SYDNEY: As Indian culture, cuisine and clothes catch Australians’ fancy, a new exhibition — Goddess: Divine energy — opens at the Art Gallery of New South Wales to coincide with the Indian festive season.
Curated by Jackie Menzies, Head Curator of Asian Arts at the Gallery, this is the first major exhibition in Australia that explores the many manifestations of the divine female in Hindu and Buddhist art.
Menzies says, “The all-powerful Goddess has been a source of inspiration and guidance to followers for centuries. She protects, loves, comforts, champions, seduces, enlightens, saves and empowers. This exhibition is about finding the goddess, symbolising power and compassion, within oneself to overcome negative mind sets and spiritually sustain and nourish one's life.”
“The last decade has seen an enormous interest in eastern religions and philosophies as people search for new spiritual models that help them in today's world,” explain Menzies, who has been involved with promoting Indian art for over a decade.
In 1994, she curated Dancing to Flute exhibition and in 2001, A Show on Buddha.
“The Buddha exhibition was very popular and it inspired me to have this exhibition. Yoga, meditation and chakras are of increasing interest to Westerners, who are finding all of these aspects in Indian religious traditions more rewarding,” she adds.
Menzies observes, “Indian festivals are a part of the annual community calendar. This has made Indian culture and teachings more accessible. Today, more young Australians are visiting India and there is more people-to-people connection.”
The exhibition has over 150 exquisitely carved sculptures and richly coloured and composed paintings from India, Tibet and Nepal, dating from 2000 BC to present day.
It includes two female torsos from the Mohenjodaro and Harrapan collection, which were presented by the Indian Government to the University of Sydney in 1958.
There are paintings from the Ajit Mukherjee collection and sculptures of Shiva, Paravati and Tara from the National Museum of Delhi; paintings of Radha and Krishna from the Government Museum in Chandigarh; sculptures from Bharat Kala Bhavan at the Benaras Hindu University in Varanasi and British Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Guimet Museum in Paris and Metropolitan Museum in New York.
The exhibition on display from October 13 to January 28, 2007, has four sections: The Divine Mother , which has images that articulate the nurturing power of the goddess through early fertility and nature figures; Goddesses in Hinduism has images of Radha and Krishna, Shiva and Parvati, the androgynous form of Ardhanarishvara (half Shiva, half Parvati), Durga and Kali; Yoga Tantra looks at the Goddess represented in symbolic form through diagrammatic sonic formulae, mandalas and chakras; and Goddesses in Buddhism include Prajnaparamita and Tara.
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