The Saatchi Gallery

in partnership with Phillips de Pury & Company

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK:

INDIAN ART TODAY

PICTURE
BY
PICTURE
GUIDE
Media Partner
 The Saatchi Gallery
in partnership with Phillips de Pury & Company

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK:

Indian Art Today
Gallery 1
Jitish Kallat
Public Notice 2 2007
4,479 fibreglass sculptures dimensions variable
Public Notice 2 recalls the historic speech delivered by Mahatma
Gandhi, on the eve of the epic Salt March to Dandi, in early 1930 as a
protest against the salt tax instituted by the British. Through this speech
he lays down the codes of conduct for his fellow revolutionaries, calling
for complete civil disobedience, the only fierce restriction being that of
maintaining ‘total peace’ and ‘absolute non-violence’. In Kallat’s work,
Gandhi’s ardent speech is recreated as a haunting installation with
around 4500 bone shaped alphabets recalling a turning point in the
nation’s history. Each alphabet, like a misplaced relic, holds up the
image of violence even as their collective chorus makes a plea for
peace to a world plagued with aggression.
Gallery 2
Bharti Kher
An Absence Of Assignable Cause 2007
Bindis on fibreglass 168 x 308 x 150 cm
In part inspired by artists such as Hieronymus Bosch, Francisco Goya
and William Blake, Bharti Kher references magical beasts, mythical
monsters and allegorical tales in which they might feature in her work.
The blue sperm whale is one of the world’s largest animals. Unable to
find sufficient scientific documentation about its anatomy, Kher invented
the appearance of the whale’s heart for An Absence of Assignable
Cause. Created in fibreglass, the artist has decorated the enormous
heart and protruding veins and arteries with different coloured bindis.
Bharti Kher
Hungry Dogs Eat Dirty Pudding 2004
Fibreglass and plastic 40 x 100 x 125 cm
Relocating to New Delhi after studying art in Newcastle, England,
Bharti Kher is an artist committed to exploring cultural misunderstand-
ings and social codes through her art practice. Likening herself to the
well intentioned ethnographer investigating her culture, Kher delivers a
very forceful reinterpretation of modern India. In Hungry dogs Eat Dirty
Pudding, a domestic hoover is covered in garish animal skins. These
are the kind of inventive hybrid creations that Bharti Kher has made her
own. Evoking the early work of Swiss artist Méret Oppenheim who
covered a teacup, saucer and spoon with fur, Kher’s sculptural works
appear incredibly surreal in their construction.
Atul Dodiya
Fool’s House 2009
Oil, acrylic with marble dust and charcoal on canvas
243.8 x 152.4 cm
Through his paintings and assemblages, Atul Dodiya engages with
both political and art history in a way that entwines global/public
memory and local/personal experience. In his most recent series of
paintings Dodiya appropriates the images and styles of famous art-
works. By doing this he pays homage to his influences, but also
‘borrows’ their identities through a kind of painting role-play: copying
becomes a form of ‘channelling’ or re-enactment, weaving the master’s
identities and ideas to Dodiya’s own (and vice versa).
Fool’s House is a tribute to Jasper Johns, the American pop artist
renowned for painting generic graphic motifs such as targets, maps
and text fonts. The fragmented composition of this painting – divided
into rectangular shapes – references the design typical of Johns; the
segments of the canvas contain quotes of a Johns map and target.
Dodiya first came to prominence with his paintings done on roll down
security shutters, and in this work he imprints his own history upon his
hero’s, re-conceiving Johns’s international abstraction as a local shop
front. The ‘taped photographs’ in the scene make reference to Johns’s
1984 painting Racing Thoughts which used this device to quip famous
artworks such as the Mona Lisa; in Fool’s House, one of Dodiya’s snap
shots contains an image of Man Ray’s Cadeau, emphasising his
painting as an offering or gift.
Atul Dodiya
Woman From Kabul 2001
Acrylic and marble dust on fabric 183 x 122 cm
Woman from Kabul is a work about living in Afghanistan at the turn of
the new millennium. The artist recalls a country rich in history and re-
sources that has collapsed under the weight of war. A figure of an
elderly woman, stripped of most of her black burka, squats over a very
decorative backdrop of wall paper. Her body is revealed as skin and
bones, representative of the oppression and squalor that has become
endemic of the city. Dodiya’s work is a potent reminder of the plight of
the refugee.
Reena Saini Kallat
Penumbra Passage (Canine Cases) 2006
Acrylic on canvas, bonded marble, wooden box, stainless steel,
velvet, glass Canvas: 135 x 90 cm Steel stand 38 x 122 x 78 cm
Penumbra Passage (Canine Cases) comprises of a series of por-
traits of ordinary civilians from both India as well as Pakistan, their
faces blemished by the silhouette of the disputed territory often
referred to as Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. While the portraits are
put in grand frames like those of royal descendants, the map of the
land that remains at the core of the dispute between the two neigh-
boring countries, casts a shadow on these portraits haunting us
with tales from the region. The corresponding cases carry a range
of weapons that appear more like museum relics, however on
closer observation one finds that they are highly embellished with
life affirming forms. Comprising a set of 32 pieces they collectively
evoke human dentures, resonating with images of the conflict-
ridden region.

