The beauty of this whole project is that it does not lie within the confines of a sketchbook.

Manisha Parekh (MP): What was the idea behind this work and why have you titled it as ‘Conscious-Sub-Conscious’?

BM Kamath (BMK): Almost two years back, I had visited my grandfather’s house. I got reminisced of my childhood days. There used to be cow shed in my grandfather’s house that I had occupied as my initial studio. All walls were mine and I used to draw on them with charcoal, only getting out of this space for in-between meals and other essentials.

MP: How old were you at this point?

BMK: I was in 6-7^th class. From childhood I was a different kind of child. My mother recollects that I never used to go out to play and rather stayed alone. It was only materials like clay and charcoal that fascinated me as objects of play, quite unlike the objects that comprised other children’s kitty. Indeed, this became a cause of worry for them, though my father was very supportive of my interest in art. So coming back to my recent visit to grandfather’s place, I saw that there were still some remains of the drawing on the wall that I had done as a carefree child. As an artist today, I still yearn for this freedom and thought of using the gallery as a sketchbook. When we put canvas or paper to draw, that also becomes an act of conscious mind as there are concerns of freezing the work. Issues of preservation did not arise since the gallery would be whitewashed at the end of the project. A freedom will prevail. People who came to see the exhibition in a light mood with an intent to enjoy.

MP: Did you have any plans in terms of an approach. On the first day of your project, I did see the image of a man with a bulb in his mouth. What kind of ‘beginnings’ this project was starting on?

BMK: The day I started with the project, it was pouring heavily in the city. I juggled with waterlogged roads to reach the gallery. I started by making interconnected clouds and showed one hand coming from the ceiling like ‘kisine tap on kar diya hai ke poora barish hi barish hai’ [Its pouring so much that it seems that someone’s switched on the tap on us from heaven]. But here I found that there was some kind of a conscious drawing happening because before you start there is an anxiety and an apprehension of what will fill the wall. So you start consciously and then go towards subconscious. The initial drawing is stiff if you notice and the hand is very calculative. I think such a planning induced cunningness to the whole exercise because one day back when I came to the gallery thinking how will I begin, I convinced myself not to plan deciding that it should come out naturally. So somehow you have to be prompt to yourself. I did not want to show to people that I can draw or I am skilful while I embarked on the project here, I did to challenge myself. Sometimes you have to play with your practice.

MP: There is an idea of randomness in these drawings as the narrative starts on a wall or even a floor and extends itself to another wall or even another floor… How do you reflect on this process when you look at the finished work?

BMK: The beauty of this whole project is that it does not lie within the confines of a sketchbook. Several years of experience in doing illustration and animation which also involve unplanned action, made me familiar with exercise of creating spontaneous narratives. So somehow I knew I could carry on with the project and there was not much anxiety of covering the whole gallery. I had this confidence so I let loose to see how an artwork developed. The novelty of this project is also that there is a three-dimensional space not a flat book. I created and responded to each and every corner with some sculptural idea because I am trained as a sculptor. In each drawing one can see the sculptural qualities especially in those on the pillars.

MP: How do you feel about the ephemerality of this project – the fact that the drawings are back to white walls in 10 days? It is not something you can hold on or possess!

BMK: Somehow in my earlier practice, I never followed the ritual of preserving the work. It is only now that I am preserving the work. At several occasions I have even destroyed my work. In an exhibition at Shridharani in 1994 I showed huge canvases. After coming back to the studio, I realised that half the studio was covered with these, leaving no space for me to work. So I told one of the cycle rikshawallah, who dropped me home late in night to take my huge canvas and put it over his house as roof. Also I didn’t have that much money to buy a new canvas. Each canvas was worked out on 15 times. After completing each work, I painted a new background to the same canvas to start another work on it. So the whole exercise is as important as the final work.

MP: Lot of your images seems to be autobiographical and sometimes I feel it’s a comment on the people around and the system…

BMK: Art has an expressive function for me. If I am irritated with the system, it shows in my work. It’s a kind of relief and at the end of day you can laugh with the whole statement. I comment in a very humorous way.

MP: It feels like a process, where through your work you are distilling your thoughts. There are definite undercurrents even if you say the work was unplanned as there are stories unfolding… like the story of the King or the magician or the group of people busy putting their fingers into their noses and ears… Where do these images come from?

BMK: I use the device of linkages to inter-connect the images to take it further and the whole exercise comes from animation. In animation, links are very important. I started one image with one guy putting two fingers in his nostrils and it keeps getting extended from face to hand and hand to ear.

MP: The formal decision seems to be building the narrative… That tree which is spreading itself on that big wall, with its branches tied up or nailed together squeezes itself out of a hole on to the next wall. Similarly there are piles of boxes visually breaking that pillar in the basement. There are dotted lines spread across connecting different stories and instances. Did you ever feel like retracing back or rethinking about any of the drawings?

BMK: The people putting fingers in nose and ears became citizens and the king appears from another wall. The king thought there must be something behind the whole act if so many people are doing it and wanted to experience it for himself, even if it was seemed foolish. So he told them ‘mera naak mein bhi ungli dal do’ (put your finger in my nose). So someone amongst them is going towards him. These stories seem baseless, but if you delve deeper you may find some truth in them. Our grandmother tales are plainly enjoyed but there is a deep message. While doing this I remembered one story I had read long back where there was a dumb king who was very worried, as his subjects did not give value to him. One day a sage came to his kingdom and promised to grant whatever the king pleased. The king asked the sage to make him wise and his subject fools. The sage gave the king some ash and asked him to put it in a well from which the citizens drank water. The king became happy as his wish was granted. The subjects came to him the next day and in their capacity as fools now called the king a fool. So the majority of fools dominated the wise king with their ideology and the power of king became neutralised. This story is a satire on the present political condition.

