Alka Mathur is a homebound painter in more than one sense. I do not know if her works that she had been showing solo or in group in the New Delhi set periodically from 1988 to 1996 had the same characteristic. In Dhaka 1997, ever since she made her appearance in the art scene by some contributions in the inaugural collective show of Gallery 21, she drove home through her compositions a peculiar case in her native compulsion to build on elemental perceptions as well as nitty gritties of her home and around. She was impressionable about the monsoon country she had to make her temporary home. Yet by the time she made her solo show in Dhaka in 1997, the bulbs of continuity of her domestic impressions sprouted in spring blossoms. She was fanciful and complex in creative abandon, but never exceeded a set discipline of her choice. She was meticulous in application of mixed media additives and exotic touches in painstaking details for effect, but she never seemed laboured. She was at home with her art-works.

She remained prolific, contributing to two more group shows in Dhaka in 1999. One wondered how she found time for creative proclivity after her parental pre-occupations as a mother of school-going children and social pre-occupations as a diplomat’s wife, But she did, and the wonderful thing is that there is no evidence of tension from time constraint in her paintings. As I said, she is at home in the cocoon of creative exuberance that she spun around her being.
In an earlier painting from the time she finished her art-education in Bombay, Alka Mathur painted her mental reconstruction of a framed sea-beach in the spiral rhythm of colored waves, integrating a collection of associable images of sea-shells and other objects. Now she tends to construct on paper collage with lightweight objects actually implanted in her color compositions. They seem (but perhaps not so) randomly picked up from her dressing table, waste basket or almirah- crusty, metallic, organic or synthetic tidbits such as beads, netting’s, mirror, mica, foils, pinheads, plastic flakes, cloth-pieces, string-fibres, dried leaves, twigs, etc. Brushwork and pigments, nevertheless, continue to be the binding features of her composition. And her imageries are decidedly objective, while abstract qualities of lines, planes, color, texture light, tone, shine, symbol and varied figurations abound in methodical orchestration. Some times she burns out parts of her paper and some implantation’s including pigments applied, by heat treatment and works them over. Sometimes she leaves opens windows of inner depth and detail within the architecture of each composition, inviting the viewer to focus on curious parts with camera vision. She also betrays a patent fascination for the third dimension. In a number of works, she had given vent to her urge for three-dimensional build-up within her compositions with papier-mache modeling. Even for comparatively flat compositions these days, she is often using papie- mache in stead of paper. And for each of her collages on paper as well, she generally obtains an extra dimension by mounting the piece over the framing paper rather than under a cut out for framing.
Last year in autumn, Alka Mathur joined Rokeya Sultana of Bangladesh and Hilpert of Germany for a Dhaka group-show in a cooperative spirit defined by a quotation from the late poet Jibanananda Das, who pined for memory – returns of the banks of Dhanshiri (rice-steps) river of Bangladesh and its greeneries and spectral clouds. This year at the height of winter, she has joined Naresh Kapuria, an award-winning Indian multi-media artist, for a co-operative artwork in multiple dimensions at the Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts, Dhaka. Both of them are showing their individual works also in this exhibition, Alka with her framed wall- pieces in papier – mache or on paper and Naresh perhaps with his boxes of “happenings” framed windows on walls and standing sculptural arrangements, They are intent upon a freedom to vary the contents and arrangements until the last moment, and to have as the center-piece of the show an as- yet indeterminate cooperative installation work with a performing chapter. The theme of the installation and its integrated design is to be jointly worked out by the two, on the basis of abstract of selective impressions from Alka’s three years of residence in this country, and instant impressions of Naresh during his three days of sojourn in the country prior to the show it may be executed in parts severally and in parts jointly, by the two artists, and also have a third party inaugural performance of a dance sequence as an event of the installation. It may thus have some six dimensions of composition, namely the three visual dimensions, the fourth temporal dimension, the fifth audio dimension, and possibly a sixth conceptual dimension in static or dynamic display.
Alka Mathur’s partner of the show, Naresh Kapuria is essentially a visual artist, but he made his name more as a trendsetter in installation arts, landscape architecture and multi-media projects working with dancers and exhibition organizers. He helped establish several successful art galleries in India (including Website Art India), was the chief visualizer for the 1997 Festival of India in Bangladesh ambience, and did conceptual design and execution of several seasonal and environmental festivals, fairs and monuments for Government of India and other sponsors. Non-conventional in his application of skills in visual arts (including photography) in pictorial, sculptural, environmental, stage craft and festival designs, Naresh is able to “discover moments of art in the most humdrum situations. His terracoltas , theatrical experiments, paintings, rock gardens and other works are all mutations from his own inherited life patterns, not derivations from outside himself.”
Alka is far from theatrical in her creative imagination and does not ever allow herself too much cantileverage in her three- dimensional works. the intimacy of her adopted life-pattern comes out more in serenade than in drama. I look forward to see how the twain shall meet in their joint venture of visual statics and dynamics in art.

Sadeq Khan
January 2001