Atul Dodiya
Portrait Of Niko Pirosmani (1862-1918) 2005
Enamel paint on laminate board, cotton kurta and cotton pyjamas
on iron hangers 183 x 122 cm
In Portrait of Niko Pirosmani (1862-1918) Dodiya portrays the
Georgian primitivist Niko Pirosmani, who was revered for having in-
vented a new technique of painting during periods of solitude and
poverty. The portrait of Pirosmani initially formed part of Dodiya’s large
scale exhibition ‘Shri Khakhar Prasanna’ which was dedicated to his
friend, the late painter Bhupen Khakhar. Believing that Khakhar was in-
fluenced by Pirosmani, Dodiya wanted to include the Georgian painter
in his show. The artist uses found objects such as the cotton Kurta and
pyjamas which hang over this painting. Here they are dyed a different
colour in tribute to Khakhar, who dyed his kurta pyjamas black so he
could wear them as an apron in his studio.
Gallery 3
Huma Bhabha
The Orientalist 2007
Bronze 177.8 x 83.8 x 104.1 cm
Bhabha’s The Orientalist conveys ideas of exoticism, difference, and
otherness. Equally primitive and futuristic, Bhabha’s figure theatrically
poses as an ominous king or deity. Cast in bronze, it sits as an
imposing relic from a fictional history, a regal air emanating from its pol-
ished geometric armour, molten death mask, and ethereal chicken wire
veil. Humanised through exaggerated hands and feet and sympathetic
cartoon styling, its powers waver between the comically surreal and
portentously intimidating, drawing narrative suggestion from the loaded
clichés of late night science fiction and horror movies.
Huma Bhabha
Man Of No Importance 2006
Clay, wire, wood, bones, iron, cotton, fabric, glass
165.1 x 104.1 x 76.2 cm
One of the ideals in modernist sculpture was that materials should
refute illusionary form: rather than trying to ‘trick’ the viewer into
believing that metal or clay might actually be flesh or hair, it was thought
that materials should resemble themselves and be material-like.
Bhabha draws upon these notions in a contemporary way. Man of No
Importance exposes the exact methods of its construction, and the
worn and brutal qualities of the materials give the sculpture an aura of
ancient ritual and reverence. In Bhabha’s work, however, this ‘hal-
lowedness’ is used to humorous effect as her mythological character,
made from bits of scrap, becomes the physical embodiment of impov-
erishment, temporality, and ideological failure.
Huma Bhabha
Waiting For A Friend 2003
Threaded steel rod, Styrofoam, wood, clay, paint
231.1 x 71.1 x 45.7 cm
Approaching sculpture as a form of abjection, Huma Bhabha uses
found materials combined with moulded components to create an
aesthetic that’s equally industrial and barbaric. Using the rough hewn
tactility of her materials, Bhabha’s work exudes a fragile sensibility;
their underlying fictions of lost utopia wittily mirror contemporary
anxiety. Bhabha’s Waiting For A Friend towers as a dejected fertility
totem. Lingering lonely against the gallery wall, its archaic form swells
with expectation: plaster and wax thighs bulging, head exaggeratedly
erect, spilled guts on full display.
Huma Bhabha
Museum Without Walls 2005
Clay, wire, wood, styrofoam 89 x 63.5 x 86.4 cm
Humorously referencing both tribal masks and modernism, Huma
Bhabha’s Museum Without Walls presents the anatomy of a sculpture
as voodoo construction. Using the traditional materials of sculptural
moulding Bhabha constructs a skeleton of process, her formalist as-
semblage doubling as anthropomorphic entity. Laying bare her media
and their function, Bhabha infuses her work with suggestive narratives.
Museum Without Walls stands as both totem and architectural model,
