This year’s Alchemy Festival contained some tantalising treasures to be discovered in multiple venues across London’s Southbank Centre. Occurring during May each year, one should venture to this festival for its astounding array of arts and cultural events – but stay for the spice and flavour to be found in the open air, Eastern inspired food adventure nestled behind the Brutalist architectural giant.
Presented in the Hayward Gallery’s project space, artist Neha Choksi questions, “what is lost and what is gained?” in an enigmatic solo display. Choksi – an artist of Indian descent - presents a resonating exhibit focusing on the futility of both labour and existence. Three films made over the space of seven years, collectively known as Trilogy on Absenting, are the most successful element of the show. In the single channel projection Leaf Fall, 2007 – 08, a team of rural Indian actors build a wooden scaffold around a lone tree and strip it of all its leaves. A process one actor beautifully described as “undappling the ground”. Another participant meditates both symbolically and literally; “if it does not kill us, they will grow back”. This act, hollow in its entirety, comes to symbolise the pointless rituals all societies perpetually preform.
Iceboat, 2012-13 presents a similar act of utter futility. The artist rows a boat, carved from a single block of ice, through a body of water until predictably, it submerges and she falls off the screen into the murky water below. This simple gesture nods to humanity's inevitable and unstoppable demise.
Presented in the Hayward Gallery’s project space, artist Neha Choksi questions, “what is lost and what is gained?” in an enigmatic solo display. Choksi – an artist of Indian descent - presents a resonating exhibit focusing on the futility of both labour and existence. Three films made over the space of seven years, collectively known as Trilogy on Absenting, are the most successful element of the show. In the single channel projection Leaf Fall, 2007 – 08, a team of rural Indian actors build a wooden scaffold around a lone tree and strip it of all its leaves. A process one actor beautifully described as “undappling the ground”. Another participant meditates both symbolically and literally; “if it does not kill us, they will grow back”. This act, hollow in its entirety, comes to symbolise the pointless rituals all societies perpetually preform.
Iceboat, 2012-13 presents a similar act of utter futility. The artist rows a boat, carved from a single block of ice, through a body of water until predictably, it submerges and she falls off the screen into the murky water below. This simple gesture nods to humanity's inevitable and unstoppable demise.