Kala Ghoda Café

Legends Bike Café, Bangalore

2012-01-07T23:39:00.001-08:00

An incredibly cool and original café in Bangalore. Owner Prabhu is in one of the shots, the guy in the dark striped shirt. He's been collecting bikes and scooters for years and has put them together in a bright space on the 1st floor above his charming-as-hell café, where he plays vinyl and sells coffee at Rs.15 a cup. Everything about the place is a statement. So refreshing to see an un-designed new establishment that's dripping with cool, a respectable entrant to Bangalore's scene...

Pop-up Tattoo Parlour in the back room..!

2011-08-09T07:41:00.000-07:00

Kunal Pahuja's 'Get Skinked' Tattoo Parlour sets up in the back room for the monsoons.

2011-07-31T23:41:00.000-07:00

CONTEXTOMY | Rick Hirtle

Contextomy refers to an style of quoting in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning. In this series a similar practice has been applied by removing a subject from its surrounding in such a way as to obscure the original context. Thus everyday peculiarities become laden with mystery, comedy or even vulgarity. It’s on this basis that Rick has built a collection of images that include such varying subjects as a visa office bathroom in Hong Kong, a lone cow in a desolate stretch of the Australian outback, a handicapped person in Tokyo, an armed drunken man in China, a stray cat on a Mumbai commuter train and other pictures mashed together to present stories that are intriguing but far from obvious.

About the artist... Rick Hirtle is a professional documentary and commercial photographer from Toronto, Canada who specializes in making unrestricted images with a focus on social outsiders and human issues. He has traveled extensively around the globe in pursuit of his personal work. His photographs have appeared in countless exhibitions in Australia, Asia and North America. Most recently in the Born Into This Show presented by the Scion Automotive Corporation in Toronto, Canada. For more please visit www.rickhirtle.com

ABANDONED | Deepshikha Jain

2011-05-20T21:55:00.000-07:00

About the series…

In 1988, the building project of the City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) of Maharashtra state commissioned the office of architect Raj Rewal to design 1048 housing units. Despite a very low budget Rewal set out to develop a home environment that was simple and of high quality.

The site of the project is hilly, and unlike most other developments in New Mumbai, it has been designed embracing the terrain rather than trying to defeat it. For this reason it has been considered an important architectural example in a city where the design of public housing is driven solely by the ability to accommodate density.

23 years later, many of the units remain vacant. Most are facing practical problems of leakages, inadequate light and ventilation in houses, unused open spaces, lack of transportation, lack of medical facilities, etc. Since the Income Tax department bought most of the buildings, this colony was nicknamed the Income Tax Colony.

These pictures are not the entire story, they are just a part to create awareness and re-tell a forgotten tale. Abandoned spaces are a postlude to a life once lived and therefore make for good stories. There is no intention to document this structure. This on the contrary is the photographer’s own artistic expression.

Abandoned, whilst capturing the mood of the space, does raise the inevitable question about why such a well-intentioned and designed project has come to be largely unoccupied and fallen to disrepair, in a city severely lacking in low cost housing.

Deepshikha Jain

After graduating in Architecture from Bombay, Deepshikha Jain pursued a Master’s in Photography from Paris. She can easily be seen as a hybrid, having embraced one world without abandoning the other. She has exhibited in the Paris gallery Chambre Avec Vues and has toured widely across France and India capturing Le- Corbusier’s works. She has also traveled widely across Africa and Europe, at times just to see why a certain piece of Architecture is so rated and at times to be mesmerized by it.

Limited edition

Prints available:

· Small prints in editions of 15 at Rs.6000

· Large prints in editions of 10 at Rs.9000.

For print sales please ask at the café or contact Deepshikha on 098198 51510 / ar.deepshikhajain@gmail.com

Part One by Gitanjali Dang

2011-04-26T23:38:00.000-07:00

In one of the back rooms at the café from 29 April till 2 May 2011...

Quality Journalism

2011-03-01T22:03:00.000-08:00

I cant help asking myself the motivation for this Times article. Another piece of quality, progressive journalism from India's biggest English language daily? - Cycling is biggest cause of heart attack!

2011-02-18T06:07:00.000-08:00

The Jazz trio from the KGC Obataimu Jazz evening last Tuesday. Amazing music! That's Karim on the keyboard...

Some pics from our launch party for Obataimu Design Studio's Guerilla Store behind the café...

2011-01-26T06:42:00.000-08:00

2010-09-22T03:40:00.000-07:00

One day after the collapse of the new bridge at the main stadium in Delhi, a false ceiling collapses at Nehru Stadium. But hey, "It's really nothing to be worried about" Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandreshekhar told television channels.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/43/20100922/377/tsp-false-ceiling-in-nehru-stadium-colla_1.html

2010-06-02T03:01:00.000-07:00

CURRENT EXHIBITION

2010-05-20T04:46:00.000-07:00

Cityscape VIII, archival digital print on photo paper, 35” X 51”, 2000, Edition 8+2AP

Kala Ghoda Café in collaboration with gallery Project 88 presents part of the Cityscape series by artist Tejal Shah at the café from 23rd May, 2010 onwards.

Shot at the turn of the millennium, the photographs in the Cityscape series are verses from an elegy to the city of Melbourne, where the artist spent two years as part of her undergraduate degree. In a final good-bye, the artist gropes in the liminal hour to give shape to her feelings and experiences in & of this place. She takes her camera out for a walk every day at dusk - the melancholic hour. Without using a tripod or other supports, she holds up her manual camera that is as old as her, both born in ’79, and opens the aperture, her third eye, to let the light in for several seconds, sometimes over a minute.

