Overlaps

Since opening ten years ago, TARQ has played an important role in increasing inclusivity and collaboration with audiences in Mumbai. A core value of the gallery has always been to appreciate that art is fundamentally for every one of us. Making the gallery space a warm and welcoming one has been a constant touchstone in terms of the programming that we have developed over the years, including various public and educational events, as well as active participation in larger events including Art Night Thursday and Mumbai Gallery Weekend, that have helped foster a strong sense of community amongst the city’s growing, culturally engaged audiences. 

It is with this spirit that we present our milestone, tenth anniversary exhibition. It comes together as an experiment in collaboration, whilst staying true to the values of art being accessible to all. Titled Overlaps, an exhibition of a portfolio of prints that represent serious, rigorous artistic work and dialogue, underpinned by a spirit of fun, experimentation, and learning. 

The portfolio features seven screen prints, each made by two artists in collaboration with each other. The process of pairing up the artists, and watching them innovate together - including the pairs that were not the most obvious to begin with - has been immensely rewarding and is evidently reflected in the prints we are presenting. The portfolio was produced by the artists at TARQ as a part of our annual Artist Weekend during which the gallery was converted into a Print Lab by Pritam Arts. We have been working together on the idea for a few months now, starting from the logistics, and going into each pair’s working process. 

The themes that have emerged during this ‘overlaps’ experiment have ranged from ideas of city, space and landscape to nature and the narratives that emerge from merging the abstract with the representational. The seven artist pairs who came to TARQ over the summer to work on this portfolio are:  Pratap Morey and Philippe Calia, Boshudhara Mukherjee and Ronny Sen, Garima Gupta and Nibha Sikander, Areez Katki and Rithika Merchant, Soghra Khurasani and Saju Kunhan, Sameer Kulavoor and Vishwa Shroff, and lastly, Savia Mahajan and Parag Tandel. 

Our founder Hena Kapadia says, “In working on this show, I encountered a poster from a Graphic Workshop conducted in Baroda in 1973, accompanied by a note from K G Subramanyan^[1] emphasizing the importance of printmaking in bringing art to a wider community. Overlaps is a testament to this ethic, which is still shared by most artists. Furthermore, this ultimately resonates with the mission that I started out with when I opened TARQ in 2014: to build a community and make the joy of art accessible to all. That this community has grown in many forms over the last ten years, across enthusiasts, collectors and artists alike, is a testament to the vision with which the gallery was founded.” 

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About Pritam Arts

Pritam Arts is a 38-year-old screen print studio based in Lower Parel, Mumbai. It is run by a father-son duo, Prabodh Mendon and Prajval Mendon, with a collective experience of more than 50 years in screen print. Experimenting with scale, medium, colour, and impressions is integral to their process at Pritam Arts. 

Print Lab is one of their signature set-ups that aims to make screen printing more accessible. Print Lab sets up a functioning screen printing system outside the limitations of a traditional print studio.