Review | Ranjani Shettar’s Sunshine and Dew drops
The first thing you might note as you walk through this exhibition by Indian artist Ranjani Shettar is the importance of shadows. The walls and floors become a canvas while Shettar’s sculptures hang and cling to the walls and ceiling. Also notable is the hand crafted nature of these objects – their surfaces are shiny, textured, as well as creepily latexy. There are a range of materials and processes which have been used by the artist to capture aspects of the natural world, for example the effect of wind on leaves or the green belly of a firefly.
Artisans were employed by the artist for Touch Me Not (2006-07) which consists of what look like knitting needles inserted at varying lengths into the gallery wall, they are actually lacquered wooden balls on stainless steel. The varying angles and lengths of these rods when assembled en mass capture the movement of wind over a field of buds, or leaves. The wall plaque describes this neatly as ‘plant kinetics’. I admire the way repetition transforms something simple, identical and not at all ‘nature-like’ into an evocative windswept scene.
A neighbouring work, Fire in the Belly (2007), continues Shettar’s use of wood, this time specifically Acacia, lacquered in green. The wall informs me that these shapes reflect the bellies of fireflies which are in fact green. Each shape is differs slightly in their liquid-like exteriors. Though shiny and slick the wood is untreated underneath so will shrink and crack over time and the paint will peel, revealing the natural object underneath. It’s not clear how this process relates to the bulgy bellies of fireflies, but it may not relate. There may be two stories here, or more. The shadows from this artwork form interesting, overlapping shapes on the wall and floor, and though they are still there’s a sense of movement from their curves. The shadows in Shettar’s work add depth and expand the scale of each work to include the wall and floor space.
