Bikrant Maharjan
Peace Wall - Belfast
During my brief visit to Belfast in May 2018, I did what most tourists do, go on a bus tour of Belfast to see all the sights in a very efficient way. I soon realised how ignorant I was to just assume the that divide between the Catholic and Protestant areas were all a thing of the past. As I took in the enormity and the importance of the wall to stop inter communal violence, I couldn't help but notice the number of tourists that come to visit the wall. Under closer inspection of the walls the messages written on the walls were mostly to do with peace and living in harmony. However, I started to notice a few carvings that were quite - at least to me - witty and funny. So began the hunt for more of these messages. I was surprised to be faced with this juxtaposition of beholding something that plays such a pivotal role in the community and one of the most common of human things to do, trying to be or succeeding at being funny in the most inappropriate of places. Maybe my hunt for these messages tells you more about me than it does the people who wrote these messages.
Cave Paintings
Built in 1844, Reading Gaol served Berkshire area as a prison till its closure in 2013. It has been the home for thousands of prisoners including the poet Oscar Wilde for homosexual offences, the serial killer Amelia Dyer and the actor Stacy Keach. In 1992, it was turned into a Remand Centre and Young Offenders Institution for prisoners between the ages of 18 and 21 years.
My visit to the reading gaol was a part of community project where I was leading a group of 15-17 year old students through the task of taking photos of the gaol 'through the eyes of the prisoner'. As we walked through the empty spaces, it was very difficult to shake off the feeling of trespassing and being watched while doing so. As the day went on, the feeling lingered with us. However, we started noticing why we felt this way. It was a uninhabited prison but it was full to the brim with signs of people who had spent time in this facility. They had all left a mark in this prison.
This series of images document the marks and signs left on the building. Some declarations, some stamps and some quips. The gaol itself turned into a ever changing diary. And there I was studying each mark as if it were a cave painting. Trying to understand and make a narrative from a snippet of their lives.
Sophia
Theosophy is a personal experience, in which an individual searches for understanding and meaning in life and humanity. It revolves around each individual’s exploration of nature and the divine, and relies on one’s personal perceptions and experiences. It is inclusive. It does not exclude any thought system, traditions, or subjects, but encourages the study of all. It works in the premise that everything in life is a sign and those signs can be read.
‘Sophia’ is my attempt at depicting a person’s journey to achieve. Everyone has goals and things they want to attain. Each differ from the other yet we all go about it in a very similar way. Education, family and career, all become a catalyst in moulding the goal we have chosen to make our own, each one being interpreted differently in order to move forward in life. This series aims to show the fluidity of how the signs in life change and how it can be interpreted individually to further a person in their journey.
Edwin Budding Gallery, Brighton Photo Fringe 2016 - Brighton - October 2016
Mayflower Gallery, Southampton - January 2016
Science
This series is influenced by the work of Tatiana Gulenkina's series 'Things merging and falling apart'. Here she explores camera less photography where she focuses on the process of making rather than the predetermined result. I embarked on an adventure into the darkrooms to reconnoitre my fascination with the abstract nature of how everyday objects could be portrayed. With a jar of water and oil and any objects that took my interest, I started making photograms onto light sensitive paper. It began as a fun experiment but soon turned into an obsession. Hours spent in a room where the only visible colour was black and red, I could feel my eyes straining to focus on the photograms. My ears getting used to the only sound that was present, a running tap to wash my prints. Playing with the different effects each object made to alter the composition whilst getting frustrated at the fact that I could not always predict the fluid nature of it all. I found myself completely immersed in the process. I was dazed by the sudden burst of light as I walked out of the darkrooms with the wet outcomes. It was almost as thought I was waking up from a dream, allowing my eyes to adjust to the light and my ears slowly noticing the rustle of students outside. I was surprisingly delighted with the outcomes that I had produced. Something that resembles petri dishes, but did not have any of its seriousness. To me, the photograms were results of playful and experimental process. As I looked at them, all the frustrations I had built up from not being able to predict my compositions and the inaccuracies, dissipated. Replaced, in its place was a feeling of achievement and the realisation of finding something I completely took over my curiosities.
Mayflower Gallery, Southampton - January 2016
Instil
This series reflects upon Western society’s endless exposure to advertising and branding. In our hyper-capitalist era, branding has evolved through continued and sustained advertising via the power of images - to the extent that buying a branded product has become a purchase of self-identity. More specifically, the project demonstrates the impact this exposure has on society, which itself becomes complicit in a cycle of perceived need, desire, and consumption. This ultimately has a number of consequent issues, from environmental damage to economic problems through capital accumulation. The work deconstructs the logos that signify current major brands to their most fundamental colours, whilst placing them in a grid with the implication that brands ‘own’ the colours.
Solent Showcase Gallery, Southampton - June 2013
Solent Graduate Show, Southampton - May 2013
Source Online Magazine - Graduate Photography Online - June 2013
Social Love
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During this project I aimed to explore the desire of an individual to reach perfection in the contemporary world. The lengths people are willing to go to have a physical presence that is seen as perfect by the world around the individual. Alain De Botton talks of the desire for higher status in the society as a natural impulse in human nature. This status acquired by the accumulation of consumer goods and money and used as tokens to receive social acceptance and "love". Love not in the sense that one might love their parents or partner, but in a sense that having their existence acknowledged, opinions listened and needs ministered to. [De Botton, 11] This human impulse is closely linked to the current commercialised capitalist world of the free market. Capitalism is an economic system where goods and the means to their production are privately owned, and these goods or services are sold for the highest possible profit.
David Harvey suggests that the current global economic rescission is due to the internal contradiction of capital accumulation, where every crisis of capitalism sows its own seeds for the next crisis. As far back as the 1970's where the worker's wages were suppressed to dramatic increase in credit to now where the average debt per individual has tripled. [Harvey 2010]This creates an immense problem for an individual to proceed to a higher social status. Wages buy goods and because of the built in function of capitalism the price for the goods keep increasing while wages are suppressed. Immersing an individual in credit money, which is so easily available. In response to this relationship between the desire for love of the society and capitalist obstacles, I have explored the literal meaning of value that has been put on an individual's life.
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Life in Colour
This video is a self portrait exploring my loss of the playful vision of the world and the growth of cynicism in my approach to life as I get older. Something that is inevitable byproduct of human interaction and the commerical ambition of society. As a result many people puts aside small pockets of time from their busy lifestyle to do things they enjoy or a hobby that reminds them of how they used to see things. From sunday sports to evening dance classes, it seems a rather reversed way of living. Mine is no different, this project showed me that I am part of the cycle that allows people to lose the innocent love for life and exploring whilst I make small pockets of time to enjoy my artwork.
Elements
Part of some work that I created in my early year of studying fine art, I wanted to manifest the elements water, wind, earth and fire in a unique visual way. I experimented with many different methods and finally after some research achived in making each element into a vortex.