Revue (Sreejata Roy and Mrityunjay Chatterjee) is a two member team of an artist and a media practitioner. Revue’s practices with regard to urban space are generally twofold. Through the projects, using and combining different media Revue document the changes in the city and study how these changes affect peoples’ lives. Revue also explore, adapt and create spaces for public interactions and collective intellectual and creative practices.
As artists Revue consider community interaction to be the main framework and fulcrum of their practice, embedded in the work for the past decade. Revue’s work is primarily done through sustained dialogues with the community, engaging different age groups and social formations depending upon project scale, scope, requirement and depth of involvement.
Based on the anxieties, insights, configurations, affirmations and negations articulated through community interaction, Revue try to recreate or reclaim spaces, giving existing public spaces new contexts, resonances and aspects. Through this participatory process they develop thier concepts and aesthetic, and understanding of modes of expression, production and dissemination.
During her MPhil studies in media art at the Coventry School of Art and Design, UK (2001-05), Sreejata Roy evolved a culturally embedded personal art practice within her larger investigation of socio-cultural issues via oral history and ethnography, the narration of daily life, and the formation of subjectivity. She initially logged her observations in a diary. These notations – sometimes dense and analytical, at other times fragmented marginalia – functioned as core material for reflection and later articulation of her core interests through various interlinked media forms and formats.
As an artist particularly drawn to community-related projects, Sreejata has focused on exploring the new labour practices that have developed in the neo-liberal political/economic environment as an expression and consequence of globalization. For almost a decade she has been using classical/conventional as well as mixed and digital media, informed by a theoretical framework, to produce narratives around this subject.
Sreejata Roy has been awarded with ‘Public Art’ grant from Foundation of Contemporary Art (FICA) for reshaping a community park in one of the low income colonies. The Park project from India has been selected for final jury in International Public Art Award 2015. Sreejata has been awarded prestigious scholarships (Overseas Research Scholarship, U.K.; National Scholarship, India) and has participated in many national and international exhibitions, residencies and workshops. She was briefly involved in research on curatorial policy in India, undertaken by the Centre for Culture, Media and Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi.
Presently she is pursuing her doctoral study (practice-based research) in the Department of Building, Architecture & Design University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, the title is Reclaiming space in public through creative endeavor.
Mrityunjay is an artist with specific interest in public domain and popular print culture. With a background of working in media and information technology initiatives, for almost a decade he was part of the Sarai Media Lab, a programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi (www.sarai.net). He produced a range of experimental digital designs for internationally showcased cyber artwork and installations, and collaborated with a group of artists and researchers to create a series of hyperlinked CD artworks on the theme of media markets and the politics of information societies. Mrityunjay was one of the initiator and worked extensively in Cybermohalla programme, a collaboration between Sarai-CSDS and Ankur Society for Alternatives in Education, with young people from urban neighborhoods, assisting with all aspects of their creative endeavours in old and new media formats, evaluating works, sharing ideas and dialogue and providing concrete design inputs.
Presently Revue is working on a project in Khirkee, urban village exploring the idea of women in public space erst while supported by Khoj International Artist Association, New Delhi and at present by Kiran Nadar Museum. Revue simultaneously engaging with homeless women exploring the idea of women in public space at the shelter in Jama Masjid supported by ArtReach India, New Delhi. Revue has widely published and participated in national and International exhibitions.
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