Artist Kaveri Bharath’s art show connects ceramics,colours, and memories in Chennai

Artist Kaveri Bharath’s ongoing exhibition, Fifty-50, in collaboration with the Alliance Française of Madras, is an ode to her journey as an artist and a ceramicist. “Inspired by my grandfather’s sculpting, I always played in mud and clay as a kid. The last 30 years of making, teaching, and thinking through clay is represented in the ceramics on display here,” says Kaveri.

Born in Chennai, Kaveri grew up in a very non-traditional family that encouraged her love for creating with her hands. “For my parents, education was very important, but not necessarily school education. The emphasis was not to go out and earn a lot of money.”

While still in school, she and four other students, convinced their principal to offer art as a main subject in high school and find them a good art teacher.

“One day, he saw that we were sitting under trees, taking turns to teach ourselves to sketch. He quickly got us a teacher who turned out to be a big blessing.”

Creating with clay

Ever since, she has taken an unconventional path, working in theatre and apprenticing under artists, till she found her calling in clay work in 1995. She started learning the basics of clay work from artist and her now husband, Hans Kaushik, in Madras, and then Padma Rajagopal from Studio Alpha, in Yelwal, near Mysore.

She went on to join a full-time course at Golden Bridge Pottery in Pondicherry, (GBP), under clay artists Ray Meeker and Deborah Smith after which she began assisting.

A notable milestone was her six-week visit to Japan earlier this year, which inspired a lot of her recent pieces, fired in a Japanese anagama kiln.

Some pieces at the exhibit feature unglazed forms typical of Bizen, a Japanese pottery town known for its rustic, unglazed surfaces; and others use clays like those from Shigaraki, which contain chunks of feldspar, that emerge during firing. The interaction of the fire and natural clay, creating effects like the wood ash falling and melting onto the clay, is a key inspiration.

There are watercolour pieces and sketches, something that she took up during the pandemic, when a fellow artist, AV Dhanushkodi, encouraged her to try her hand at the medium. “During that one year of guidance from him every week, I found out how I had also forgotten how much I love to sketch in school. So, I got back to it and I started doing these faces, which you can also see in this exhibition.”

Visitors can also find quilted frames, inspired by her grandmother’s quilting.

“In 2000, when I was restricted from working in my studio due to health concerns after a miscarriage, I learnt to quilt with my grandmother and channelled into the fabric, my creative energy. These pieces are a ‘thank you’ to that phase,” says Kaveri.

Inaugurating the exhibition on her 5Oth birthday and the titular significance of it, “Fifty seemed like a significant milestone and cause to celebrate. Every aspect of this show is significant to my life and work.”

Fifty-50 is currently on at Alliance Française of Madras till August 22. (Closed on August 15 and 16) from 10.30am to 6.30 pm.