ARTISTS TALKING

# 10 [16 September 2008]

Back in the UK, after a fond farewell to the girls.  The day after I returned the shop in Durbar Marg that was going to stock Himalayan Mosaic products produced by the girls opened.  The girls got orders for several mosaics and the owner of the shop said that she would like more of the figures with bangles on them. Successful job I feel. Now I have to put this experience behind me and turn to review the video footage and photographs that I have collected.  I was pleased to get film of the girls preparing food, which seems to relate to the bangle smashing footage.  I am sure that I will be able to use this.  But I also have to cast my mind back to July and the experience of the Char Dham.  I also have to start to think about how this experience can be converted to a piece of art!

# 9 [28 August 2008]

Oh so much has been happening that I have not had a chance to write much, plus we have had a lot of problems with the internet.   Last week, Zoe and Dan, who have been working down in Bairawa on a mosaic project, where our guests.  Also Philip Holmes who is the director of the charity I am volunteering for was back in country, this as meant a week of planning and meetings.  A woman who is opening a shop in Kathmandu is very interested in the Bangle sculptures and we are now working on prototypes.  Also the clay maquette figures that the girls produced are now being developed so they can be fired.  This does mean that the emphasis of what I am doing has changed.  I realise that what is needed before I leave is to put in place means of development and production.  Dreams of Naga sculptures are out the window now.   An amazing weekend followed the meetings and planning sessions.  This started on Friday with a trip to Timi (a town near Kathmandu that is famous for its potteries and papier mache workshops).  We took the girls, all together in a micro bus. Because Hari and Rajendra who work here for the project in the pottery both come from Timi, they were our guides, we started with a visit to a traditional mask maker, who gave us a demonstration, this was fascinating. In a courtyard behind his house Hari’s uncle was working on a hand powered wheel, basically a tire and a stick.  We then went to visit Hari’s brothers workshop, where I discovered that glazed pottery was only introduced to Nepal in 1984.  The weekend was one long festival, it started in the middle of the night in Patan, although I did not catch up with it until later in the day, it was the day that all Brahim (top caste) have to retie their sacred thread, every one gets a thread around their wrist as well.  The main Siva temple in Patan was heaving.  The water tank that we had seen being cleaned a few weeks ago was full and everyone was queuing to make offerings to a Lingum (phallic symbol of Siva) that had been set up in the middle of the tank. There were many pandits who were tying sacred threads and just loads of people.  In addition the Shamens from the mountains were dancing around beating drums.  Outside was like a small fete.  It was all really exiting. I managed to get a lot of photographs and some video footage, although the camera was not too keen on all that Hindu mess.  Like most of these experiences I am not sure what to make of it all yet, but was interested in the following day which was the Gai Jatra festival, this is a day when people who have died in the last year are commemorated.  A procession follows a cow.  There was music and masked dancing.

# 8 [14 August 2008]

So now I am in the fourth week of being in Godawari.  Some of the bangle sculptures have been completed by the girls and we have been making animals, clay on a metal armature, so that we can create part moulds for repeat casting.  All useful skills. The director of the charity returned to Nepal this week and this morning we met with a contact of his who is opening a shop in Kathmandu, just the day I fly from Delhi ironically.  She is interested in selling mosaics and ceramics and anything else the girls make.  Much to my delight she was very taken with the bangle sculptures and we talked about what sort of figures we could make, woman carrying baskets and water carriers. I now feel filled with enthusiasm, but realise that the large scale naga (snake sculpture) is probably out of the question. Last week there was a naga festival and pictures of nagas appeared on everyone’s gates, including ours.  I am still pursuing ideas about these potent fertility symbols.  I have been told that there are many stories of snakes coming in the form of women and luring men into relationains with them.  They then turn in snakes again.  The daughters of nagas are half woman half snake and called Naga Kanya. I am pleased that in some way the work that I am creating with the girls is relating to ideas that are circulating in my mind for my own work.

# 7 [8 August 2008]

So now in the third week at Godawari, it has been an interesting time, the girls   have started to make sculptures that we can stick broken glass bangles on.  This has involved making proper armatures, padding them with polystyrene and wrapping muslin dipped in plaster round this to make a basic structure.  Monday was quite mad as I had some girls at the plaster stage and some at the armature in wire stage.  The result is a solid bag of plaster and a blocked sink. Last Friday, myself and three girls, went into Patan, to Mangle Bazaar, to buy more Bangles than the old couple running the stall have ever sold before.  Monday morning we smashed them all!  I got my video camera out for the first time since I have been here to record this event.  I feel that this footage could become part of some work, footage of several Nepali girls crouching on the floor smashing these beautiful bangles with rolling pins, there seems to be some symbolism in this action.  Even the way that Mumta was scooping up the pieces and putting them in a box, it had a similar action to sorting rice or beans. I have been making some sketchs for a Naga (snake) woman sculpture that we could construct in the same way that we have made the smaller sculptures.  Working on this collaboratively, making a larger structure.  Nagas are worshiped by women and are associated with fertility. Speaking of fertility and as I have mentioned before the obvious symbolism of Hinduism on Sunday we visited the Siva temple in Patan, there the pujari was performing rites around a Siva Lingham, decorated with flowers and fruit.  A pan of water was dripping onto the Siva Lingham from above.  It reminded me again of the ceremony that we had witnessed in Utterkarshi, with the newly married couple pouring milk over the Lingham. I hope that what I am teaching the girls is useful to them, I think that they are learning useful skills.  I am exited by the idea of collaborating with them.  It is quite strange as I rarely make real sculptures these days and actually it is quite pleasurable playing with plaster and clay.

