PARALLEL HORIZONS: BAASHER GHOR: BAMBOO HOUSE (2013)

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PARALLEL HORIZONS: Baasher Ghor • বাঁশের ঘর • Bamboo House • 竹屋 • گھرکا بانس 
Curated by Saif Osmani
Dates: From 21st January until 28th February 2013
Opening: 18:30 24th January 2013 
Talk and workshop: 18 February 2013
Venue: Stephen Lawrence Gallery at University of Greenwich, Old Royal Naval College
Further details: www.baasherghor.com
www.stephenlawrencegallery.net 

 

Documentary:
Directed by Tijmen Veldhuizen
Produced by Abbas Nokhasteh

 

Saif Osmani statement 

In an increasingly interconnected world, what do we choose to bring along with us into the present and what do we leave behind?

Baasher Ghor (Bengali for ‘Bamboo House’) originated from a childhood memory where during a visit to Bangladesh I noticed a row of woven bamboo baskets suspended from the ceiling of our ancestral home. The bungalow-style house was built on a earth mound with bamboo stilts, locally sourced wood, a tinned roof braced with bamboo beams.

 

My father explained to me that the baskets hanging from the ceiling had been used for catching different types of fish and each had its own story attached; a sturdy one was used to catch the first and largest fish in the spring, closed end ones to catch river fish during the monsoon, others specifically designed to catch eels and and there was even a broken basket when a fish broke free and had escaped.

The next time I visited Bangladesh our family home had been replaced with a concrete building and the bamboo baskets thrown away.

This memory was recently reawakened when I walked past a pile of bamboo baskets thrown on top of a refuse skip in east London.

Soon after these series of occurrences I put out an 'open call' for creative practitioners to respond to bamboo in context of a space, place or country. 

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So far Baasher Ghor has received over 40 projects from artists, sound artists, sculptors, designers, architects, poets and oral historians from across 4 continents.

 

'Parallel Horizons', a cross-disciplinary group exhibition held at the Stephen Lawrence Gallery was the first time all 40 projects had been brought together and the process of learning from one another's practice began.