The treats in store at the latest edition of Mumbai Art Weekend

The Mumbai Gallery Weekend will return for its eighth, even more egalitarian edition, hoping to draw diverse crowds to the city's art district

Since it was dreamt up in 2012, the Mumbai Gallery Weekend has gone from trying to take art to the people, to bringing people to the art. For its first edition, the organisers —galleries in the Fort, Kala Ghoda and Colaba areas – had gathered in a single hall in Bandra’s Taj Land’s End hotel and pooled their artworks to create a set of exhibitions. What they really needed, however, was to invigorate their own flock of tony South Mumbai spaces with patrons from everywhere in the city. Which is why they switched to hosting a theme-less yet somehow coordinated weekend of art previews, shows, talks and performances across venues which people could hop around.

“There are no invitations or RSVPs. The idea is to activate the art district,” says Tara Lal, co-founder of contemporary art gallery Chatterjee & Lal, which is one of the organisers. The same set of galleries came up with Art Night Thursdays, when galleries stay open for longer than usual to welcome working professionals. Rather than quiet meditation on the works, these experiences are about collegiality. Newbies and experts alike drop in to sip wine, judge the art, and disappear into shows happening elsewhere in the neighbourhood. The air is much less stuffy, much more convivial, than at other times.

In keeping with its professedly democratic aspirations, the Weekend is not bound by any one common subject. Participating galleries usually try to time their best openings with the event. This year, visitors will be able to see the retrospective of Sudhir Patwardhan’s works at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Fort. Everything ranging from his preparatory sketches, photographs, early post-impressionist experiments and more recent Escheresque graphic labyrinths which reflect on Mumbai in all its complexity is on display. For the uninitiated, the group Carpe Art will conduct walking tours covering this and other major exhibitions.

Riten Mozumdar's Untitled artwork. Photo: Courtesy Chatterjee & Lal

The paintings of Mysore-based contemporary artist N S Harsha, which are very often about life in a small town, will return to the big city after a gap of 13 years. To be exhibited at the Chemould Prescott Road gallery, the new selection illustrates his shift away from “multitudes” and “monumentality” to agnosticism about scale and themes. So there are more paintings rather than installations and each individual piece has its own specific concerns. The “artist’s artist”, as Chemould’s Shireen Gandhy describes him, is also seen using vivid colours like pinks and purples that were previously not in his oeuvre. Harsha will conduct a walkthrough on the final day of the Mumbai Gallery Weekend.

One of the rarer names that will be showcased is that of the late Riten Mozumdar, who emerged during the post-Independence modernist design renaissance in India. It was a time for both historical revivalism and technical modernisation. Santiniketan-trained Mozumdar, for instance, is known for modifying traditional printing blocks to make contemporary motifs. He defied categorisation by creating both arts and crafts. As such, his works rendered in wool, wood, metal and paper, among other materials, will cover the walls of the Chatterjee & Lal gallery. This exhibition draws from ongoing research on the largely forgotten artist by scholar Ushmita Sahu.

Party Wall (Bombay Series) by Vishwa Shroff

Paintings by another Santiniketan artist, Jogen Chowdhury, will be celebrated by the auction house Pundole’s. To be a part of the mix, auction houses including Prinseps and Christie’s have also been dipping into their collections and putting up exhibitions during the Gallery Weekend. Christie’s, which has a South Asian contemporary and modern art sale in New York in March, will host a preview of the works which come from a selection belonging to collectors Jane and Kito de Boer. The couple has amassed over 1,000 Indian artworks since they started buying when they lived in the country briefly in the 1990s.

Sonal Singh of Christie’s India says it is not necessarily buyers or collectors but students and young artists who walk into their third floor office over the course of the Weekend. It is not widely known that the space is open to visitors, so the event has helped with outreach for the auction house’s “museum-quality works”. Prinseps, meanwhile, will show a set of Bengal masters including Abanindranath Tagore and Meera Mukherjee to trace how the movement developed over 100 years to include local folk styles and surrealism.

Beginning by N S Harsha

The Gallery Weekend will also include talks from Women in Design 2020+, an international conference put together by architects Brinda Somaya and Nandini Sampat to discuss what women have brought to the world of design. A full schedule will be available on the website mumbaigalleryweekend.com, which is being revamped so that it can carry details of galleries throughout the year. 

Lal says the scope of the event is growing. A book launch will be among the offerings this time. Further, restaurants are creating special menus and local shops are participating too. Apparel boutique Raw Mango will host “Baithak”, an evening of Hindustani classical music by Chhannulal Mishra and dance by the Manipuri Jagoi Marup troupe. “Organisations in the area are making an effort so that there is something for everyone,” says Lal.

Mumbai Gallery Weekend will be held across art venues in Mumbai from January 9 to 12, 2020. Entry is free.