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Artistic expression of the Kodavas through artifacts, ritual and performance

The grant helped me to understand the ethnic culture of the Kodavas (Kodagu, Karnataka)  and largely exposed me to the rural environment, paving the way to the use of natural materials, pigments, cloth for my growing practive of installation and site-specific work. I was awarded the Commonwealth Arts and Crafts Award and was artist-in residence at the University of Newcastle in 1997-8.

For photographs of Bengali scroll paintings from British collections.

I received the grant during the course of my PhD on the picture story-telling traditions in Bengal and Rajasthan. These are traditions in which itinerant storytellers use scroll paintings to illustrate their storytelling performances. The sterling grant enabled me to order slides of the wonderful scroll paintings, particualrly from the J C French collection  in the V&A and British Museum. They were extremely useful, as these paintings are among four or five surviving examples of a superb, lost tradition.