India Art Summit 2011 to draw best of global art

NEW DELHI - The capital will become a giant canvas for the international art fraternity to paint its hues, views and transact business Jan 21-23 when the country plays host to the third edition of the India Art Summit 2011.

The summit will be a “sprawling affair with 18 events, nine specially commissioned live art projects, 60 public art installations to save the tigers and 84 galleries from 20 countries exhibiting the best of modern and contemporary art by 570 artists from across the globe”, summit director Neha Kirpal told IANS.

She said “the 2011 summit will have something for everybody”.

The panel of speakers will include artist Anish Kapoor; Hans Ulrich Obrist, co-director of the Serpentine Gallery in London; Sheena Wagstaff, chief curator of Tate Modern; Urs Stahel, curator of Fotomuseum at Winterthur in Switzerland; Homi Bhabha, director of Humanities Centre at the Harvard University and Hou Honru, director of Exhibitions and Public Programmes at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Delegations from 19 international museums will tour the summit to acquire work and identify potential faces.

A VIP tour will curate walks and studio visits will take the museum delegates, top-of the chain collectors, institutional and corporate buyers through the event, Kirpal said.

Though the core venue of the summit will be Pragati Maidan, related art events will be spread across locations like the National Gallery of Modern Art, the Gurgaon-based Devi Art Foundation, Kiran Nader Museum in Noida, the British Council and the French Embassy, she said.

“The India Art Summit has received tremendous response from the art world right from artists, galleries, curators, buyers and enthusiasts,” Kirpal said.

“The striking feature of the 2011 edition is the range of international art - a wide variety from 20 countries,” she said.

The fair will be home to two different kinds of international galleries - one dedicated to foreign art and the other with a nice interplay of Indian and international art, she added.

The scale of events will be bigger than the 2009 edition of the fair.

“The summit will host 18 collaborative events around the city and nine commissioned live art projects that will open dialogues between viewers and artists at the summit,” Kirpal said.

The India Art Summit is also supporting the ongoing Project Tiger live art project.

Citing an example on how the art summit will reach out to virtual viewers in digital space, Kirpal said: “One of the nine commissioned projects, ‘Feed Station’ by the Foundation for Contemporary Art, will feature blogs about the art summit by those who have seen the summit in the digital space.”

“At the same time, artist Abhisekh Arya, the creator of the project, will invite bloggers at the fair to post their views on the dashboard thus creating a dialogue between the audience present at the fair and those in virtual space,” Kirpal said.

Another exciting component that will add pace to business at the fair is an Art Store that will showcase 450 new art books and merchandise, including art products and home accessories created exclusively for India Art Summit, the director said.

The expanded Sculpture Park will showcase works by some of India’s most significant sculptors and the video lounge will present state-of-the-art works by the masters, including the Otolith Group.

The summit, which drew more than 40,000 visitors - 3,500 of them from overseas - the last time around and sold art worth Rs.26 crore in four days, is likely to draw 70,000 visitors, Kirpal said.

“It will be like a one-stop shop for people interested in the art space so that they can experience art in a meaningful way,” she said.

“We want the summit to position itself as an event of entertainment and interest to the corporate traveller who flies in to attend the event, mixing business with pleasure. It is a pan-Indian event involving four metros - Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and New Delhi,” she added.

Kirpal and her team has been “receiving requests for previews on the summit galleries posted on the Internet”.

“The pre-fair interest owes itself to the new confidence in the market that are making a comeback after two years of downswings. Many galleries - both foreign and Indian - are feeling a little better in terms of markets,” she said.

“This edition of the summit is unique in its level of corporate, business and mainstream integration,” she added.

A youth outreach programme will see over 40 students of art and art history interning with participating galleries and media partners.