# 6 [30 July 2008]

So entering the second week in Godawari.  Getting used to working with the girls now, even if the ones that I worked with last week were the Mosaic Girls, ie the girls who are employed to make mosaics, not the Project Girls, who are the newer girls that I am supposed to be working with. Anyway we had fun and they worked very hard, producing some lovely things.  I am now working with the Project Girls, I am trying to introduce them to the difference between 2d and 3d.  Also to the idea of creating shapes in a more abstract way, rather than always copying things.  Some of them have responded really well to this.  Attention spans are short and we will have to work on developing things.  This seems normal for girls of their age though. We keep trying to take them to the Museum in Patan to do some drawing, but as there is a severe fuel crisis here at the moment it has not been possible. The other challenge is to teach with a minute amount of Nepali, and a tiny bit of Hindi, a lot of sign language.  However teaching by example seems the best policy anyway. I have some company, or I should say some one to speak English to, not just bad Hindi/Nepali.  Lexa, another volunteer from the UK has joined me.  She will be teaching ceramics.  It does mean, that with a trip to Kathmandu at the weekend, I have not been thinking a great deal about any of my own work. However, today, I have started to teach the girls to make sculptures starting with a proper armature.  As some of them had made figures and wanted to put some mosaic on them I decided to show them some photos from the Nec Chand Rock Garden in Chandigarh.  As I had hoped they were very exited by the idea of making sculptures with broken bangles on them.  As I have been thinking about the Bangle sculpture I would like to make I think that we may collaborate to make a large sculpture in the garden here.

# 5 [22 July 2008]

So, I have been in Godawari for 3 days now.  It feels like a lot longer, after the frenzy of travel in India and the Holiday in Kathmandu, life has slowed right down.

I have started working with a group of about 8 girls, we have been exploring 3d form, first by modelling vegetables and odd objects out of clay.  Then I bought some ornaments down in the village and they copied those.  I am amazed at their facillity for modelling in 3d. 

I have  been busy with that and trying to learn rudimentry Nepali as you can imagine, but have also had time to think  about the pilgrimage and my own work.

 I have had an idea ever since I was in Chennai Museum and saw memorials to victims of Sati (widow burning) on which they hung glass bangles, of making a bangle sculpture.  As I sat in the garden this morning I thought why not here, there is a Bangle shop at the end of the path.  It seems a fitting place, most of these girls lost their childhood in a violent way.

There are other sculptures I have been thinking about, but I wonder if using the very blatent, obvious symbolism of sexuality that appears in Hindu sculpture and rituals may seem a bit crass in our (seemingly) more sophisticated art world.  But this kind of symbolism is the essence of life.  For example when we visited a temple in Uttarkarshi we saw a newly wed couple pouring Milk over the Siva Lingum (the phallic symbol of the god Siva).  Obvious, but none the less a beautiful action, the lingum was covered in flowers, which were also coated in milk.  It made me think of Helen Chadwick's photos of flowers, which I believe she coated in milk to make them look right for the camera.   

I am still trying to walk everyday as well, as a way of thinking.  The idea of pilgrimage and the idea of physical activety to excercise the mind, today it was cut short by rain, but hey!

# 4 [19 July 2008]

I am now at Godawari, near Kathmandu, where I will be staying for the next 8 weeks. I will be teaching sculpture to girls who have been rescued from circuses in India, they were sold to the circuses by their families.

Teaching sculpture to Nepali girls who do not understand English and have no experience of Art.  That is a challenge greater than the Char Dham, which now seems a distant dream.  But I hope that my time here will give me time to reflect on that experience.

Back to India

1^st July Haridwar The Ganga Arti is the nightly ritual on the Har Ki Pari, the main bathing ghat on the river.  It is an ancient ritual of bringing fire to the river at dusk, bringing light and warmth into the night.  We had whitnessed this ceremony a couple of times when we were here in 2005 and it is strictly speaking something that you should do before embarking on the Char Dham.  I think that we went with a mind to record it, in the hope of getting material for use in later work, but crammed on the ghat with many other pilgrims, cajoled by the attendants to give donations for the upkeep of the ghats one is caught up in the atmosphere of the thing.   As the sun begins to sink the God of day is bought out from their temple, the amplified music starts to build and people raise their arms in the air, Jai, they shout.  Then the sacred flames are bought down to the river bank and all the bells in all the temples in the town start to ring.  For a few brief moments all is noise and light.  Then the flame is bought amongst the crowds and people sale their banana leaf boats of flowers and flames down the river.  I struggled to raise the video camera over the heads of those in front of me.  I think I got some reasonable footage.  Adrian has an easier time really, once the microphone is set up he can still look and listen.  The sense of separation that the camera lens gives you is difficult to deal with sometimes.  To always see mediated by the lens.  Essentially I think the experience of being there is the most valuable material we gathered, this, like many rituals seems to get better every time that you see it.  It is so theatrical, the building of tension, the attendants working the crowd, the anticipation.  People travel from all over India for this ceremony and you are sucked in by their enthusiasm for it. Haridwar is a fascinating place, a mixture of spiritual and end of the peer and it seemed fitting that filming the Aarti I was using up a bit of tape from England that had Brighton Peer on it. 

