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Achuthan Kudallur: The Memory of Colour

Start Date : 24 October 2024

End Date : 11 November 2024

Location : Durbar Hall Art Centre, Ernakulam



Ashvita’s, in collaboration with Kerala Lalithakala Akademi, is delighted to present Achuthan Kudallur: The Memory of Colour

Memories hold special significance for migrants. It ties their past with the present and creates a sense of anchoring for the future. So it was for artist Achuthan Kudallur who was originally from Kerala. He could recall with precision his blissful childhood spent in Kudallur Village in Ponnani taluk and quote with clarity the various Malayali authors he had read during these years. At the same time, he was deeply anchored in Madras (now Chennai) to which he moved as a youth and came into his own as an artist.

Trained as an engineer, Achuthan Kudallur began his artistic journey in the 1970s when he joined the Madras Art Club. These were exciting years for Madras as the art movement which sought to combine Indianness with contemporaneity had infused new vigour into the art scene. Cholamandal Artists’ Village, founded in 1966, was also evolving in form and identity. Through his association with the famed college of art, which was the epicentre of art activities, Achuthan became intimately familiar with this shifting art scene.   He freely mingled with the artists of the era, many of whom were also from Kerala and had moved there to study art.   However, due to the nature of his training in art, in the eyes of his contemporaries, and perhaps in his own estimation too, he was an outsider to the art scene. It was this sense of alienation where he was both an insider and an outsider, an observer and participant that gave his personality and consequently his art a migrant quality.

Achuthan Kudallur: The Memory of Colour is an ode to Achuthan Kudallur’s explorative artistic spirit and captures his creative quest across several artistic languages and forms of expressions. Featuring artworks from his early days to the later years, when he painted the abstracts that he is remembered for, archival material and writings, this exhibition captures his evolution across time. In addition, this exhibition is also conceived as a kind of homecoming for the artist, especially since he exhibited at the Durbar Hall during his own lifetime. Through this, the exhibition pays tribute to the artist, to the land that sowed the seeds of his creative life and to the connection between him and his native land that nourished him irrespective of where he was. 

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