Walkthrough with Vasudevan Akkitham: Arrivals & Departures
About the Exhibition:
The exhibition interweaves the traditions of the Baroda School's figurative narrative with the styles of luminaries from the 1980’s School of London's golden era. In the works one can find simple human figures and animals gracefully placed against the interior spaces or inhabit natural landscapes plucked from the tapestry of memories. Despite the apparent simplicity of his imagery, there's a deliberate mystery in how things are arranged, making a story about people, nature, and society. Akkitham's art, travels beyond the mundane and introduces the transformative power of poetic infusion, where 'the unseen becomes as important as what is painted.'
This exhibition also explores journeys in life, especially the artist's own experiences of leaving his birthplace and contemplating the inherent displacement and revisiting memories of lost time. This exhibition comes out as a vital life source, a reflection on imagined journeys of returning home and departing, lacking clear details and existing like a dream. The works placed in such a manner that it invites the participation from the visitors to think about them. The act of painting, according to Akkitham, is like looking for meaning in the middle of chaos, creating puzzles with the hope of solving them by accident. In some works you will see the depictions of children and adolescents, unaware of the world's troubles. There's a mix of city and village scenes, like a quiet background to the stories, reflecting the artist's own life. Animals and people together tell stories of journeys, echoing recent real-life migrations.
"Arrivals and Departures" is like a beautiful song where Akkitham's art takes you beyond what you see, letting you explore a mix of real and dreamy worlds with ease
About the Artist:
Akkitham was born in 1958 in Kerala, the son of acclaimed Malayali poet Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri, and studied painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University of Baroda, where the eminent painter Gulammohamed Sheikh was his teacher, followed by a stint at the Royal College of Art, London. Vasudevan himself spent his entire life in academia – he joined his alma mater as a lecturer in the painting department in 1990 and retired as head of the department in 2021.