17 April – 19 June 1994
Formed from knotted and woven vegetable fibre rope, Mrinalini Mukherjee’s creations resemble living entities as much as sculptures. The artist, after starting with a central image, then allowed each work to expand organically, proliferating in every possible direction – meaning the process dictated the eventual form of the finished pieces.
This exhibition of the Indian artist’s work, features free standing structures, as well as works that are suspended in the gallery space. Creating a system of personal deities and iconographic systems, the works form a private mythology, avoiding direct and simplistic relationships with any single cultural environment. Mukherjee nevertheless emphasises the importance of India’s rich tradition of craftsmanship in her choice of both material and process, deliberately blurring any binary distinctions between art and craft. The natural world equally informed the plant-like growths of Mukherjee’s sculptures, her interest in vegetation and flora imbuing the work with the imposing solemnity of natural life.