Visakhapatnam :
At just 26 years of age, Vizagite Durugadda Harsha Vardhan has won the Rio Tinto Sculpture Award at the ‘Sculpture by the Sea-2017’ contest recently held in Australia. His work ‘Column of Sound’ has emerged as winner among works by 78 international sculptors and is now being showcased in Perth.
Harsha’s creation ‘Column of Sound’ consists of two mild steel hemispheres and slices of marble (8 ft by 4 ft dimension) stacked in between. It is based on the visual dynamics of an audio wave where sound translates to tangible and eternal, rendering a paradigm shift of sensory experience. In Harsha’s words, “It’s a translation of sound into a visual form, in the same way we store images as memories, it’s actually my memory of a sound.”
He was a student of St Francis School and Bullaya College in Vizag following which Harsha completed his B.Sc from Hyderabad and Masters in Visual Communication from Delhi. He also completed a course in arts and aesthetics from JNU. Eventually, he took up sculpting which has also been the profession of his father and grandfather.
Harsha plans to participate in the next ‘Sculpture by the Sea’ contest to be held at Bondi in Sydney in October. Speaking about his next sculpture, he said, “Made with corten steel, it would be called ‘Fish Love’. This structure will showcase misinterpretation of love. Though, love is always talked about in great terms, it’s often self-gratification rather than a selfless emotion. True love should be always giving without thinking about the self.”
“Vizag is blessed with the sea, which is a soother and contests and exhibitions by the sea can be held just like in Australia. But we need to create that environment and not ruin art by politicising the events. We need an organising committee for it with encouragement from well-to-do private patrons just like it’s in Australia. Vizag needs more galleries and more events as well as private patrons,” Harsha said.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News> City News> Visakhapatnam News / by Sulogna Mehta / TNN / May 11th, 2017