Designer Rohit Bal and sculptor G Ravinder Reddy collaborate for Lotus Makeup India Fashion Week

Covid-19 has temporarily grounded sculptor G Ravinder Reddy’s fashion collaboration with uber-designer Rohit Bal. But work is very much on.  
Designer Rohit Bal and sculptor G Ravinder Reddy collaborate for Lotus Makeup India Fashion Week
Designer Rohit Bal and sculptor G Ravinder Reddy collaborate for Lotus Makeup India Fashion Week

Collaborations between fashion and art are not that outré. The oldest one could be an iconic yet surreal dress designed by fashionista Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dalí. Louis Vuitton paid homage to Richard Prince by dressing up models in Prince’s iconic Nurse paintings. The flamboyantly innovative Delhi designer Rohit Bal and sculptor G Ravinder Reddy are in the planning stages of a creative alliance, although slowed down by the coronavirus. Bal was inspired by Reddy’s gloriously coloured giant female heads and voluptuous sculptures. He sent the sculptor a partnership proposal for Lotus Makeup India Fashion Week. Through video calls and email—Reddy lives in Visakhapatnam—they are brainstorming continuously. Bal’s inspiration is Reddy’s gigantic golden head sculptures. 

Reddy is one of India’s first artists to use industrial fibreglass as a medium—since the early 1990s. He says the material freely yielded to his experiments with shape, size and colour. “Besides, it was cheaper,” he smiles. His colour palette comprises bold shades—red, blue, gold and copper and has created a new oeuvre of Indian pop sculpture with gigantic heads of very feminine rural Indian women. Bright blue faces startled by some private vision. Bright gold skin and red lips, eyebrows lifted in bemusement. The eyes are large, startlingly white framed by kohl. And of late, subtle greys.

Rohit Bal
Rohit Bal

“I like the thought of feeling the immensity of my creations even as I’m working on them. I should be able to stretch my hands wide and still not be able to take it all in. That is the emotion I want my audience to experience.”

This is perhaps the reason he refuses to have a website of his works.The male form does not interest him. “I like women,” he admits candidly though a couple of sculptures make the rule. Reddy’s nudes faced the brunt of ‘societal moral norms’ in the early years, since many galleries refused to exhibit them. “It’s the reality of the times we live in, but of late some of them are more than willing,” he says. His recent exhibition at Vadehra Art Gallery in Delhi had an extensive array of nudes. They seem more divine than human; Reddy calls them “devis”.

Born in 1956 in Suryapet in Andhra Pradesh, Ravinder Reddy studied Fine Arts at Baroda—an artistic Mecca of sorts, before furthering his education in London. His work challenges convention by celebrating female intimacy. The female forms, even the fully clothed ones, follow the theme. “I strive to reflect the social outlook, how most of us perceive women.

But I do not want to tantalise viewers or be vulgar,” he says. The head epiphany was born in the 1980s at a Nigerian exhibition of Benin Bronzes. Reddy saw small heads modelled on African tribal chiefs, which impacted him powerfully. “The head is the immediate recognisable form of any human being,” says Reddy.Unlike Benin, the Reddy trademark is scale; the women are only getting bigger. It is the same with Bal, whose shows address vast issues both political and social to make statements that transcend limits of pure fashion. It’s very likely he is getting Reddy’s massive head on his diminutive shoulders.

spot a reddy

Gigantic scale and gloriously colourful forms.

Striking heads and female nudes, simultaneously sensual and monstrous often adorned with typical South Indian accessories and makeup. Even the clothed sculptures focus on female anatomy.

Gold and blue give the Devis a divine aura

The characteristically large eyes are confrontational. The kohl-lined eyes are wide, open and bold. 

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The New Indian Express
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