Passage - Ceramics at the Hyatt, Chennai

Adil Writer Mandala Pottery Auroville

A road less travelled is an installation of ‘treasure boxes’ made of a variety of clays.... small intimate objects you want to hold; discover hidden secrets within. Rajeev Sethi initially requested a one metre cube of a treasure box for the Hyatt project.... “not possible? Then make 500!” Ray saw an undulating serpentine mass basking in the sun at the pool level, and as he succinctly puts it, “These boxes are small. Most fit in the palm of the hand. They are made to be held—close to the heart—to be looked at closely and opened. Inside? There is virtually no inside. This is not a box to be filled with pins, buttons and paperclips. A treasured ring? Or the key to the jewellery box? Perhaps. But what does an Adil Writer Treasure Box really hold? Unquestionably, your imagination; a kind of rite of passage, if you wish to make the trip—from outside to inside—to Bachelard’s realm of “intimate immensity.” “The gift of a decorative box implies permission to conceal one’s secrets.” “…the dialectics of inside and outside multiply with countless diversified nuances.” Gaston Bachelard. The Poetics of Space