Sarnath Banerjee - Vogue India - July 2012

WHAT TO TALK ABOUT THIS MONTH

POSTER

CHILD

Selected for London’s prestigious Cultural Olympiad, SARNATH BANERJEE takes the cool of the graphic novel to the world’s biggest art audience

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Tell us about your involvement with Frieze Projects East and the London 2012 Festival.

I had an exhibition at the Frieze Art Fair a couple of years ago and I guess the curatorial team remembered me.

I like their policy of building relationships with artists.

What is this collection of work about?

It is a series of posters and a graphic narrative around competitive sport. I proposed a ‘gallery of non-winners’.

It includes billboards and graphic essays in newspapers. It’s like a campaign on people who fail despite trying very hard.

You’re the only artist whose work will be displayed in all six boroughs of the London Olympic Games.

It’s the nature of the project; to be accessible to the community where it will be shown.

I feel privileged to be allowed to communicate with such a large group of people.

Why do your pieces focus on Brazil’s first judo champion?

I interviewed Douglas Vieira, who almost won gold at the LA Olympics, in São Paulo. He told me that judo is as much about falling as it is about throwing. It was strangely liberating. Four years later I made it into a proposal.

How important are posters as an art form?

Very important. These images don’t belong to the galleries—they need to be seen in tube stations, bus stops and newspapers.

—Allie Biswas

ARTWORK COURTESY: SARNATH BANERJEE

FRIEZE FRAME

From top: Mother And Judo by Banerjee; a page from The Harappa Files (2011). Inset: Sarnath Banerjee.

The exhibition marks a return to familiar stomping grounds for Sarnath Banerjee. “[London] is like home. I went to university here and haunted its streets till the early hours of the morning,” says the artist.