The Deccan Herald 15.11.2010
Sculptures to adorn City, after paintings
Satish Shile Bangalore, Nov 14, DHNS
Apparently not satisfied with ‘beautifying’ the City walls by paintings, IAS officer Bharatlal Meena has taken up installing sculptures at a few traffic junctions, BDA parks and lakes in the City whose roads are decorated with potholes.
When Meena was the BBMP Commissioner he had the City walls painted and now as commissioner of BDA wants sculptures at traffic junctions and lakes. In preparation, the BDA is conducting a month-long workshop from Wednesday for sculptors.
The workshop will be held at BDA park located at Ullalu on Magadi Road. Soft stone, meant for sculptures, has been acquired from Heggadadevana Kote in Chamarajnagar. As many as 15 sculptors practising contemporary art forms have been invited for the workshop. They will create a work each by the end of the programme. Though they have not been assigned any themes to work on, they have been instructed to ensure that their works do not attract controversies.
The sculptors include Gopinath S, Babu Eshwar Prasad, Uday Vir Singh, Pradeep Kambathalli, Suresh Kumar G, M C Ramesh, Venkatachalapati (all from Bangalore) Suchinder P (Mysore); Vinod Patel, Ved Gupta, Deepak Khatri (Vaddodara); Anand Prabhu Desai (Mumbai) Bhupesh Kavaria (Delhi) and Venugopal, Hariprasad (New Delhi).
Meena said the sculptures created in the workshop would be BDA property. The authority would decide on the locations in the coming days.
So far, sculpture workshops had been conducted occasionally by the Shilpkala Academy or other cultural organisations. With its first such venture, the BDA hopes it will emulate the City to emulate other metros of the globe, such as New York that have special parks dedicated to sculptures. The BDA has plans to set up an exclusive park for sculptures. But, Meena said the BDA had not yet taken a decision on that yet.
