Thiruvananthapuram :

In a bid to refurbish and conserve the age-old artefacts at Napier Museum, a group of 20 participants, including 10 students from the National Museum Institute of History of Art, Conservation and Museology in Delhi are taking part in the six-day hands-on workshop conducted at the museum.

As a preliminary step in the preventive conservation, the participants are dry-cleaning the artefacts using soft brushes and vacuum cleaners to remove the dust, dirt and moulds.

“It’s a four-step process which includes cleaning, labelling, measuring and accessing. We are not using solvents or chemicals because the condition of the artefacts is not that worse. We clean them and jot down their condition based on the gravity of damage. The condition of the artefacts is assessed based on the size, stability, fragility and material,” said  Tanushree Gupta, a participant at the workshop and a post-doctorate student at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.

The participants aim at refurbishing around 500 artefacts, including a majority of bronze idols and coins in a span of six days.

The ongoing workshop has also thrown open possibilities for a new storage facility. The refurbished artefacts will be moved to an interim store room for now and will be shifted to a new storage room as soon as the authorities give green signal.

“The strong rooms here do not have the right facilities to store anything. The high level of humidity causes formation of moulds and damages the artefacts severely. There is no ventilation in the strong rooms which causes high humidity and formation of moulds on the surface of the artefacts. We will submit a proposal to the museum authorities to build a new strong room as early as possible,” said Johanna Wilk, one of the participants and a researcher at University of Applied Arts in Vienna.

In 2014, the museum authorities had undertaken a conservation exercise deploying experts to clean stone sculptures, bronze artefacts, wooden exhibits of dirt and dust. It was done as part of Rs 2-crore worth conservation scheme.

source:  http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News> City News> Thiruvananthapuram News / TNN / February 14th, 2017

At the Devaraja Smrithi Mandapam located opposite the Paravur municipality office in Kollam, a sculpture portrays several musical notes and instruments as originating from the Sankarabharana, or Lord Siva’s ornament.

The ornament, and the raga which symbolises it, is the root of all music, says Rahesh Kumar, the creator of this unique sculpture.

It is the possibility of expressing the intricacies of music through visual arts that inspired Mr. Rahesh while he was designing this sculpture over a year ago, as part of an effort to renovate the run-down Mandapam, a tribute to renowned music composer G. Devarajan.

However, the sculpture is just the tip of the iceberg, as he wishes to delve further into the expression of music through visual arts, says Mr. Rahesh. Just as colour and music can both convey emotions, they can also project each other, he says.

“Not just music and painting, but all art is deeply interlinked.”

Mr. Rahesh, who is a multi-faceted artist adept in painting, sculpting, singing, and playing musical instruments, including chenda, drums, flute and violin, has now taken to teaching himself classical music in order to aid his exploration of this linkage.

He has not received any formal training in these arts. His talents are just the outcome of the time his ancestors spent on them, he says. Right from a young age, he had a good sense of rhythm, and could identify ragas based on their feel.

The support of his peers during his college days at Kerala University helped him a lot.

Time, however, is a scarce commodity for Mr. Rahesh, who also has to fulfil his duties as Municipal Secretary at the Chengannur municipality.

Having a constraint on the time he can spend for art has in fact increased his passion for them, he says.

“Art need not be a career,” he says. “It can be something that enriches your career as well as your life.”

A native of Nemom, Mr. Rahesh has previously worked at the Paravur municipality, and as a lawyer before that.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Kerala / by Sreelakshmi Sivaraman / Thiruvananthapuram – January 31st, 2017

Thiruvananthapuram  :

Veteran actor  Jagannatha Varma, who played the roles of a kathakali artist,  police officer and film actor with ease in real life, died at a private hospital here on Tuesday. He was 77.

Varma was admitted to the hospital with pneumonia two days ago. He suffered a cardiac arrest on Tuesday morning and his death was confirmed around 8.30am, according to hospital authorities.

Varma who got trained in kathakali at a very young age had performed mostly women characters on kathakali stages across the state. He had almost found his future in kathakali when Varma got a job as a police sub-inspector. His passion for acting made him pursue all possible opportunities which he thought would lead him to his first film.

However all such ventures ended bitterly for Varma. Once he was promised a role in a film by a prominent producer. A jubilant Varma turned up at the producer’s house. When the producer asked him to sit, Varma obeyed. Later he came to know that he was ruled out of the film only because he had the gall to sit in front of the film producer despite being a debutant.

The misfortune continued in his second attempt also. P Ramdas, director of the film Newspaper Boy was planning his second film. Varma was summoned for a role. The shooting began only to be wound up in two days. Nothing more was heard of the film. Hopes again bloomed as one of his close friends decided to shoot a movie. The shooting was completed, but by the time post-production works were done, the transition to colour had happened and the film never came on screen.

He finally made his debut in 1978 portraying a character like a judge (in his own words) who only had to utter two dialogues — ‘Objection over-ruled, Yes, proceed’. Jagannatha Varma slowly made his footing playing character and villainous roles and went on to become a familiar presence in Malayalam cinema portraying a range of roles. He made himself a memorable actor with his roles as a finicky newspaper owner in the film Pathram or Palakunnath Namboothiri, the polygamous old man in his sixties in the film Parinayam.

Varma leaves behind his wife Santha, son Manu and daughter Priya. Director Viji Thampi is his son-in-law. His body was kept at Kalabhavan Theatre for the public to pay homage. The cremation will be held at Cherthala at 11am on Wednesday.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News> City News> Thiruvananthapuram News / TNN / December 21st, 2016