Creative cocktail: Young artists showcase their mettle with a riot of colours

Artists from 20 institutions are participating in talent exhibition .


Our Correspondent June 12, 2016
‘Stuck in traffic jam’ by Noreen Ali.

KARACHI: To have a feel of what the budding artists of this country are thinking and experimenting with, VM Art Gallery has opened its doors with yet another talent exhibition. This is the 14th year the show is being organised ever since its inception.

A visit by The Express Tribune before the opening of the exhibition showed some young girls from Hyderabad working on the floor of the gallery. Gallery director Riffat Alvi said that the students were preparing for the 14th edition of the talent exhibition. “This is an annual show in which students from all over Pakistan participate,” said Alvi, adding that her gallery is always open for new and fresh talent.


‘Untitled’ by Beenish Khan

Artists from as many as 20 institutions of Karachi, Lahore, Hyderabad, Bahawalpur, Rawalpindi, Multan, Quetta, Gujrat, Peshawar and Islamabad have taken part in it. A range of works is being showcased including ceramics, sculptures, installations, canvases and digital art. Similarly, the themes are very broad ranging from societal to personal and very abstract.

Artist Noreen Ali of Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture has gone figurative with her paintings. ‘Stuck in traffic jam’ shows the bewildered face of a cow with chaos all around it. The work seems like a comment on the traffic situation of Karachi, about which complaining is synonymous to blowing a horn in front of a bull.

Moving further into Sindh, one comes across the pencil work of artists like Hallar Abro of Centre of Excellence of Art and Design. He has drawn a characteristic noble from the Mughal era, reaffirming one’s belief that it’s one topic that simply wouldn’t die out in terms of experimentation among both new and old artists.

On the Punjab side, the work of artist Jawaid Iqbal Mughal strikes viewers both with its clarity and relevance. Using clear watercolours, Mughal depicts a man lying around looking at what appears to be a book, with eatables surrounding him. The work gives an aura of the setting and the place to which the artist belongs. He is a student of the University of Punjab.


‘Sun glare’ by Hafsa Sheikh

Likewise, Noorul Huda, from the same institution, has painted a scene from what appears to be lower middleclass household with the entire family sitting around one sofa.

Beenish Khan of Hunerkada Lahore has used acrylic on canvas to show pencil-thin, red heels in her work, titled ‘Concealed Identities’. The red pencil among all black ones perhaps indicates angst and violence.

According to the press statement shared by VM Gallery, the idea of this show is to highlight different bodies of artwork, to be able to compare different levels of instructions being imparted in our art institutions and also to catapult the emerging artist into the mainstream.

The exhibition is open for viewing till June 24.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 13th, 2016.

COMMENTS

Replying to X

Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.

For more information, please see our Comments FAQ