In this whole process I never thought of retracting back. I noticed that the whole practice creates a give and take situation. The conscious-sub-conscious work together. You start something subconsciously and consciously you correct it. For example, I start with a line and then think ‘ab kya karun is line ko’?

MP: But when you have drawn on the wall the way you have done, it’s a commitment once the line is drawn. There is no going back. You have to take it further, make something out of it.

BMK: You cannot always manage to become conscious enough to retract back. If you are conscious you cannot draw. Somewhere, you have to allow whatever comes, so that the flow is there. You cannot control that. In some works I get a feeling that somebody else has done it, it’s not me…the body becomes the medium.

MP: What does ‘drawing’ mean to you?

BMK: Drawing is a major relief. When I sit and scribble, the feeling is akin to kuch bhi bakte jaane hai to gain relief. I don’t know if it’s good or bad? Similarly drawing becomes a hand relief. Drawing becomes release of some sort. People who have been close to me know that I don’t hold the feeling of possessiveness towards my work. When the paintbrush or pen attaches itself to the canvas, only at that particular time I have relation with the work. After completing the work, I start detaching myself and move towards the new work.

MP: Is that happening with this work also?

BMK: When I see this after one week ‘lagta hai ki aur bahut kuch ho sakta tha’. [Lots could’ve been done!]

MP: While seeing all your past works, I feel this project has been the most playful and the viewer can have the experience of wandering and strolling through the narrative while making his/her own story. When you make something not in a precious manner, then I think you are releasing something and you get unattached to it. Your painting and animation have a kind of preciousness they have a jewel like quality in the way they are composed with brilliance of colours and preciseness of lines. You seemed to have broken away and freed yourself in this project.

BMK: There are so many hurdles I have passed and this is a major get-away. While I do a canvas there is a kind of bondage, here there is no edge, the whole gallery is the edge. After one week when I visited this, somehow I had a very casual and detached attitude.

MP: What are your thoughts about the present art scenario? What is the role of medium/skill in creating a work of art? Your work seems to be connected a lot with the world of advertisement, animation and billboards.

BMK: Present art scenario in the context of painting or sculpture is completely open now. The boundaries are not there. But at the same time, there should be some kind of sincerity towards the use of medium. I notice that there is little seriousness towards technique or medium. Medium is not art at all. Art is elsewhere.

Skill is a very supportive agent because in any particular work you cannot shy away from skill. In the present generation, a notion is circulating that if one uses unconventional medium, it is art! Rather using unconventional medium has become a conventional way of being. A specific medium is employed if a particular idea demands. Medium required in animation is different from that in sculpture or painting. I don’t like labelling myself as a painter or sculptor. When you talk about freedom in art you have to elaborate that freedom. Why should one bracket oneself!

Like in the scribbles and geometrical boxes, the element of relief was present. So if I started with the box, it ended up being bunch of boxes joining floor and wall becoming altogether one form. In another place, where I started with a dot, it developed into an insect’s pathway.

MP: Who has been the source of inspiration to you – artists, designers? Anyone in particular while doing this project?

BMK: I don’t stick to a particular artist. When I deal with a particular work, I might take inspiration. When you talk about painting, in my case I have seemed to grow. In the Shridharani show, my canvases were cluttered with images. For the next three year I was struggling to empty the canvases. I wanted to do work with very minimal images. So for creating those works I took major influence from Prabhakar Barwe. There were lot of empty space in his work and with the minimal imagery, lines were very personal.

MP: There is a curious element of objects growing into each other like the leaf growing into a bulb, a mice becoming a leaf or the magician’s shoes becoming the stool on which he is walking…It’s a world of fantasy….

BMK: Gardening remains my second passion after art. I started with drawing plants but I replaced the fruits with plastics, bulbs and bottle. Then I created story out of it – of nature’s response to the ecological havoc played on it and so it has started creating natural bulbs and plastic.

MP: Is there a need for you to make myths in today’s world? In all this conversation, I am also realising the fact that you are making stories out of any situation.

BMK: I have been interested in reading books on Hindu mythology. The stories build around some kings or their wives are created in a myth like way and have an element of godliness in them. Majority of gods are queens or some saviours. This interested me, so I thought of creating my own gods. When I was in an art camp in Coorg, I used to visit coffee plantations everyday and talked to the planters. They had their own woes ‘ki kuch nahi ho raha barish ki wajah se’. So I created one coffee god ‘isko pooja karo har roz aur aapka coffee ug jayega’ [Worship and it will grow]. I created almost 10 contemporary gods! Probably we can have a Commonwealth God too! In future, I plan to install these sculptural gods in public spaces to see what kind of reaction they get. Probably some years down the line there will be a set of contemporary gods who will be venerated.

MP: I think the most fascinating aspect about this project is your ease with the scale. The architecture has become the subject and you are draping your drawings around it.

BMK: In this project, fifty per cent is visual play. I responded to the architectural space.

There is a let go as well as stylisation in the project. Not being a sketchbook, there may be ten styles one experience’s at the same time. I do not control this configuration. I saw one scribble in a place in the gallery and I thought that this one scribble, if left alone would have looked like an abstract image. I joined it with a hook and it looked like a wire. If I hadn’t done it, the scribble would have appeared as an odd entity. So I put meaning to it. But on the other hand, I realised that there is no need to give meaning to everything. Something that the critics today are lacking. They lack the sensitivity to experience the work for its intrinsic value and instead are busy theorising and cross-referencing. You can’t see drawings with logic or stories, in this attempt one can lose the nuances of the work.