Indian Art
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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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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…
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Bhupen Khakhar, 1934 – 2003
Bhupen Khakhar was the opposite of anachronistic – modern? That doesn’t seem to cover it. His paintings are sensuous, brave, graceful, perhaps (aphorisms invited) ahead of their time. Born into a middle-class Gujarati family in Bombay in 1934, he trained as a chartered accountant, and only aged 28 did he start to make art. He…
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Vishwa Shroff, b.1980
A Mumbai based artist exploring architectural forms. Shroff’s practice sits between geometry and architecture. Her drawings bristle with clipped precision and invite questions about our relationship with buildings when they are in front of us on paper. There is something reassuringly analogue about the arrangements she composes. Perhaps it’s the peaceful, self-contained combinations of mathematics.…
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Introduction to G J Varley Art
Learning about Indian art in India. Stay to see the things I come across, written about. Call it Bombay or Mumbai as makes you happy. Mostly full of ramblings about art with the occasional invasion from sport.
G J Varley Art 