A DESERTED BARCODE

Adil Writer attributes his fascination for the stars and dark skies to his being born under the sign of Aries. He laments the growing loss of what he calls “the celestial companions of the night” in the artificially lit cities of today. In a recurring dream he sees himself painting a night sky in the midst of large sand dunes. Adil has enjoyed painting abstract landscapes since he was a child. As an established artist today, he has continued to incorporate painting with his pedestal-driven sculptural practice.

For the Triennale, he chose to merge a recently explored idea of a larger-than-life size barcode with his dream of a night sky. Composed of a series paintings on five metre long canvases stretched around free-standing wooden frames, the six-and-a-half feet high barcode utilises an assortment of unfired native clays and acrylic paints. He says, “with acrylics, it’s a what-you-see-is-what-you-get medium,” that frees him from the idiosyncrasies of a cone ten firing. Taking a cue from the thick crawling shino glazes he soda-fires at Mandala Pottery, Adil focused on conjuring an in-the-still-of-the-night, banjaric desert landscape. Thoughts of the threats of a changing climate at a biological, personal, cultural, microcosmic, and macrocosmic scale are embedded, although none may be overtly apparent to the viewer.

ADIL WRITER practiced architecture prior to training at the Golden Bridge Pottery, Puducherry in 1998. Currently a partner at Mandala Pottery in Auroville, he strikes a balance between making functional tableware and his own studio ceramics. Adil’s ceramics and large-scale unfired clay and acrylic paintings have been showcased at several solo and group exhibitions internationally. In 2013 Adil arranged a residency for eighteen Indian ceramicists to make artwork for the proposed Museum of Contemporary Indian Ceramics in Fuping, China. A recent milestone was the show In Collaboration with Laxma Goud, at Pundole Art Gallery in Mumbai. Adil is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics, Geneva.

www.adilwriter.com