As she does this, the imperceptible movements of her breathing and heaving hands and in that sense, the very presence of her being is recorded on film. The resulting photograph then is as much what we see as what we'll never be able to see;the artist in flesh and blood, in the act of capturing. The trails of light or the errant man-made structures that seem to shake and vibrate are not as such because the lights or the buildings were moving at the time of photographing, but because the artist moved.

“Whether Armilla is like this because it is unfinished or because it has been demolished, whether the cause is some enchantment or only a whim, I do not know. The fact remains that it has no walls, no ceilings, no floors: it has nothing that makes it seem a city except…”
(from Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino)

Incidentally, in these rather lonely scapes not a single human being appears. The images remark the presence of absence.

Kala Ghoda Café
10 Ropewalk Lane
Kala Ghoda
Fort
Mumbai 400 001

Phone +91 22 2263 3866
+91 98 3380 3418
info@kgcafe.in
http://www.kgcafe.in

Opens May 23, 2010
On view till July 4, 2010

Opening Hours: 0900 to 2345

Cityscape series is comprised of 8 images in total. For any sales enquires please contact Zakia at the gallery Project 88, BMP Building, Ground Floor, N.A. Sawant Marg, Near Colaba Fire Station, Colaba, Mumbai - 400 005; T- (91) 022- 2281 0066/0099; F- (91) 022- 2281 0099; E- contact@project88.in; www.project88.in

Monocle Magazine

2010-03-17T01:58:00.000-07:00

We are very pleased to have been listed by Monocle magazine in their A4-sized pdf file on Mumbai!

New Exhibition

2010-02-16T00:38:00.000-08:00

A new exhibition entitled Leisure Landscapes is now on show at the café. More details below:

A series of colour pictures exploring the recreational landscapes in different places. Of initial interest here is the overall landscape and often – the spacing between people. On closer inspection though, many more details become apparent. Such as the pug-owners club at a Tokyo beach on a Sunday morning; or the honeymooning couple experiencing snow for the first time in Himachal; or the baseball in mid-flight at Tokyo Dome stadium with thousands of spectators observed from above…

Prints available as singles of an edition of 10 (+ 2 artist proofs), titled and signed with edition number, printed on archival Epson paper with archival inks. Size: 54 x 54cm - (As currently on display at the KGC).

For further information on sales, please contact Nerissa Framroze on 099 200 56612 or email info@kgcafe.in .

2009-12-21T06:03:00.000-08:00

2009-11-17T07:18:00.000-08:00

Bicycle lock facilities have now been installed. And the free espresso macchiato offer is still on for those who come on their cycles on Sundays - so you know what to do now!

The KGC is now open seven days a week!

2009-07-01T13:15:00.000-07:00

NEWS: You can now get your responsible, sustainably grown, organic coffee (and all the rest of it) on Mondays too. Starting Monday the 6th of July we'll be open seven days a week on an experimental basis. Come and make it work!

Lovely Café in Brussels

2009-07-01T12:43:00.000-07:00

Modele is at one end of Rue Antoine Dansaert / Dansaertstraat. I really loved the place. I'd been walking for ages and really wanted to just put my feet up (not quite), sit down and drink copious amounts of water and a couple of espressos. Still, I wanted something apart - not a run-of-the-mill dingy café. At the end of Dansaert I found Café Modele, which is a corner café with generous tall windows on two sides, letting in lots of daylight. It's an old space, with a recent tasteful refurb. Super well selected music playing - mostly great new stuff I hadn't heard. Although both the coffee and food were average - by which I mean not bad - the staff were super friendly, charming and real local eye-candy. I just love the way they've taken an old space and redesigned bits of it making it very current, yet in a restrained, responsible manner, true to the original space and it's details. What I'd call non-interventionist design or minimun intervention design. Very inspirational vibe...

Shots of the show

2009-03-30T00:08:00.000-07:00

For those of you who couldn't visit the show this weekend, here are some shots of the installed exhibition Mint Condition...

First Exhibition at the Café

2009-03-25T04:47:00.000-07:00

Opening Night Preview: Friday March 27th, 6pm - 11pm
Show continues on March 28th/29th 12pm - 11pm

Selected works from the exhibition will be shown throughout April at the Kala Ghoda Cafe (open everyday excluding Mondays)

SUSPECT is a collective of poets, filmmakers, anthropologists and
photographers, dedicated to dignifying ordinary objects and
celebrating quotidian beauty.

Mint Condition is a collection of works produced from found
photographs and discarded videotape. These lost negatives, junked
prints and moldy videos have been reclaimed from streets in different parts of the world.

The SUSPECT Collective is Ashim Ahluwalia, Dale Cannedy Azim, Farhad Bomanjee and Shumona Goel.

Poetry Reading

2009-02-08T13:35:00.000-08:00

We're taking part in the Kala Ghoda Arts festival this year - hosting a poetry reading on Tuesday the 10th of Feb, from 1700 till 1900. More info here: The Kala Ghoda Gazette

kgc reviewed

2009-02-04T12:12:00.000-08:00

Check out our review on lotsafood.blogspot.com

Sunday Cycle Special

2009-02-01T09:03:00.000-08:00

Today we had the first customer to avail of our special Sunday offer (come to KGC on your cycle on a Sunday, lock it outside, and get a free espresso or macchiato - that's right, we're not serving free cappuccinos). Shanky cycled over from Andheri and was going through the lanes of Kala Ghoda looking for a particular shop selling boiled eggs when he stumbled upon the café. Needless to say, we weren't serving boiled eggs and he didn't find his shop; but he did come in and got his complimentary macchiato and a refill of his water bottle for his long trek back north. Shanky rides a maroon coloured steel framed Trek.