Popularart - from Nehru's Democracy to the networked multitude, is an exhibition where a group of contemporary artists based outside India engage with a key idea of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru – democracy – in today’s globalised setting. Popularart underlines the belief that art is a way to raise provocative questions without proselytising: of the kind of people we are, and the community we live in. The show is conceptualised and curated by Parvathi Nayar and Caspar Below and features the work of Galia Armeland, Caspar Below, Robert McKay-Forbes, Errol Francis, Roselina Hung, Mark Molloy, Parvathi Nayar, Kevin Quigley, Frank Selby, Simon Mitchell and James Melville Thomas, Dominic Thomas, Kelly Warman, Susie Wong and Oliver Walker.

The group of artists lives up to the high-level of globalisation: most of the contributors have a background in migration or life as an ex-pat. Their work engages with their social network and the shared experiences of their surroundings. For example Galia Armeland’s Sleeping draws on a memory of Indian railway stations, where individual identity in the collective is explored through multiple sleeping figures; in Collective Fragments, the iconic image is questioned by Parvathi Nayar, who works with 16 Singaporean children to reconstruct an image of Nehru on ‘boxes’ through fragments given to each of the children; Caspar Below “recreates” the world within London in The Global Map of London, to comment on communal living conditions; Mark Molloy’s Democracy is Good ironically juxtaposes found images and text; Robert McKay Forbes plays with the democratic model of sharing in Games without frontiers and Kevin Quigley arranges a series of debates and drawing events in Drawing bridges.

The overclocking market dynamics changing almost any aspect of our art, community, identity and livelihood intensively influenced the curatorial process. Globalisation spreads through local structures around the globe in two very basic and general ways: The first is through establishing a network of structures organising power and the markets. Secondly, globalisation also means the emergence of new networks of communication and cooperation across nations allowing an infinite number of encounters. The latter can work as a potential check and balance to the hegemony of the former- one of the interests of popularart, but “Art” need neither be a solution provider nor influence peddler – its role is to open things up.

Nehru staked his claim for human growth in the idea of democracy – a collective right of the people to live in the world of their choice. Popularart offers a chance to actively foster an understanding between communities by the very nature of its method and content – to use non-Indian artists (apart from the co-curator of the show Parvathi Nayar, based in Singapore) to talk to a largely Indian audience at the Nehru Centre, about the larger reach and relevance of a core Indian idea – democracy – and thoughts about one of India’s founding fathers – Nehru.

More information on the artists, the venue, the curators and the concept can be found on www.popularart.co.nr

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