London-based Indian artist Sheila Malhotra has a strange hobby — to collect and preserve newspapers that have been published in the UK over the turn of the new year and especially those that were printed to mark the turn of the new millennium almost a decade earlier. But it’s no ordinary obsession; it’s part of her endeavour to go green. Instead of a canvas, Sheila has chosen newspapers as the medium of her works, apart from experimenting with banana pulp to give a unique texture to her works.
Sixty-five year old Sheila admits, “Being an Indian, preserving newspapers isn’t a special concept. We have all re-cycled papers at home, which we make into bags and materials to write on.”
And preserving newspapers to her is a synonym to the concept of the passing of time — by counting every passing minute on her watch kick-started by her early days of being married to a merchant navy sailor and sailing across the high seas in her husband’s ship. “There was nothing much to do,” rues Sheila, “except gazing out of the porthole.” Throughout her art works in her current show titled Playing With The Millennia, there is a strong significance of the concept of time when the clock strikes midnight, ushering in a new day, sometimes even a new decade or a century. The artist explains her theme, “The moment is so transient when the clock strikes midnight that it symbolises a new beginning.”
Sheila is content that she has found a unique opportunity to exhibit her works just at the turn of the new year that precisely explains the theme of her art works.
Catch the exhibition at Jehangir Art Gallery on till January 4.
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