Title- Elephant Scape
Year- 2009
Dimensions- Covered an area of 20 ft x 20 ft space
Location- Showcased in Jaipur and Delhi
Executioner- Curated by Dr. Alka Pande
Sponsor- Jaipur Virasat Foundation
Material- Blue pottery, Terracotta, Resin, Cloth puppet and Bamboo canes
Elephantscape
Hailing from Jaipur and being in close network of artisans and craftsmen of Rajasthan Gopal felt as a responsible artist to showcase plight of elephants in Jaipur via medium of extensively used crafts of Rajasthan like Blue pottery, cane craft used by taziamakers, terracota figurines by a potter community called Prajapatis, Cloth puppet by local puppeteers, metal enameled techniques and miniature painting over an elephant made of resin. A collab between craftsmen and him was an experimental venture of introducing crafts in contemporary arts.
Elephant the four footed, large bodied, sweet paced animal has become so much a part of the desert state’s capital Jaipur and its arts, crafts and design at micro level and cultural regimen at macro level that we have never realized being the subjective participants of enslaving this friendly animal. By utilizing intrinsically traditional methods to the contemporized form and with a background of the natural landscape of Jaipur, Gopal showcase “Elephatscapes” and focus the misery of elephants being kept as chained slaves to tourism machinery, transporting foreign tourist up to the hilly fort of Amer.
His penchant for elephant murals also has a similar deeper reason than what meets the eye. “A temple in Amer that I used to frequent had an elephant chained in, lonelyand bereft of company. The sight of the lonely pachyderm struck a chord in me prompting me to come up with multiple depictions of elephants in my art. It is an inherent call to draw attention to the plight of hundreds of such elephants so confined”, he states.
