APURV and Alka Bagri complement each other perfectly in their public duties.
Apurv, president and CEO of Metdist, the non-ferrous metals group, concerns himself mainly with education as chairman of governors at the London Business School.
Meanwhile, Alka looks after the arts as the “totally hands on” trustee of the family’s charitable wing, the Bagri Foundation.Apurv’s thinking encapsulates what Eastern Eye’s GG2 Power List is all about: “Those fortunate enough to succeed, whether in monetary terms or in terms of their power and influence, have the capacity to make a real difference. Doing so in selfless ways and without agenda is what separates the grandstanders from those for whom giving back is a part of their lives.”His wife reveals that she is making radical changes at the Bagri Foundation, moving it away from engaging only in Indian or British Asian activities to innovative cultural influences from anywhere and everywhere.Once, she was comfortable doing traditional Indian or south Asian events because this was what she was familiar with.
These are not being dumped, but she is now making much more of an effort in opening up the Bagri Foundation to global contemporary cultures.“I can’t box myself into just India,” she declares.
“I never wanted to slot myself as Indian only or British Indian only. I don’t want the foundation to be identified as just Indian. If you ask me who my target audience is today, it is absolutely anybody who is interested in seeing something new, learning how art is used to express matters of importance.”However, “contemporary visual art is one of our main themes going forward”.
She also says that “a lot of the projects we are doing have some social relevance – sustainability, impact, what are people doing in these fields, how are they expressing it through art?”She has taken on American Chelsea Pettitt as head of arts. “She comes with a strong background in Chinese contemporary art”.
Another key recruit is Mary George, who is British of Malayali heritage, with “a strong background in visual art”, especially that of India.
“My team is only four but if you have good people I don’t need 40,” Alka explains. “I am totally hands on. We have been everywhere around the globe with big and small events.”
The Bagri Foundation’s sponsorship of the London Indian Film Festival is well known. And this will be the second year it is supporting the River to River Florence Indian Film Festival, whose Italian director and founder, Selvaggia Velo, much impressed Alka with her love of all things Bollywood. On the films front, Alka also “did something on films from Syria and Jordan, countries that are under-studied or lesser known”, for the benefit of “total cinephiles”.The foundation has supported various literary events at Asia House, which provides “a vital space dedicated to vibrant, diverse writing, stories and ideas from and about Asia and the diaspora”. A recent event looked at how British Asian women have worked with Shakespeare in theatre, film and literature.
There has been support for Shubbak (‘window’ in Arabic), London’s largest biennial festival of contemporary Arab culture.Other projects confirm that Alka is seeking out new artists from a wide variety of cultures. Two in particular have bowled her over. One is the Anicka Yi, a Korean-American conceptual artist, and Shezad Dawood, a Londoner whose “multi-media works are inspired by his varied cultural heritage – Pakistani mother, Indian father and Irish stepmother”.
Alka backed Anicka Yi’s presence at the Venice Biennale this year. “That to me was the most outstanding thing that we did this year. I did go for the opening because this was a big commission for us.”Anicka Yi is described as “a conceptual artist whose work lies at the intersection of fragrance, cuisine, and science.
She is known for installations that engage the senses, especially the sense of smell, and for her collaborations with biologists and chemists.”About Shezad Dawood, who was given help to premiere at the Sharjah Biennial, she says: “It’s all visual. He works with textiles, he makes beautiful hangings with them. He works with paint. He takes light and twists them into shapes and his latest is virtual reality.”
It was announced: “His newly-commissioned project Encroachments takes a pragmatic and oblique look at the relations between Pakistan and the US since partition in 1947 through a new Virtual Reality environment, contained within two mirrored installations comprising neon, wallpaper, tapestries, sculpture and print. The work is a meditation on the idea of sovereignty, private property, and the politics of space in the two largest cities in Pakistan, Lahore and Karachi.”The Bagri Foundation is also supporting Samsara, a collaboration to be showcased in Melbourne in November “between Aakash Odedra and Hu Shenyuan, two of the finest exponents of culturally-specific dance forms from their countries of origin, India and China”.
There is also funding for At the Cutting Edge: Experimental Sounds of Asia, at Café Oto in London, a series of events in November which “takes its inspiration from the acclaimed Japanese composer, jazz musician and interdisciplinary artist Jun Fukamachi (1946-2010).”Alka sums up: “I am now more and more getting used to the idea of thinking globally.”But at the same time she applies a common sense test: “I like to keep things simple – high falutin ideas are neither here nor there.
If I can’t get others to understand an idea then I have not succeeded.”She wants above all for parents to introduce their children and grandchildren to literature, theatre, drama and other art forms at an early age. Which is probably what Apurv and Alka will do some 10-15 years from now with their first grandchild – their daughter Amisha’s son, Aarav.
