INFO
| Name | Gitanjali Bhatt (she/her) |
| Born | 1999 |
| Country of Birth | England |
| Place of Residence | Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland |
| Ethnicities | Indian (Gujarati) |
| Artform | Visual arts |
| Decades Active | 2020s |
ABOUT
Gitanjali Bhatt is a Tāmaki Makaurau-based video, sculpture and sound artist. She crafts alternative filming and sound-recording apparatuses using scavenged, discarded industrial objects, and uses them to document towns, cities, parks and shops within her surroundings. Her method of video and audio documentation surveys routine events on the margins of her everyday environments. The apparatuses amble through weedy grass, trip over road curbs and slip through ditches. Bhatt looks to embrace alternate philosophies when it comes to encountering fringe, cross-over and in-between spaces.
Many of Bhatt’s works are shot on her smartphone, including the videos for her 2022 exhibition Crap Encounters [Shot on iPhone] at play_station in Pōneke. This reflects Bhatt’s practice of ad-hoc assemblage, utilising discarded objects and equipment that are readily available. Her assemblages have included broken timber, found wheels, fencing timber and wire, hubcaps and plumbing pipes. In Crap Encounters the presentation of Bhatt's various apparatuses together with the videos, treated the filming equipment and DIY rigs with the same value as the footage they were used to document.
In response to settler-colonialist conservation, which largely protects and champions seemingly desirable spaces such as national parks and reserves, Bhatt’s research and reflections led her to spend time in marginal spaces, like roadsides and gutters, which are, by comparison, relatively unsupervised or neglected. As she states:
In many ways, land is treated like commercial entertainment through nature documentaries and Bollywood films and tourism. I find the language of nonsensical performance a way to resist the control of mass media. Instead, these filming apparatuses offer their own perspective of the landscape in attempts to rediscover alternate ways to embrace our surroundings.
Writer Ronia Ibrahim described her experience of Bhatt’s installations: “instead of trying to project or read beauty on these sculptures, I relish in their absurdism, and encounter a curiosity and joy more worthwhile and long lasting.”
Bhatt completed a Master of Fine Arts at Whitecliffe in 2022 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the same institution in 2020.
LINKS
Key works / presentations
2023 — Kiss Taraf, The Art Paper Offices, Tāmaki Makaurau
2023 — Fertile Ground, DEMO, Tāmaki Makaurau
2023 — Chemical Landscapes, ODDLY, Tāmaki Makaurau
2022 — Hansa Studios Exhibition, Tāmaki Makaurau
2022 — Crap Encounters, play_station Artist-run Space, Pōneke
2022 — local migrant, RM Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau
2021 — Where We Are Now, Auckland Photography Festival, Form Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau
2021 — Conversation Pieces, Artspace Aotearoa, Tāmaki Makaurau
2020 — Inflorescence, Auckland Artweek, Comet Project Space, Tāmaki Makaurau
2020 — Shifting Matter, Form Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau
2020 — Lively Collisions, DEMO (curated by Yolunda Hickman, Tāmaki Makaurau
2019 — Lightscape, Auckland Artweek, Comet Project Space, Tāmaki Makaurau
2019 — Adapt, Pearce Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa
2018 — ...If you knew me, with Jill Sorensen, Mark Harvey and Denise Batchelor, DEMO Tāmaki Makaurau
Key awards
2021 — Whitecliffe: MFA scholarship
2020 — Eden Arts’ Art Schools Award: finalist