# 3 [15 July 2008]

As promised back dated posts Haridwar 01-07-08 I must say that this feels like old times, working on the laptop in a hotel room.  This laptop has seen a few hotel rooms, a few as grubby as this one even. But then, as we were coming back from the ghats this morning we saw where the dobhi was being dried.  I am sure it is really clean until it gets laid out on the side of the river right next to piles of rubbish, where pigs are scrabbling around in a welter of grubby plastic bags.  Actually this computer has been in this very hotel before, when we stayed in Haridwar 3 years ago during our Silkthreads Project. It feels as if the project has started now, after lots of travelling we are here in one of the main centres of Hindu Pilgrimage.  If you bath here all your sins are washed away, Adrian bathed his feet this morning, which might get rid of a few bad actions. Once again we are fascinated by how being a Hindu is not something reserved for going to the temple once a week, it is your whole being.  We are also again fascinated by how the ritual and actions of religion are like performance.  The images and symbols of the Hindu way act like metaphors, in the way artists try to make sense of their world through images and symbols. We have just begun to collect sounds and images, but tonight we hope to document the Ganga Arti, the Fire Ceremony on the Ganga, it happens every night at dusk, wild and wonderful.  Look out for images soon. Tomorrow we leave for Yamunotri, the source of the Yamuna River, by private Ambassador Car.  That actually means being a bit sick round the bends.  For those of you reading this who had not been in an Ambassador, it is something like being in a boat.  It is hard to know at this stage what we will become interested in, actions, rituals, bells.  But it is great to be nearly  there, experiencing the pilgrims way.    

# 2 [14 July 2008]

We are now in Kathmandu.  Sorry that there has been a lack of BLOG, but we have not seen an internet cafe on the whole of our pilgrimage route.

What I will do is fill in the gap with installments as if we were on the pilgrimage, but not now.  First, here in Kathmandu after 20 years, it  is a great shock.  Its so set up for tourists now, I knew it would have changed, but this is beyond belief.  Thamel just goes on for ever, not just Freak street and the German Bakery now!

It comes as such a shock after spending about 2 weeks entirely with Hindu Pilgrims, we saw 3 white people the whole time we were on the pilgrimage, and we met a bunch of Pilgrims from Wembley!  (We hope to meet up with them on our return to the UK.  To find out their oppinions of the Pilgrimage route as British Asians will be very interesting)

The temples here are really interesting to see now that we have been imersed in Hinduism for weeks, this strange blend of Hindu and Buddhist, butter lamps and Ganesh, bells and stupas.  It is fanscinating.  Walked through to Durbar Square (the main square in K) last night, late afternoon.  Many people were out shopping for vegatables, making puja (an act of worship) as they were passing.  Darshan (giving a view of the resident god) was happening in one temple and below there was a mayhem of veg. and motorbike horns and shoe salesmen.  It reminded me of when you are in a muslim country and the call to prayer comes and everyone just bumbles along ignoring it.  Here Hinduism is just a part of everyday life. It is like making a performance piece on the way home from work, although of course it is a religious act.

 One temple was surrounded by Pidgeons, this is my worst night mare seeing that I am affraid of birds, but Adrian made a great recording or thier sound.

We also fell upon a stupa, a copy of the Swayambunath Stupa (stupa is a a round mound topped with a sculpture, used in buddhist worship).  I have never seen this before.  Gee (clarified butter) was being thrown down its sides and again the surrounding mini stupas were a mix of Buddhas and Hindu Deities. However, the highlight was an impromptue game of cricket, Adrian was a bit of a hit with the ladies.

So more catch up news to come.  For now, we have a HOLIDAY in Thamel

# 1 [23 June 2008]

As I sit before my computer, still in Kilburn, North London, I find it hard to imagine that in 4 days time I will be in New Delhi.  The items for packing are piled behind me and most of the paper work, injections and purchases have been dealt with.  However I still have a sneaking feeling that something has been left undone.

Maybe it is thought about what we will actually do once we are there, once we have booked transport to take us higher into the mountains to begin this important Hindu Pilgrimage.  I have a new video camera, yes, but what will I film?  Adrian, my partner has a new digital sound recorder, but what will there be for him to tape.  A lot, if our experiences in India are anything to go by, maybe too much.

As well as just experiencing being in the mountains at the source of Indias most sacred rivers, what will this journey mean, in terms of ongoing research?  This is all ahead for us to discover.I feel daunted, and nervous and very very exited.