Abstracts
Nicola Durvasula
Curated by Grant Watson
Abstraction for Nicola Durvasula implies a referent. Material, colour, texture, surface and form might gesture towards environment, sound, art history or spiritual practice. In this, Durvasula’s work sits within a genealogy of artists who have used abstraction to explore the ‘life world', which along with their human scale, makes for an approachability.
Small sculptures point to a legacy of the Objets Trouvés. They can refer to the artist’s biography, to happenstance, to metaphysics or to the beauty of the ordinary. Monochromes which appear deceptively simple are built up using multiple layers. The choice of handmade paper, the use of gouache, watercolour, or pigments dissolved in Ganges water, inflect them with a particular tone or significance. Shown as singular statements, individually or in groups, they insist on the power of colour.
Graphic notations use mark and symbol to suggest sequences of sound. Here, there is a reference to the confluence of avant-garde music and art from the 1950s, as well as an echo of the artist’s own earlier figurative works in their fluid lines. Seascapes captured from the artist’s window recall a 19th development towards abstraction, in which sea and sky become the pretext to render qualities of light through watercolour paint.
Light on water in Varanasi, and a technical glitch, give rise to a video by the artist; and in a short film commission titled The Painting, writer and artist Will Eaves explores a dialogue between one of Durvasula’s paintings and its viewer.