Akash Bhatt - Beaux Arts Bath

MADHU

Beaux Arts Bath

AKASH BHATT

A IS FOR ANSWER Oil on Canvas 38 x 291 cm.

AKASH BHATT And I her son, though summer-born And summer-loving, none the less Am easier when the leaves are gone Too often summer days appear Emblems of perfect happiness I can’t confront: I must await A time less bold, less rich, less clear: An autumn more appropriate.

- Phillip Larkin Mother, summer, I Madhu, the title of the exhibition, is an abbreviated version of ‘Maduwanti’, the first name of the artist’s mother and the nickname that Akash’s late father would use to refer to her in the family home. Originally from a village outside Baroda in Gujarat, she has been a consistent presence in Akash’s life as a painter, with a role as chief critic, adviser, and crucially, the person most fully aware of the sacrifices necessary to be committed to life as an artist. Now in her eighties, portraits of Madhu have been a regular, if less public part of Akash’s oeuvre over the years. Recently, as the artist puts it, ‘The onset of old age is a constant reminder that time is limited and this in turn pushes me to capture as much of what is available to me.’ One such portrait won the prestigious Sunday Times Watercolour award in 2015, and now in this show she is, as she has always been in his life as a painter, an ubiquitous and stoic presence.

Akash is a constant if not obsessive draughtsman, and has a tendency to hoard even nascent ideas. His journals, besides neat spidery architectural and figure sketches, feature snippets of writing, quotations, passing thoughts, observations, overheard snatches of conversation, plus what to some would be the ephemera of everyday life - labels from food that Madhu has prepared, a fragment from a flyer picked up from a Manhattan Street. All these are plucked from his life and melded and reconstituted in lines and coloured marks on canvas and paper. ‘The characters, the symbols, the notes I use must be infused with my own experience, this is vital as only then can I fully immerse myself in creating a place to paint. Otherwise it is meaningless.’

The longest work, at over 9 feet, is A is for Answer, the third in a trilogy of paintings which have been exhibited over the course of 3 shows, set in Baroda. With its attenuated format and its streets teeming with life, one has the sense of looking into an aquarium. Numerous wheeled vehicles vie for attention; auto-rickshaws, bicycles, cars, carts, mopeds, motorbikes and mobile food stalls. He appears to relish the company of animals in the street-level brouhaha – a donkey is stationed to the left underneath some enigmatic graffiti, and next to the nearby roundabout is a dog loping languorously into the roadway. Snatches of the same yellow, blue, and red tones are interspersed across the panorama on facade, awning and veranda, ushering the eye along the length of the painting under the gaze of the attendant telegraph poles

and lamp-posts. Details that extend to the edges and the streets that tail off in new diversions add to the sense of visual and narrative depth.

Dotted line also depicts Baroda and features familiar landmarks. Centre left is the cupola of the Maharaj Fateh Singh museum which houses a significant collection of the work of Ravi Varma- a celebrated 19th century painter. Akash and family have visited the museum but more notable on the opposite side of the road is the domed roof of the Khanderao Market, a favourite haunt of Madhu’s, with its vegetable and flower market at the rear of the building.

Saturday is a scene from home-town Leicester, a stone’s throw from College street, where Philip Larkin lived in the late 1940s while he was assistant librarian at University College. Victorian terraces are distorted in the windows of the laundrette, and also tail off to the right. The pavement scene is dated and down at heel with its mosaic tiles, the signage, the grey-mauve biscuit pallor of the plaster walls; yet the artist lightens the mood. ’Speedy Laundry’ appears once as scruffy signage and then again as a reflection of its reflection. Seagulls, crows and pigeons look on speculatively, as if on special assignment from the artist. The bins, the birds, the drainpipes, the parking restrictions sign are all classic prosaic Bhatt subtleties and form a lugubrious Larkinesque vista that the artist himself could easily have encountered in 1970s Highfields.

