Alice Furber, India 2016
The dog and the holy rock
This photograph was one of the initial inspirations for this project. I took it whilst travelling around North India in a small village. I was incredibly inspired by the chaotic streetscapes of India, where the personal and commercial lives and activities of individuals are so interconnected with others and spill into public space. Thresholds of public and private feel very different to the neat, quiet streets of Sydney, with private residences, businesses and amenities increasingly partitioned from public eyes and interaction.
Whilst travelling, I would often come across rocks painted with this orange saffron colour. When I asked somebody about these rocks, they told me the rocks were painted to demonstrate that all objects within the world are precious and holy. Saffron is a significant colour used in Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism, three major religions in India. These rocks reflect the spirituality at play in organic interactive streetscapes, amongst the surprise of shrines, cows, shops, goats, murals, people and objects leaking into the streets and ready to be encountered around every corner.
To me, this rock embodies the poetic in the ordinary, the activation of the un- precious, easily moved, removed or altered, belonging without a home but accepted, appreciated and a part of the evolving streetscape. The onlooking Pariah street dog is its only witness and shares a similar experience in life.