Kolkata has had a spate of interesting exhibitions over the past month. Among these, the most celebrated event was Homelands, an exhibition of artworks at the Harrington Art Centre. The exhibition that had opened in the capital on January 24th, was on its second leg at Kolkata before moving on to Mumbai on April 28th and Bengaluru in June 20th. Curated by Latika Gupta, the exhibition consisting of 80 works by 28 “leading modern and contemporary” artists from the British Council’s art collection, was unique both in concept and content, seeking to project “the idea of a ‘homeland’ to reveal a rich plurality of meaning; ideas of belonging, alienation, history and memory”. Gupta effort reaches out to many who have moved across national boundaries when she states, “We are born in one country, we make another our home...inhabiting multiple places. What constitutes a homeland?” What indeed.

The exhibition showcases some leading contemporary artists from Britain, some of whom we are familiar with, such as David Hockney, Nathan Coley, Graham Gussain, Jeremy Deller and many others. It also gives us the opportunity to see the works of 8 Turner Prize winners and nominees and is a unique opportunity of a glimpse of the changing face of the changing face of art in Britain today. The exhibition also offers visitors the opportunity of meeting some of the artists who have travelled with the show to conduct workshops in association with Outset India, a body set up to support contemporary art in India.

Visiting Kolkata during the exhibition is Anthony Haughey, whose work is part of the collection. An artist and lecturer/researcher in the School of Media at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Haughey lives and works in Ireland and is known for his long-term ‘Disputed Territory’ project (2006), in which he uses large-scale colour photographs and sound/video installation pieces, to explore ‘conflicts over territory and identity in contemporary Europe and the aftermath of conflict in Ireland, Bosnia and Kosovo’. For researching his project, he has worked directly with members of the International Centre for Missing Persons in Bosnia. Visitors to the exhibition in Kolkata have the opportunity of meeting him.

Another artist whose is work can be seen in the exhibition is Grayson Perry, whose ceramic vases are now fairly well known to art collectors. In 2002, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam mounted a solo exhibition of his work and gave him a platform, which helped in his winning the Turner Prize in 2003 -- the first time it was given to a ceramic artist. He is known to have created a stir, when he attended the award ceremony dressed as a girl (his alter-ego Claire) wearing a little girl party frock. Trained at the Central Institute, Perry’s first exhibition of ceramics was in London in 1983. Perry, who was also interested in film as a medium, decided to choose clay, as a medium for ‘communicating his ideas about gender and society.’ He is known to have said that he had no real motivation to work in clay but chose pottery as, “artifice could be deployed to make the innocent or honest pot have a purpose and mean something”.

(The writer is a winner of many advertising design awards and a painter of repute)