Road Trip recalls a day out with a hospitable cousin in Baroda. In Detour ‘1995’ is scrawled as graffiti on a Manhattan wall, referring to a memory of his father falling ill whilst Akash was in New York painting. Arrival recalls a jet-lagged stay-over after a flight from London, evoking a street corner in the Chor Bazaar area of Mumbai. Every painting has the thread of family running through it. And whether it is the grimy overhanging Bombay buildings, the brownstones of New York or brightly coloured facades of Baroda, he masterfully picks out the essential vagaries and familiarities of makeshift, higgledy-piggledy street-level architecture, such that we can almost smell the vendors’ various foodstuffs.

Throughout his career, Akash has been celebrated for both portrait as well as architectural work, as his many and diverse prizes and awards attest. Generally a quiet, intelligent and thoughtful man Akash has in this body of work again woven with great skill a complex fabric of ingrained recollection and impression. As he mildly puts it, ‘The older you get the more of this stuff there is’. For me Tennessee Williams sums up what Akash has attempted, and more often than not succeeded in capturing in each of his paintings. ‘Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.’

Aidan Quinn September 2017

DETOUR Mixed Media on Paper 102 x 102 cm.

ARRIVAL Oil on Canvas 66 x 183 cm.

MADHU I Acrylic on Paper 79 x 55 cm.

BAD HABIT Oil on Canvas 15 x 123 cm.

FOLLOWER Watercolour on Paper 57 x 77 cm.

DOTTED LINE Oil on Canvas 38 x 245 cm.

Madhu V Acrylic on Paper 80 x 56 cm.

SATURDAY Mixed Media on Paper 36 x 81 cm.

NO STANDING Mixed Media on Paper 33 x 33 cm.

PUSHKAR BUS STOP Oil on Canvas 15 x 123 cm.

MADHU IV Acrylic on Paper 44 x 81 cm.

ROAD TRIP Oil on Canvas 15 x 123 cm.

YOU MUST LISTEN TO ME Mixed Media on Paper 74 x 54 cm.

ARAM Oil on Canvas 15 x 123 cm.

AKASH BHATT Selected Exhibitions Beaux Arts, Bath - Solo Exhibition (2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017) Royal Society of British Artists, Mall Galleries, London (2001, 2005, 2007-2010, 2012, 2013)) Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Mall Galleries, London (2003, 06, 2011, 2013) Royal Society of Portrait Painters, Mall Galleries, London (2002, 2013) Sunday Times Watercolour Competition, Mall Galleries, London (1996, 2001-2004, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2015) Lynn Painters & Stainers, Livery Hall, London (2005, 2006, 2008, 2010) Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London (2001, 2003-2005, 2007, 2010) Threadneedle Prize, Mall Galleries, London (2009) Royal Watercolour Society, Bankside Gallery, London (2005, 2006, 2008) ‘One Love’ The Lowry Gallery, Salford, Manchester (2006) Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London - Solo Exhibition (2001, 2003, 2006) New English Art Club, Mall Galleries, London (2001-2003) BP Portrait Award, National Portrait Gallery, London (1997-2000) 21st Century Watercolour, Bankside Gallery, London (2004) The Garrick Milne Prize, Christies, London (2003) The Hunting Art Prize, Royal College of Art, London (2003) BP Travel Award - Solo Exhibition, National Portrait Gallery, London (1998) BBC Network East - Solo Exhibition, NEC, Birmingham (1998) Awards First Prize, Sunday Times Watercolour Exhibition (2015) First Prize, London Lives, Bankside Gallery (2010) Elected Member of the Royal Society of British Artists (2008) Purchase Prize, Discerning Eye (2007) Windsor & Newton Painting Award, RBA, Mall Galleries, London (2007) Regional Prize, The Discerning Eye (2005) Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer Purchase Prize (2004) The Villiers David Prize (2002) Singer & Friedlander Sunday Times Watercolour Competition, Third Prize (2002) Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Award (1999)

MADHU III

BP Portrait Award Finalist - Commended (1999)

Acrylic on Paper 63 x 74 cm.

BP Travel Award (1997)

Beaux Arts Bath 12-13 York St. • Bath BA1 1NG • 01225 464850 info@beauxartsbath.co.uk • www.beauxartsbath.co.uk

Cover: MADHU II Acrylic on Paper 57 x 57 cm.

Beaux Arts Bath