A woman of many mediums This artist explores her innermost feelings and experiences through her work

BY CHITRA SUDARSHAN

Artist Anuradha Patel is a public artist, a sculptor, a painter, a ceramic artist.....indeed she works with a variety of mediums. For many years, Patel’s primary experience has been in the field of Public Arts design, and she has designed public art projects in the UK and Australia over the last 20 years. In the UK, her works include the A13 Artscape in London, the Peace Garden in Birmingham, and others. In Australia, she is well known in the City of Greater Dandenong area for her public art commissions for Council, Water Pool, the Mons Parade Pedestrian Underpass in Noble Park, and the Noble Park Station Pedestrian Underpass. She has also exhibited her studio-based work widely in the UK, where she lived, and some of her works were recently exhibited at the Walker Street Gallery in Dandenong, Victoria, with which I was impressed, and later spoke to the artist about her art.

Anuradha Patel was born in Gujarat and her family moved to Uganda when she was quite young – where she spent her childhood, and explored the outdoors in a ‘near perfect climate’. It was here that she first began working with clay; she later moved to the UK where she lived many years and went to art school (in 1983). It was then that she discovered the great impact Indian folk art tradition had on her, especially in the way it celebrates and reveres life in all its forms as well as the way it rejoices in everyday life.

Folk art incorporates art in daily life either as house paintings, murals or art that is put to use in our lives.

For instance, the art of paper cutting in Gujarat –especially paper cutting decorations at weddings, Indian appliqué work on fabric, the use of stylised images of flowers, animals and humans, the splash of colours – have all influenced her in one way or another. For Anu, the decorative and stylistic use of line, form and pattern has evolved from a close study of natural life and form.

As a public artist, Anu Patel’s works have been largely made with metal, where she has had to translate and transfer her paper cutting art to large artworks using industrial processes. She learned to use a specialised computer programme, resort to laser cutting, and has sought professional help from metal workers to create her artworks. Public art commissions are large projects which also entailed working with landscape architects, and are one-off pieces specific to the area, which need to conform to safety requirements and other criteria.

Anu Patel now wishes to concentrate more on gallery and studio work, exhibiting her creations that are wholly her own – her own ideas in which she can explore many things and her own experiences. This exhibition is a step in that direction. Anu’s works in the gallery are primarily figurative and are in a variety of mediums and worked with a variety of materials in both two and three dimensions. They are also an expression of situations and experiences from her life. The versatility and range of her talent were evident in the Dandenong Exhibition.

She now lives in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria