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Ovenden Contemporary interviews Geetha
Alagirisamy........
GA: I suppose everyone's life is a journey and it's about perspective as well. Mine has definitely been a vibrant, rich and eventful journey.
OC: So, where did the journey start?
My early years in the Little India of Singapore in the seventies were a colourful collage of bustle. We were immersed in the immigrant society of Chinese coolies, rickshaws & sinsehs (medical practitioners) alongside Indian spice & silk traders and hand-skilled goldsmiths, like my father, who sat in their jeweller's quarters waiting for the rich and the 'wannabees' to come for their jewellery to be designed and handmade exclusively for them. I remember as a three year old, watching the rich and the fat Madams in their colorful sarees, kilos of yellow- its the colour of pure twenty four carat gold- gold jewellery and an entourage of daughters of marriageable age jostling up onto the higher platforms just so they can be at eye level with the desk that my father worked on. We moved around a lot because of my parents' immigrant status.
"I remember my father worked in the heart of an Indian temple, designing and making jewellery for the religious deities in the temple. Tuesdays & Fridays were grand ceremonial affairs of celebration in that temple, and even as a four year old I remember feeling proud that my father's work was so special that even the Gods were wearing them!"
OC: You were immigrants?
GA: Yes, my mother is Chinese, born in the Straits of Malaysia & brought up by an Indian family in Singapore. So she moved in a mixed circle of Indians & Chinese. At one point, I remember my father worked in the heart of an Indian temple, designing and making jewellery for the religious deities in the temple. Tuesdays & Fridays were grand ceremonial affairs of celebration in that temple and even as a four year old I remember feeling proud that my father's work was so special that even the Gods were wearing them!
OC: Do you take after your father?
GA: My father's artistic genes must have filtered through to me at some level. He came from generations of hand jewellers in India. That's one skill I wish I had picked up from him.
OC: He sounds like he was a 'hero' to you....
GA: He died of a heart attack just before I turned five.
OC: What a terrible shame. That explains why you've held on to so many of those early memories. His death must have had an enormous impact upon your life.
GA: Life became much more eventful, with us moving around a lot trying to find a place we could call home. My Mum became my dad as well. I have no siblings so I have a very close and intense relationship with her. We are room-mates, girlfriends & mother and daughter. We get mistaken for sisters a lot. I was sent to classical Indian dance lessons from the age of five and that meant a lot of performances in the beautiful temples. Mum has always encouraged me in anything I did. As a kid in fledgling Singapore of the eighties & nineties, it was very much about education and survival. Buying the best papers you could find the best-paid jobs. My Mum caught the 'mainstream mentality' and I had to give up my dancing after a while to concentrate on schoolwork.
OC: So you were 'encouraged' away from the creative side of your personality?
GA: I managed to squeeze a bit of folk dancing in school concerts. I loved my art lessons and especially my technical drawing for wood and metal work. But somehow it became the thing I did only when I was home alone. I also became the D.I.Y. handyman at home for my Mum, fixing things that broke. The dynamics of our relationship altered to the point that I had more freedom and trust from my Mum than any of my peers, but I had to earn that and to prove my responsibility by keeping up my grades in school. And it was also about making Mum proud for all her hard work. She worked really hard to put me through school, as a loyal employee of Black & Decker. I started giving private tuition to younger kids since the age of 12 and kept it up throughout my school life until university, to earn extra pocket money.
OC: Did you have aspirations to become an Artist through all of this?
GA: Becoming an artist was absolutely not an option for me at that time. The closest I came to it was considering a career in Architecture. I ended up in Information Technology because it was the next wave set to hit Singapore economics. Also, I preferred to work with machines than people at that time!
GA: Art was never lost or forgotten at any stage of my development. I used to paint portraits as wedding presents for a never-ending list of relatives we seem to have inherited. At one point, my Mum even allowed me to paint pictures, and anything else I wanted, on the walls in our home. I did go through the usual teenage angst about everything and everyone. Some of it was spent fighting off my predatory family relations from trying to exploit my Mum. A very vibrant upbringing, indeed! Art was always there, my solace, my escape. I forget everything around me when I concentrate and I feel like I've 'unloaded' my mind when I'm finished. It's like a diary. But no-one can read the 'diary'.
OC: So how did you end up in England?
GA: I started to travel after university. I spent a lot of time in the Far East & Australia in between working as an IT professional in Singapore. I reached a point where Singapore became too small for me. I moved to England in 1998 and it was by chance that I fell back into the art scene. When you are in a foreign land to make a living and trying to survive, as well as travel, indulging in art was a bit of a luxury. I was still hoarding my Singaporean 'work and work and work' mentality. I spent a lot of time studying for technical qualifications and when I did indulge in art, it was such a high that I started to get addicted very slowly and my quest for a better quality of life began. I have travelled a fair bit in Europe since then, and as a UK and Australian resident with a Singapore base as well, I just want the freedom to be able to move about. Art is one of those things that will go with me, wherever I am. As a self-taught artist, I am slowly switching things around so that art becomes the key focus in my life. It's also about getting comfortable in your own skin. You need to know what you don't want to do in life, and make everything else work around the things that you do want to do in life. I'm at that stage now and Art is a big part of it. Having the discipline from the IT field has helped me in a lot of ways.
"What happens in life is simply a result of decisions and actions. It's not fate. Life is too short for that excuse."
OC: You rarely explain or define your abstract expressionism. Is that because it is still a way of writing a secret diary?
GA: Yes, it is still a kind of diary I guess, but it is not secret. It is an ‘open diary’ that anyone can read and interpret whichever they like.
OC: So why don't you provide an explanation
then?
GA:My explanation of my art to anyone will be exactly
that– my explanation only. To me, art is what you
choose to see and interpret in your mind. What you take
from it is yours alone. Personally, if I like a painting,
I make it a point to refrain from asking for the
artist’s viewpoint because I don’t want that
to influence or prejudge my interpretation of that
painting. In a way, I guess I’m hoping to do the
same with my own art. Anyone’s interpretation of my
work should be a free and independent viewpoint,
influenced only by their own mind and its capability to
relate visual imagery to feelings, thoughts and context.
OC:
What are you painting about?
GA: What I paint is a culmination and build-up of
everything that I have come into contact with and feel up
to that point in time– people, places, events,
experiences, conversations, thoughts, feelings. Anything
and everything that has ever made an impression in me,
comes out in my paintings on some level. My art is an
outlet to express. And I am, to a great extent, grateful
to have this outlet and also pleased to admit that a lot
of energy and colour is coming out of my work. To me,
that is an affirmation that I am able to take the good
and the bad, and yet see the positive, lighter and
colourful aspect to them.
OC: You're an optimist?
GA: I am not one to see the world as a dark, bleak place.
I believe in making my own destiny. What happens in life
is simply a result of decisions and actions. It's not
fate. Life is too short for that excuse – my
personal quest has always been – be happy, try not
to hurt anyone and hope to find true love. Time is a big
factor for me. How I live is more important than how long
I live. Close friends say they can see my personality in
my work and again that is their interpretation of me from
what they know of me and when they got to know me.
My own interpretation of my work differs at different
points in time. When I look at a work I did some years
ago, I recollect my state of mind back to that timeline.
And I remember. But how I interpret that work now will be
different to how I interpreted it when I painted it all
those years ago. And each time is new and different and
refreshing. A close analogy - how you feel about a
certain person or an event that happened in the past is
very much affected by where you are and your frame of
mind in the current timeline. It is another reason why I
find it hard to put my work in a mould and say THAT is
what it SHOULD mean to anyone at anytime. Everything has
a life span, including the interpretation of a work of
art.
OC:
How do you decide what materials or objects you are going
to use to create your work?
GA: I get inspiration from almost anything. My art
teacher’s words when I was 8 still ring in my head
– everything is a raw material and is useful for
something. Sometimes I know what texture that I want in
my work and work everything I have towards it. Egg
shells, garden twigs, copper wires – anything I can
get my hands on, somehow finds its way into my work.
There are experimental days when I start with something
and end up with a totally different result –
that’s when I let things flow and go with instinct
about what material I use. I love the way colours fuse
and mix with different materials and the results are
always unique and different each time. It’s always
a pleasant surprise.
"The cold of England has had a very deep impact on my art. I’m keen to see how the heat of Australasia affects my work, now that Ive been away for so long. We’ll see. It’s a journey and I’m keen to explore what comes my way."
OC: And where do you go from here?
My attitude to exposing my art has taken a 360 degree turn, thanks to the support & encouragement from friends and Ovenden Contemporary alike. I have gone from hoarding and hiding my art for my eyes only to being open about my art and about anyone’s interpretation of it. I’m also more interested to understand how others see my work from the outside. I must thank Ovenden Contemporary for taking a chance with my work and for giving me these opportunities. Thank you for believing in my art.
OC: You're most welcome Geetha....and deserving. Thank you for a wonderful interview.