Comrades in Arts!

In this, the sixth Feb Show, we are trying out a new idea. Instead of the proven mix of the Usual Suspects and New Faces, the Feb Group Show 2008 embraces an all-new line-up of artists who are participating in this show for the first time (except for Harendranath Mahato who was there last year) and brings them into its fold of camaraderie. No doubt a handful of these ‘new’ artists have already shown in Baroda in other group shows, a few such as Nitin Agrawal, Sharath Kulagatti and Piyali Ghosh are working with established galleries, and Atul Mahajan, Anu V S, Ambubhai Rathwa and Nutan Majumdar are Bodhi Young Artist award winners.

But the Feb Group Show 2008 takes great pride in especially presenting the rest of the talented artists – painters, sculptors, printmakers and ceramists -- and giving all of them a platform to share their work with all of us. With most of them preferring to work with large formats, we have brought down the number of participating artists to 23 this year so that each of their artworks can be displayed to give it proper justice.

In a sense, this year's show resonates the first Feb Group Show of 2003 when every participating artist was showing in public for almost the first time and there was a great sense of expectation as well as deep anxiety. Though a nervous anticipation is still very much there, it is good to see how the young artist community has grown much more self-confident and self-assured over the last few years. For all of us who have been associated in different capacities with the Feb Group Show since its inception, it is also really heartening to realize that this Show is being seen as a genuine and significant platform provided annually to young Baroda artists, all of whom are brought together not by any curatorial or thematic cohesiveness but to be seen and certainly evaluated for what they have to individually express through the varied artistic media available to them. The fact that the Feb Show is now on the list of many gallerists as a must-see exhibition is indeed no mean achievement.

This year, the artworks do not reveal any particular kind of pattern evolving as a ‘Baroda signature’ but as usual the Feb Group Show does present artworks that surprise, question, astonish, startle, amaze, shock, and sometimes, even leave you dumbfounded. That was always the idea behind the Feb Show and this year it is no different.

Sandhya Bordewekar February 2008