Exhibition Review: Photography | Brian Rope
Poison Berries | Janhavi Sharma
Photo Access | 15 March 2024 – 27 April 2024
Two exhibitions running concurrently explore identity and memory, in quite different ways. Poison Berries is one of them.
Janhavi Sharma is a visual artist from India currently living and working in Nottingham, UK. In this exhibition she reflects on her childhood and heritage. She uses orange poison berries from her backyard layered over images as a metaphor relating to the interwoven continuity of time. There are 32 untitled inkjet prints displayed in a single group.
 |
| Installation image – provided by Photo Access |
This artist often uses food in her practice
as a mutating metaphor. Orange poison berries are an inedible fruit. Growing in
the artist’s garden they attract songbirds and remind her of present pasts.
The booklet available in the gallery about this show contains many very expressive words about the poison berries written by Meher Manda, a writer, culture critic, editor and educator from Mumbai (Bombay), India but currently stationed in the USA. The material addresses a range of questions, including Why, Where and What are the poison berries? I found those words enormously valuable in understanding and appreciating the works on display. the artist feeds on a photograph for more Absolutely true. But here the viewers of the photographs not only feed on them for more but also should feed on the words.
.jpg) |
| Scan of middle pages of booklet |
orange diffused at the foot of the plastic
chair, durable, timeless refers to an image of
just that. It is a good image. I would have enjoyed it completely devoid of
context. But what is it all about here? Again, Manda’s words: say what the
memory of one’s own forgone story? orange provide a starting point for our thoughts.
What are your memories of your own forgone story? Are they merely a delicate
thread woven into the fabric of your existence? Do they whisper secrets to you,
only you? What do they reveal to you of journeys in your earlier life? Had you
even forgotten them? As we grow older each of our memories, once vivid - even
alive, fade into what some have described as quiet chambers of remembrance. How
would you illustrate your memories before they fade so that you might recall
them from those illustrations in your later life?
 |
| Janhavi Shama, Untitled 30 – installation image provided by Photo Access |
In another image a child’s face is covered with the orange berries. She
is standing alongside the trunk of a tree. A child limp on the stillness of
a photograph. Her memory: orange. Again, words to stimulate our thinking,
about what the author is saying relating to her memories. There are more in the
booklet for you to read and consider as you stand before the block of images.
About a mother’s orange bloodline. About a tree promising life yet bearing the
poison berries.
 |
| Janhavi Shama, Untitled 27 – installation image provided by Photo Access |
Another print features a small bird amongst
the mainly bare branches of a shrub. Is it a hummingbird that fed on the
berries before they fell from the branches? But wait on, it does not appear to
be an evergreen shrub.
sit on it and fly away … regurgitated as a photograph …. attracting …
hummingbirds
 |
| Janhavi Shama, Untitled 16 – installation image provided by Photo Access |
There is much more, in both the images and
the words. Read about the what, when, where and why of the poison berries. Then,
as you explore the images, consider both what they mean for the artist and what
they mean us viewing them, whether we had orange berries in our past lives or
not. As this artist has done, we should dare to reflect on our own childhoods,
to explore the intersections between our gender, our memories and our
relationships with physical environments.
This review is also available on the author's blog here.