WELBECK.- Coinciding with the 70th anniversary of India’s Independence, ‘First Rain’ is a new exhibition of Warli tribal art, which has developed into an internationally-celebrated, contemporary art form, at The Harley Gallery on the Welbeck Estate in Nottinghamshire.

Featuring more than 80 semi-abstract compositions the exhibition illustrates stories and reflections on the sacred and the human, folk tales, legends and the seasonal round of everyday life in the Warli communities found north of Mumbai on India’s west coast. Only white paint is used on a red ochre background with depictions of the mother goddess as the symbol of fertility and scenes of hunting, fishing, and farming as common themes.

First Rain runs from 14 April to 11 June 2017 and is free to enter. The exhibition came about through a collaboration between the Harley Gallery and the cultural practice ‘A Fine Line’ which has been working with Warli artists for many years. It focuses on paintings created on paper over the past ten years by the form’s acknowledged master Jivya Some Mashe as well as a new generation of artists inspired by him, particularly Ramesh Hengade.

Now in his eighties Mashe is recognised as the father of a new Warli painting tradition that emerged following the introduction of paper in the 1970s, which made the tribal artworks portable and available to urban markets, supplementing the tribes meagre income.

Traditional Warli art is practised mainly by women and involves painting the mud and dung walls of houses with rice paste to celebrate key events and rituals during the year. As a child Jivya Some Mashe assisted the women painters, honed his skills and developed his imagination to encompass new forms and narratives through his work: “Our history is not written, it is drawn; we tell you stories, we tell you about our life.”

His success opened up the way for a new generation of artists like Ramesh Hengade. For Hengade, First Rain is an opportunity to return to the Harley Gallery where he spent time in 2006 as artist-in-residence. An exhibition of work from his time in Nottinghamshire was an immediate sell-out in his native India.

The Harley Gallery opened in 1994 and was constructed within the ruins of the Victorian gasworks which were built by the 5th Duke of Portland to power his family home at Welbeck. It has exhibited contemporary work by artists such as David Hockney, Grayson Perry and Sir Peter Blake and its newest addition is a purpose-built gallery space for the masterpieces of The Portland Collection, assembled over 400 years by the Dukes of Portland and including works by Michelangelo and Van Dyke.