georgevarley
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Ahmedabad, 18-20th September.
In Primo Levi’s 1946 short story ‘I mnemagoghi’, or ‘The mnemagogues’, a doctor named Montesanto has developed an olfactory process of recall by concocting chemicals which replicate smells from isolated moments of his life. He invites a junior physician, Morandi, to unstopper the vials and remark upon what he smells. There is a moment in the…
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RA Summer Show, Zubarán
It was 7.37pm on a hot Friday. Admittedly a very hot Friday, which might precipitate the swollen numbers in the icy halls of the Royal Academy. There could easily have been 500 people there. I couldn’t help but feel that an important thing was unfurling itself before my eyes, or rather, less solipsistically, an important…
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14.01.2026
I exhibited the works below last week in London with my friend and business partner, Goose Leigh. It may be worth saying that the exhibition had no title beyond Edit 01. This wasn’t a cop-out (we hope). Rather, it reflected that the show was an offering of an India we have encountered – and, in…
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Mukhtar Kazi, b.1977
I recently spent forty or so hours in front of Mukhtar’s work. Not consecutively, but over four days at Somerset House. There were lots of nice things said, and lots of good people to talk to. But one conversation sailed to the top of the pile, late on the Sunday evening. A woman (slightly breathless…
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Interview with Harleen Kaur, early June 2025
GV : What world(s) does your work want to exist in? HK : My works is deeply influenced by personal memory (but more recently I have been thinking/wanting to see what would happen if it meets at the intersection of personal memory and collective history – more specifically personal memory and how individual experiences carry…
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2O25. 2 – Arpita Singh, b.1937
‘This map is faulty, do not follow it’ is tucked into the border of My Lollipop City: Gemini Rising. In ‘Remembering’, the artist’s first solo outside of India, we are given permission to soar/drift/scuttle through an entire career. It is a complete pleasure, from the very moment after you pass this slightly confusing font. Singh’s…
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2025. 1
Thoughts and comments on the first chunk of 2025. It is a strange time to buy art in India. You could argue all appears robust and rosy; on Thursday (19th March) a new record for South Asian art was set by the ever more expensive MF Husain (13.7 million dollars); ambition is high; confidence is…
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Khan Shamim Akhtar, b.1994
Khan Shamim Akhtar lives in Mumbra, a sleeper town north of Mumbai. After the ‘Bombay Riots’ of 1992 and 1993, Mumbra was wrenched from an idyllic coastal town to a place of relocation and upheaval. Now it is home to an artist whose work takes on wider global concerns. This solo show is an exercise…
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Gigi Scaria, b.1973
Gigi Scaria was born in Southern Kerala in 1973. His work is diffuse, ranging across installation, painting, sculpture, photography, video. His most recent show (images below) swirls around the brain like a medieval warning against sin. The palettes are carefully sickly, the world is tattered, and we are to blame. Your eye slides about over…
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Anwar Jalal Shemza, 1928 – 1985
Shemza was born in Simla, now Shimla, and went to school in Lahore, then India, now Pakistan. It would be trite to try and render the dislocation of such circumstances. Perhaps you can do the thinking better than me. The context is that he graduated in 1947, a year in which several of his relatives…
