The Skoda Prize 2011 Announces The Top Twenty

New Delhi, 21st September 2011: The Škoda Prize for Indian Contemporary Art announced the list of the Top Twenty Best Solo Exhibitions to be held in the country in the last one year. Out of 128 entries received from all across the country, the jury declared the top twenty finalists after much deliberation. The Longlist comprises of 20 contemporary Indian artists at various points of success in their career as well as working in a wide variety of media. It comprises of artists from all across the country; and ranges from artists who have been exhibiting for more than a decade to those who have only just had their debut solo exhibitions. The Škoda Prize Top Twenty 2011 catalogue will showcase the best of Indian contemporary art in the year 2010-2011 and will act as a leveler wherein artists who are yet to be famous will share space with India’s most celebrated artists.

With solo shows in London, Berlin, Chicago in 2010 Jitish Kallat, one of India’s most successful artists finds his way into The Škoda Prize 2011 Longlist with his solo show “Fieldnotes: Tomorrow was here yesterday” that is currently showing at Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai.  At the same time 27 year old Prashant Pandey’s debut solo show “Shelf-Life” at Gallery Maskara has found a spot in India’s best twenty. Pandey works with eclectic media: expired chocolate, urine, sweat, sugar, discarded cigarette buds. Navin Thomas who showed at Gallery SKE in Bangalore mixes science and art and 25 year old Dhruv Malhotra who had his debut solo at PhotoInk in New Delhi experiments with photography by shooting at night with long exposure to arrive at surreal landscapes of Noida. Ashish Avikunthak is the only artist on the list to work solely with film and video, although a number of others use video as part of a cross-media practice. Other celebrated names include L. N. Tallur, Reena Saini Kallat, Arunkumar H. G., RAQS Media Collective, Manjunath Kamath, Vishal Dar, Sujith S. N, and Sumedh Rajendran. Pooja Iranna who was included in the longlist last year is back this year as well, with another solo show in New Delhi. Manish Nai, a young artist who in particularly interested in textures makes his way into the longlist with “Extramural” at Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke in Mumbai. Aditi Singh and Paula Sengupta who has solo shows at Chemould Prescott Road in Mumbai are a part of India’s best twenty shows too. Making up the rest of the list are shows by Anjali Srinivasan and Srikanth Kolari and a collaborative photo project by Madhuban Mitra and Manas Bhattacharya.

The jury panel for the award is chaired by one of India’s most prominent philanthropist and art curator Kiran Nadar. Other Jury members include Pooja Sood, Director of KHOJ International Artists’ Association, Vivan Sundaran a renowned India contemporary artist. In addition to the eminent Indian jury members, renowned curator and director of the Migros Museum in Zurich.
Heike Munder from Switzerland will be a part of the final judging process.

Apart from the Jury Panel, there is also an advisory committee headed by renowned art critic, Girish Shahane. An Independent Writer based out of Mumbai, his articles on art, film and cultural politics have been published in leading newspapers and journals in India and abroad. He writes a fortnightly column for Yahoo! India.

Top 20 shortlisted artists will be featured in the Škoda Prize Catalogue and the artworks of the final three artists will be exhibited. The Škoda Prize patron Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council will offer a four-week residency each in Switzerland to the two runners-up of the The Škoda Prize 2011.

The final winner will be announced in January 2012 and shall be awarded Rs.10,00,000/- apart from earning the prestigious title of The Škoda Prize winner for the year 2011-2012.

Below are the Top Twenty Best of all:


1) Ashish Avikunthak
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.

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

3) Arunkumar H. G.
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 show at Nature Morte in New Delhi, in September and October 2010.

4) Pooja Iranna 
Pooja Iranna’s images capture her impressions of the city she calls home, as it changes into a world she barely recognizes. She painstakingly constructs sculptures, made from staple pins, which echo grand modernist architectural forms. Her paintings endow the harsh surfaces of modern buildings with delicacy, humanising them in the process.  She is equally at ease  working with painting, sculpture, digital prints and video.

Pooja Iranna’s “In the Waves and Underneath” was shown at Palette Art Gallery in New Delhi, in September and October 2010.

5) Jitish Kallat
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 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.

6) Manjunath Kamath
Known for his witty and satirical takes on the secular, mythological and historical, Kamath revels in his humorous interpretations of the common tales, while always underlining the deeper sense of poetry and philosophy of life.  The current body of work, is the aggregate of Kamath’s distinctive imagery rich with the narratives of everyday life, interwoven with mythologies and intimate stories. His specially stylised backgrounds are overlaid with earthy slabs, making them reminiscent of decaying walls and rusted surfaces. They create a camouflage on the canvas to suggest the lies humans tell as a matter of habit.
Manjunath Kamath’s “Collective Nouns” was shown at Sakshi Gallery in Mumbai in April 2011.

