Veteran designer Bina Ramani and artist Georges Mailhot recently showed together at Art Konsult, with the avowed objective of showing art connoisseurs the brighter side of life,away from the mundane ugliness and cruelty of today’s world. Ramani and Mailhot have also painted on the same works together, of which a few are included in this exhibition, curated by Brian Mulvihill.

It began while Georges was running a non-profit “artist-run space” Metamorphosis in Golf Links, where Bina’s works were discovered in one of her sketch books. Bina and Georges began working with one another decades ago, even painting projects together, at times working on the same painting, some of which were included in this show.

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With a close affinity for India’s animal world, especially the sacred cow, Bina has observed them closely and accumulated a large archive of “Cow Mela” photographs ~ cow groups that regularly sit around on less frequented roads, lanes and bi-lanes of residential areas across India.

Ramani’s photographs have been worked on the Photoshop and other photo-processing tools before being printed on canvas, and subsequently enhanced by painting directly upon them, at times also using collage processes with additional images of cows, crows and various birds associated with rural India, along with other photo objects taken from her various photo archives, to arrive at the finished works.

Georges has for years been travelling extensively across Canada and the world, and also studied the Japanese Sumi ink-brush. He has also been looking into the great Asian traditions of Chinese, Japanese and increasingly Indian Sub-Continental spiritual art of the Mandala and its rich symbolism of various realms of consciousness.

On settling in India he has explored this imagery at greater depth. His imagery is highly personalised, variously communicable to the viewer, subject to temperament and individual orientations, traversing from the grand to the austere, the complex and the cosmic.

The remark one is unable to unconditionally agree with, however, is that “the freedom an artist gets encourages creativity and helps to offer a sanctuary of beauty to an ugly world”.

Art is no sanctuary, beyond the point that it grants license and a liberty of sorts to its practitioner to express himself in various, at times unconventional ways. By itself art is only the mode of expression, not conclusive to what is expressed; as such it remains only as much about joy as about pain, turmoil and struggle.

Bina’s work is the earthier of the two, and one has taken the liberty to express one’s personal take on them. Works like One Last Look are poignant in view of our disappearing greens, depleting agricultural leanings and verdant, pristine environs. In Reflecting in the Galaxy, the cow seems to represent the desolation of the entire post-modern era, and verily a stifling political system.

Scratch My Back could actually be funny, albeit loaded in allusions. Colours here are vibrant yet somewhat comic. Sheltar is not understood, either for its spelling or in meaning.

Works like Under the Shade of the Cracking Wall are gripping at several levels ~ their general quiet, antiquated atmosphere, colour, texture and composition, with two hand painted blue birds on the peepul tree, in seeming recollection of an era gone by.

Suddenly she appears on the bridge on a river, juxtaposed as if on the very psyche of anation bridled with the notion of cow as the mascot of right wing rabble. She just pops up anywhere ~ atop a bridge, behind a sheer curtain, on a jetty, from the midst of a pool, or amid bloodshed.

Again, neck stretching towards the leaf no longer there on the tree long dead ~ is she beseeching the setting sun to rise again tomorrow, and not die out as it seems to have on the fate of society at large? Who knows!