation for scribblers in Kannada ), a collective of street artists who showcased their works on Sunday.