Recollective: Offbeat offices

In a pursuit to bring about a paradigm shift in the existing art space, five artists ventured out with Recollective — a collaborative that aims to cascade the role of an artist beyond the gallery. While the first project of designing an office space using art installations kicked off with a bang, we catch up with the team that’s making news in design — for all the right reasons.

Launched on the 5th of this month at Kstart, an inititative by Kalaari; Recollective is the brainchild of a zesty artistic bunch—Shilo Shiv Suleman, Sean Stevens, Nikhil More and Pallavi Sen, headed by the lead artist Raghava KK. “We believe that art belongs everywhere and not just in galleries and studios. The idea was to work on something ambitious and interdisciplinary. We wanted to bring art, science and technology together. So when we offered to help design a creative space that will allow one to think out of the box, we jumped at the opportunity,” says Raghava, elucidating about how their first project for start-up incubator rolled out.
 
While the idea is to promote art and transcend it across into commercial, non-commercial and corporate spaces, Shilo Shiv Suleman, reiterates how the concept is built on the threshold of incorporating art installations while designing spaces. “India has moved from an industrial age into the creative age. Albeit there is an umpteen number of state of art companies in India, we’re yet to explore many facets of art that can bring about a radical change in the looks and perception of space. And this is exactly what we want to convey through out works using art installations. Moreover, the city is boiling pot for innovative start-ups. So, we’re quite certain that our vision to transform prosaic spaces into quirky surroundings using art installations will work.”

Barely a month old, and the collective is already making its presence felt across the country with requests pouring in from various quarters. “We are in conversation with two other spaces to do re-collective residencies. One is at an illustrious institute in Ahmedabad and the other is in the US at a big corporation,” reveals Nikhil More. Adding to the same, Raghava mentions, “In all honesty, it’s indeed refreshing to note that a majority are taking to the idea that in order to bring about fresher ideas and productivity independent of the profession, it should first begin with the surroundings. We’re glad that our ideology pertaining to the fact that one can’t really think out of the box while sitting in one is gaining traction.”