The St+art India Foundation stormed into the city this October, paintbrush and creativity in hand, and has been painting the town colourful ever since.
As part of the St+art Urban Art Festival 2017 which is supported by Asian Paints, they are hoping to reintroduce the lost spaces of Mumbai to its people, and have begun the project with the topmost point of Mumbai, Sassoon Dock.
Over the past month, artists, illustrators, graphic designers from Indian, France, Singapore, Australia and other have come together to make elements of this 142-year-old dock interact with the culture and people of the city.
Through November and December, Sassoon Dock, which is usually cordoned off from public access, is now an experiential exhibition with installations, wall murals, screenings and AV experiences that anyone can visit and interact with.
One of the exhibits is a work done by Hanif Kureshi, where he has taken the fishing nets used at Sassoon Dock and printed it with words he picked up during his walks around the area – everything used to describe the sights, sounds and smells of Sassoon Dock.
Tan Zi Xi, a Singaporean artist has created a blue room with a ceiling full of plastic and waste material, to give the illusion of what sea life must see from under the ocean. Interestingly, she picked up everything, from the crushed mineral water bottles to the never-to-be-used thermocol plates from around the dock area, where they had been strewn and thrown about.
In one area, artist Guido Van Helten has painted a huge detailed wall mural of three faces that he came across in the dock area. Gorgeous, and massive in its scale, the three murals can be seen in one go only from a distance.
Akshat Nauriyal has made an installation called the Curiot, which explores the idea of a mythical sea creature such as a dragon, which literally jumps off the page, or rather the wall.
Sameer Kulavoor has made a tongue-in-cheek life-sized commentary on the advertising sector, with a well-packed perfume box selling the smell of the fishy Sassoon Docks, named Parfum Sassoon.
24 other artists have come together to make Sassoon Dock a lively, colourful and cultural space, at least until the end of this year.
Open to public, you can walk in between Thurs-Sun, noon-10pm. Apart from the installations, there will be events, workshops, talks and even music performances, the details of which you can read here.
Will you see the art in the everyday now too?