Indigo Act 1860
A site specific work
A site specific work
A site specific work
Details: Indigo Act 1860 is a site-specific imprint made for the Foyer Gallery exhibition at Wimbledon College of Arts curated by prominent artist-curator Marvin Gaye Chetwynd.
Four identical screen prints of an image of coral photographed on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands group in the Indian Ocean. Four printed images tucked on the wall and a squeegee (an instrument of screen printing technique to enforce the colour into the pore of the screen) distributes the ultra-marine shade of blue colour by an act of running on the edge of the prints thus on the wall, leaving the imprint of both surface on the wall and on the prints.
This project follows a research/observation on the depiction of the coral image in the studies of natural history and the visual culture developed around it in Europe and the famous historical movement instigated through a theatre 'Nil Darpan' (The Blue Mirror) written by Dinabandhu Mitra portrayed the exploitative activity of Indigo Planters in British India in 1860. After the play staged in Calcutta, now Kolkata it widely published in European newspaper then and created huge uproar across the continent which forced Queen Victoria to change the law of Indigo plantation and harvest.