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It’s slightly ironic that Kolkata, a city fiercely protective of its monuments and history, should now have a contemporary art outpost operating out of a 116-year-old former prison.
Experimenter, the gallery that co-founders Prateek and Priyanka Raja established in 2009, opened its fourth space on March 15, inside the Old Art Studio at Alipore Museum. For the uninitiated, it’s the erstwhile Alipore Jail, once one of Asia's largest prisons, housing prominent freedom fighters during the Independence Struggle.
A remarkable address comes with a tall order. Much like Experimenter’s Hindustan Road and Ballygunge Place addresses, and its sole Mumbai address, the decor alone tells you Experimenter is not interested in the contemporary experience as a white-cube-we’re-here-to-talk-and-drink. You’re met instead with a double-gabled structure in deep terracotta brick, two circular windows, twin white exhibition banners hanging on either side of its green-painted doors.
Going forward, the Outpost plans solo and group shows alongside music lectures, salon-style workshops, and community gatherings. The heritage site, if this works as it should, becomes more than a museum of what once was. It becomes a place where the city actively thinks about what it is now, and what it might become, literally, all at once.
The inaugural show makes a reasonable bid for that case. Kolkata-based artist Rathin Barman's The cage broke, and I found the horizon brings together new sculpture and drawing built from his anthropological engagement with communities who migrated from post-Partition Bangladesh to North Kolkata, and others who arrived from across India. This exhibition is on till June 14.
It’s a theme that runs through the lives of many residents of the city at a venue that many residents of the city have specific memories of – a light show, a family visit, and even frequently a landmark for the area. But here, the familiar promises to suddenly not be so familiar. In a building made to restrict movement, Barman’s subjects’ choices stand out all the more poignantly.
Address: 17, Judges Court Rd, Alipore, Kolkata, West Bengal 700027
Timings: Tues-Sun. 12-6pm. Ticket counter closes at 5.30pm. Mon closed.
Entry: ₹30. Minimal parking fees apply.