Announcing: A Friendship with Emami Art
Ryan Christopher, Ethiopian Evangelical Church in Gothenburg, Film Still, 2023. Credit: Ryan Christopher
Over recent months we’ve been developing a relationship with Emami Art, a contemporary gallery and cultural production space based in Kolkata (India). The space was founded in 2017 and aims to:
“adopt a forward-looking, multi-dimensional approach that reflects South Asia’s history, socio-cultural, and geo-political narratives”
There are immediate parallels to be drawn between our organisations. Coventry Biennial was also established in 2017, and we have a similarly social, political and locally-embedded mission. There are also wider parallels between West Bengal and the West Midlands that we will explore together.
There are a pair of exciting outcomes from our work together that are about to take place:
Emami Art Experimental Film Festival 2024:
We’re delighted to be presenting the Recently Cov Screening Programme as a part of the Emami Art Experimental Film Festival which takes place in Kolkata between the 6th and 10th of November 2024.
We’re sharing works by Ryan Christopher, Paul Daly, sirenscrossing and Duncan Whitley and a short curatorial overview of this project can be read here. This screening programme will take place on the 10th November at 4:45pm and will continue until 6:45pm, just before the festival comes to a close at 7:00pm.
Imaginarium 4.0:
We’re also pleased to announce that Ryan Hughes (our Artistic Director & CEO) was an international jury member of the 4th Imaginarium exhibition. This is a prodigious group exhibition that supports young and emerging artists and is selected through an all-India open call.
The exhibition opens in the gallery at Emami Art in Kolkata on 8th November 2024 and continues until 11th January 2025. There will be a preview and award ceremony taking place in the gallery at 5:00pm on the 8th November.
Ryan comments:
“It was a huge honour to be a jury member on this exciting exhibition, I was introduced to the work of so many amazing young artists from across India. I was especially interested to see so many stunning works by practitioners working in drawing and with textiles. I hope that visitors to the exhibition will feel the same sense of excitement and discovery that I had.”
The exhibition includes: Avijit Dutta, Poojan Gupta, Sayanee Sarkar, Bhaskar Jyoti Bordoloi, Sudip Jana, Gayathri AP, Poorvi Sultania, Ritwika Ganguly and Bhanu Shrivastav
And was selected by a jury including: Praneet Soi, Ryan Hughes, Shilpa Gupta, Vasudevan Akkitham and Ushmita Sahu.
More information on both of these projects can be found on the Emami Art website, and do look out for future collaborations between our organisations taking place in India and the UK!
by Ryan Hughes