Writing
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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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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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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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Ali Kazim, b.1979
Ali Kazim was born in Pattoki, Pakistan in 1979. He trained in Lahore and London, and has had exhibitions from Oxford to Karachi. His watercolours are tightly observed, highly detailed paintings which feel like a refrain from the Mughal past. They are miniatures at scale, sometimes of barren landscapes, and often of figures in isolation.…
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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 