closer

Tonight the task of swathing the tiger in red velvet will be complete.

working hard

I've been trying to write but hands are busy right now. Day two of installing for 'Stains on my Chintz' ... great title!

All works behaving badly, in particular the tiger. The velvet sea is almost done and I'm not leaving the gallery till it's finished.

Oh yes, look at that verandah. My room is just opposite where I'm sitting and sewing.

tiger trace and time to go

Today is the last day of my residency and I've been sitting at the computer most of the morning. The doorbell has been busy. One person called to see if I was interested in a portable gas stove cooking demonstration, a man from the water company downstairs came to collect the empty bottle, and someone else came looking for a Khoj person. I managed 'no thank you', 'it's here' and 'come back at three' ... in Hindi.

I haven't told anything of the Sunderbans trip as yet and I have some photos I'd like to share, so I will add some more posts post-Kolkata. However, here is one of my favourite images.

One morning in the Sunderbans, we came across some tiger pug marks. Sambhu said they were very fresh, probably from early that morning. They emerged out of the water, across the mud and disappeared into the mangrove forest. This tiger had swum across from one island to the other, most likely in search of food, a distance of about 1 kilometre. Just a trace.

It's my last day, and there is still more to write. And much more to think about. It has been an amazing experience, or rather an accumulation of experiences, that I'm sure I'll carry with me for a long time. I farewell some good friends and look forward to meeting them again. I will return in late January to finalise and install the work for the exhibition at Harrington Arts Centre.

A huge thank you to Khoj for hosting my residency, for their generosity and in making me feel so at home here. It has been great to share many things, especially all the fantastic meals we've eaten together. I can't recall how many conversations I've had with my friends about food and cooking. At the end of the day, friends, family and food is what sustains us all. I'm very glad to have been included in theirs. Special thanks to Abhida, Smriti, Bhutu, Kaushik, Paula, Chhatra, Tamal, Kazima and Sayak.

JOY MA!

possibilities within a space

I've been to the Harrington Arts Centre three times now and I still cannot come to a resolution about my installation.

My room has five doors, two alcoves high up on one wall and a fireplace.

I have one tiger, a very large number of small glass objects and a roll of red velvet. In my mind, they all take flight and move around the room, landing in various configurations that are impossible and hilarious.

mandirtala

When I met Achintya Bhattarcharjee last week, he was wearing an orange and black striped shirt. Abhijit has arranged for me to work with him on constructing the tigers for my project. He's an artist who is currently doing an MA at Rabindra Bharati University as well as being a traditional idol maker from Mandirtala, on the Howrah side of the city. Mandirtala is just over the second Howrah Bridge and from Khoj is about 15 minutes on a clear run, 30-40 in rush hour. That side of the river is at least 100 years older than Kolkata, and is very different ... more like an urban village.

I visited Achintya's studio on Sunday. We met at the bus stand and then we headed down a narrow street towards his house. There are some stalls at the start of his lane. A man selling chickens, a wire cage with about 50 chickens sit below his table. On top are freshly slaughtered and plucked birds. Next to the table a dog sat dozing with a delicate beard of white feathers.

Achintya's studio looks out over a pond, surrounded by houses, with the odd small shop and local business. The path that runs around the pond can take a bike or a small cart but its mostly pedestrian traffic.

I'm envious of his studio, it's perfect for sculpture. Earth floor, two large doors opening outwards, good light. On one side, his shelves are stacked high with plaster moulds for various features and components of the gods, goddesses and deities he makes during the puja festival season. Achintya told me that the work commences in July and runs right through to November, ending with Jagadharti Puja which was last week.

His sister and brother-in-law live in the house next door and they treated me to tea, rasagullas and sandesh sweets. I also met two of his nieces. They were all curious about the project, and when I went back there again this morning, Achintya told me that his brother-in-law's mother who lives there as well, has taken a special interest in the tiger's well being and visits it twice a day, morning and night.

Tiger photos to follow.

the gift

My father was the eldest of four children and his family lived in Barrackpore, about 20 kms out of Calcutta. My grandfather was a race-horse trainer. When his horses won, it wasn't unusual for their owners to present him with all kinds of gifts. Sweets, fabrics, jewellery, even cars.

When my father was about seven or eight years old, they were given a tiger cub. This was in the 1920's and tiger shooting was rife. A friend of my grandfather's had been out hunting, shot a tiger and then found that she had two cubs. I've read since that it was not uncommon for the cubs to be shot as well. In this case, they were brought back to the city and domesticated. My grandfather raised the cub and it became his constant companion around the house. My father told me that he and his brothers would ride their bicycles to school every day and they would return around the same time. The tiger had an afternoon ritual where it would wait in ambush in the long grass near the gates, and as they raced in towards the house, it would pounce and knock one of them off their bike to wrestle and play.

When the tiger was around two years old, it became clear that a domestic home, even with large gardens, was not the place to keep this creature. It would certainly have been an intimidating size. My grandfather had been getting complaints from various people, and finally decided that the tiger could not stay there. He donated the tiger to the Calcutta Zoological Gardens in Alipore. My father said that my grandfather would go to the Zoo at the same time every day and that the tiger would call out to greet him.

As a a child, I insisted my father tell me this story over and over repeatedly. It seemed so incredulous to me that anyone could own a tiger as you would a dog or cat. I always felt so sad and worried for this tiger's fate. Taken from it's dead mother, deposited in a family home where it lived only with relative freedom for two years, and finally imprisoned in a concrete cage for the remainder of its life in a zoo.

In 2007, I met with the Assistant Director of Alipore Zoo with the hope of finding some shred of information about this tiger. He told me that most of the records held in the Zoo were lost around World War II, and that during this time, the animals were evacuated to private estates outside of the city. I'm not even sure what I was looking for. Its name perhaps, or how long it lived. Last week, I did in fact find some references to Zoological Reports held at the National Library from this period. I may discover something yet.

This is one of the threads to my project, and although I'm not making a narrative work about this tiger, it has certainly been in the background of much of my thinking. There is also something very tangible about being here in Calcutta that makes another strange kind of connection. Visiting the zoo, seeing those tigers living in perhaps the very same cages that my grandfather's one lived. I am aware that this now is a different time, a different place and that what I am looking for no longer exists. It is simply another fiction. I suppose I just want some trace of that history, some physical evidence, even just a word.

the sunderbans

This is the Sunderbans in the Bay of Bengal. Its name means 'beautiful forest'. It is vast and mostly impenetrable. A UNESCO World Heritage site, it also contains the largest tiger reserve in India that is home to around 250 tigers.

My cousin David Marland is visiting Singapore for a few days. He is an avid family historian and his visit is very timely.

He tells me that my great-great grandfather, Edward Alkin, supposedly was the Harbourmaster in Calcutta sometime in the late 1800's. Information is vague though we know that he had not been in the post very long before he died ... in the Sunderbans. He was buried there, and some time later his body was exhumed and re-buried in the Lower Circular Road Cemetery in Calcutta.

kolkata

Next Monday, 26th October I fly to India to begin a residency at Khoj Kolkata. This will be my fourth visit in five years. The first time in 2004 was with my mother Sylvia who was returning after more than fifty years. It was quite a journey and I knew then that I would go back. I began to consider possibilities of new work in relation to this place.

It's difficult to locate the starting point for this project but its true to say that my travels to Kolkata have helped crystallize some of my thoughts surrounding it. I won't write much about the details of my research right now, it is still unfolding. Briefly though, it relates to tigers. In particular a tiger cub that was given to his father when he was a boy. It also builds on earlier work concerning boundaries and liminal space and looks at colonialism and the British occupation of India.

This image is from a series made in 1992, entitled 'Drawing on Memory'. In this work, I was thinking about objects, the body, about histories and the way in which we move through the space of memory, time and place.

Time to re-visit.