7) Srikanth Kolari
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.

8) L N Tallur
Known for his kinetic sculptures which often comment on society and politics, the works of L.N. Tallur combine a sharp wit along with a prodigious use of materials. Using classical sculpture of India as their starting point, these are then manipulated to confound the established categorizations with which we usually interpret art: figuration and abstraction, traditional and contemporary, decorative and functional, creative and destructive, religious and secular. It is as if each work is both and neither at the same time. Tallur’s works may appear quintessentially “Indian” at first, but they certainly participate in the most advanced dialogues surrounding sculpture today and reveal themselves to be both cosmopolitan and historically astute.
L. N. Tallur’s “Chromatophobia:  The Fear of Money” was shown at Nature Morte in New Delhi, in April 2011.

9) Dhruv Malhotra
Dhruv Malhotra has a strange predilection for nightfall ¬¬¬¬–¬ for it is the night that also compels him to pick up the camera. He prowls the city of Noida with a medium format camera, courting danger in its gardens, dark alleys and under bridges where silence and sodium vapour lamps keep him company. The experience of the night is not obscured or made mysterious. Instead, the photographs made with long exposures, appear like almost-day and thus surreal. It is in this visible darkness, the attention shifts to the anatomy of an aspiring metropolis. The focus is not the obvious signs that seek to define Noida but the less seen, in-between spaces that await being transformed and occupied.
Dhruv Malhotra’s “Noida Soliloquy” was shown at PhotoInk in New Delhi, from April to June 2010.

10) Madhuban Mitra and Manas Bhattacharya
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.

11) Manish Nai
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.

12) Prashant Pandey
Prashant Pandey reawakens perception of everyday life by destroying conventional logic when it comes to ways of seeing discarded objects. Through his use of recycled, reclaimed and found material like abandoned industrial containers, cigarette butts, cane trash, urine and blood - Pandey uses by-products of human activity and discarded material in new ways, interrupting the utilitarian cycle of everyday life. The distortion of form slows down the act of perception between the audience and the object. In this manner, his work serves the poetic function of promoting seeing as opposed to recognizing something that is already familiar and known. As you experience Pandey’s work, keep in mind the words of John Baldessari who once famously said, “Look at the subject as if you have never seen it before. Examine it from every side. Draw its outline with your hands and saturate yourself with it.”
Prashant Pandey’s “Shelf-Life” was shown at Gallery Maskara in Mumbai, in August and September 2010.


13) Sumedh Rajendran
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.

14) RAQS Media Collective
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.

 15) Sujith S. N.
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.

16) Reena Saini Kallat
Reena Kallat’s practice spans painting, photography, video, sculpture and installation, often incorporating multiple mediums into a single work. She frequently works with officially recorded or registered names of people, objects, and monuments that are lost or have disappeared without a trace, only to get listed as forgotten statistics. One of the recurrent motifs in her work is the rubber stamp, used both as an object and an imprint, signifying the bureaucratic apparatus which both confirms and obscures identities. In keeping with this, her show consisted of sculptures, works on paper constructed from the names of people who have been denied visas on the basis of class, nationality or religion; a set of ten large-scale photographs tracing the fluctuating Line Of Control between India and Pakistan from October 1947 to December 1948 and two video works.
Reena Saini Kallat’s “Labyrinth of Absences” was shown at Nature Morte in New Delhi, in March 2011.

17) Paula Sengupta
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.

18) Aditi Singh
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.

19) Anjali Srinivasan
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.

20) Navin Thomas
In his latest solo show, Navin Thomas explores his continuing interest in the afterlife of salvaged electronic junk with a possible audio capacity, creating work that incorporates found objects as varied as old PCO telephones, former army loud-speakers, a customized hatbox, a PA horn from a mosque, and a toy that gleefully sings in Iranian which was found in the Chinese toy market in Chandni Chowk. Thomas’s work also examines how animals and birds react to household electronic appliances and the effects of living in close proximity with seemingly domestic magnetic fields.
Navin Thomas’s “From Towns End…” was shown at Gallery SKE in Bangalore, from August to October 2010.

About The Škoda Prize
The ŠKODA Prize is the largest and most prestigious award on the Indian visual arts scene. It recognises cutting-edge work demonstrating vision, innovation, and a mature understanding of material and form. The Prize brings to public notice exciting trends in  contemporary art, highlighting the output of established mid-career artists as well as new voices. It is backed by jurors of impeccable credentials, renowned patron institutions, a dedicated group of advisors, and a management team of proven capability. The ŠKODA Prize is Seventy EMG's Arts Initiative.


Note: Press release