When I lived in Brisbane, I used to go quite often to GOMA. I think it was post the Asia-Pacific Triennial-anyway for a short period GOMA had a couple of Indian artists including NS Harsha. A couple of his works were like "Mass Marriage" below i.e. a composite of many images, e.g. a series on "sleep", which formed a whole. You can spend a lot of time looking at the works because it is very detailed and each image is different from the other.
It appears the sixth triennial has now rolled around and The Australian's Christopher Allen is quite underwhelmed by the Indians:
"Interestingly, the Indians, not only heirs to a great civilisation, but from a functioning democracy and tolerant society, do not come off particularly well in this exhibition. Subodh Gupta is described as amongst India's most prominent contemporary artists, but one struggles to think what his enormous mushroom cloud composed of brass pots and pans could possibly mean. The brochure may tell us that it "shifts an image of destruction into one of abundance", but that's empty verbiage. There's nothing abundant about pots and pans treated like rubbish in a tip. As Peter Nagy observes, he's good at "selecting icons and symbols", but arbitrary conjunctions are not good enough. Being big and spectacular is not a substitute for making sense. Much the same could be said about his brass motorbike. It's interesting to read the history of this machine and its manufacture in India, but that doesn't make the work significant....Gupta presents himself as rooted in Indian culture, but this turns out to be quite superficial. The world he now belongs to now is that lucrative no man's land we call the art world."
You can see the installation on the GOMA site.
Reading Allen's piece I wondered if the last lines are true of much in India these days i.e. we are a culture unmoored and grounded only by our participation in the no man's land of the world economy.
Then again, this is a year in which the Guardian art critic decided to dump on Hirst - and the commenters gleefully concurred. And Hirst in turn proved to be a common bully with a guy named Cartrain who seemed to be remarkably adept at taking the piss.
"Interestingly, the Indians, not only heirs to a great civilisation, but from a functioning democracy and tolerant society, do not come off particularly well in this exhibition. Subodh Gupta is described as amongst India's most prominent contemporary artists, but one struggles to think what his enormous mushroom cloud composed of brass pots and pans could possibly mean. The brochure may tell us that it "shifts an image of destruction into one of abundance", but that's empty verbiage. There's nothing abundant about pots and pans treated like rubbish in a tip. As Peter Nagy observes, he's good at "selecting icons and symbols", but arbitrary conjunctions are not good enough. Being big and spectacular is not a substitute for making sense. Much the same could be said about his brass motorbike. It's interesting to read the history of this machine and its manufacture in India, but that doesn't make the work significant....Gupta presents himself as rooted in Indian culture, but this turns out to be quite superficial. The world he now belongs to now is that lucrative no man's land we call the art world."
You can see the installation on the GOMA site.
Reading Allen's piece I wondered if the last lines are true of much in India these days i.e. we are a culture unmoored and grounded only by our participation in the no man's land of the world economy.
Then again, this is a year in which the Guardian art critic decided to dump on Hirst - and the commenters gleefully concurred. And Hirst in turn proved to be a common bully with a guy named Cartrain who seemed to be remarkably adept at taking the piss.
Maybe it's just the art world.
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