Prabhakar Pachpute
The Extension
2015
Charcoal and Clay
A site-specific work on the walls of the Gallery of Modern Art.
Prabhakar Pachpute’s (b. Chandrapur (Maharashtra), India, 1986) choice of media — coal — is a reference to the city in which he was raised, known as The City of Black Gold. Paying tribute to his family who worked in the coalmines Pachpute’s uses coal as an interrogation of hard labour and immigration. Moving from an exploration of drawing, sculpture and shadow installations, Pachpute’s work has recently tended towards context-based interventions and in-situ drawing. Through the occupation of space with a performative presence, Pachpute attempts to unravel the complexities of the contemporary social order and identity. The same theatricality and poetry can be found in his stop motion animation films, where the drawing process is enhanced as we watch the continuously built, erased and transformed images.
Courtesy of kadist.org, The artist and Queensland Art Gallery