Tanya Leighton

‘In the meantime, water had begun to dry up, a huge salt marshland had appeared. Last melted snow dried and froze into the first salt. The white in the horizon kept coming back again and again. The wide spreading line in the horizon that separates ground from the sky is the last hope of our senses. After walking a few kilometres in the salted barren land, the midday sky began to reflect on the ground and ground reflected it back to the sky again. This exchange went on again and again until the line in the horizon disappeared.

One falls unconscious, only to be rescued in the Rann by villagers who live nearby or border security forces who were patrolling the border area. When they asked the unconscious person: Where is he coming from and where is he going? He uttered: “He is coming from point ‘A’ going to point ‘B’. Back in the village there are rumours about a terrorist in the Raan, who can say anything like a mad person”.’

‘Crust’, Goutam Ghosh’s first exhibition at Tanya Leighton, brings together a body of work that was inspired by the artist’s recent trips to the salt marshes of the Rann of Kutch, in India. In his paintings, sculptures and films, Ghosh synthesises ways in which humanity understands the world — through geology, myth and systems of measurement. His poetic approach does not seek answers, so much as provide a space for further reflection.