creating a contemporary primitivism from cultural refuse.
Huma Bhabha
Sell The House 2006
Mixed media 139.7 x 96.5 x 71.1 cm
Central to Bhabha’s work is the idea that materials embody a kind of
mysticism or power that can be activated or enhanced through the
artist’s handling. Sell The House is a small sculpture made to the scale
of architectural models or museum relics. Assembled from construction
staples such as wood and bricks the body of her sculpture acts as a
‘foundation’ for embellishment. Utilising the aged and weathered quali-
ties of her materials, Bhabha heightens their totemic connotations by
adding clay to create an animistic form or mask. The ‘unfinished’
appearance of the sculpture both exposes the artist’s process of
making and the materiality of the construction, framing these as some-
thing cryptic, compelling, and haunting.
Huma Bhabha
Untitled Drawing 2007
Watercolour, pastel, pencil, ink on paper, mounted on board
40.4 x 30.4 cm
Bhabha’s Untitled Drawing approaches drawing with the physical sen-
sibility of sculpture. Mounted on board, the image is made more
‘object-like’ than if it were simply on paper. Bhabha uses a variety of
media, each imparting their own distinct ‘feel’ and texture: indelible
stains of watercolour suggest a poetic fragility underlying thick layers
of greasy pastel, opaque ink washes, and gritty graphite residue.
Bhabha’s physical process of drawing becomes enhanced through the
earthy hues which record the evolution of the piece with a rough,
organic aesthetic. The strong contrast of light and dark tones creates a
deceptive spatial illusion; the abstract image, reminiscent of a mask,
emerges with the three dimensional intensity of sculptural relief.
Huma Bhabha
Untitled 2006
Clay, wire, plastic, paint 114.3 x 243.8 x 152.4 cm
Working with found materials and constructed forms, Huma Bhabha
reworks the familiarity of everyday objects into creepy inventions.
Something between a primitive species and space alien, her Untitled is
both ghastly and sympathetic. Set atop an altar-like plinth, Bhabha’s
figure prostrates in submissive position. Shrouded in black, hands out-
stretched as if in prayer, it echoes humility and reverence; its aura of
calm perversely interrupted by a rigid tail trailing out from behind.
Gallery 4
Huma Mulji
Arabian Delight 2008
Rexine suitcase, taxidermy camel, metal rods, wood, cotton wool,
fabric 105 x 144 x 155 cm (open with lid)
Pakistani born Huma Mulji’s works explore ideas of displacement. Her
preoccupation with cultural difference takes her away from India and
Pakistan toward the Middle East and other landscapes. This juncture
between tradition and the relentless modern thrust across India and
Pakistan is where Mulji occupies herself with deliberate humour.
Arabian Delight, a taxidermied camel forced into a battered suitcase,
addresses ideas of the relocation of cultures. The rather crazed
manner in which the collapsed camel is impossibly forced into this suit-
case, legs thrown in disarray, is a humorous comment on the perceived
‘Arabisation’ of Pakistan as another Muslim state.
Huma Mulji
Her Suburban Dream 2009
Mixed media 99 x 330.2 x 76.2 cm
In a similar vein, Mulji’s most recent work titled Her Suburban Dream
involves another taxidermied animal shown in an unexpected situation.
The concrete water pipe has forced the cow in Her Suburban Dream
into an unnatural and somewhat degrading position at the mercy of hu-
manity. These compelling works explore change and disorder in the
region and beyond.
Rajan Krishnan
Substances Of Earth 2007
Acrylic on canvas 274 x 366 cm
Rajan Krishnan’s painted works depict a reclaimed earth after
humanity has abandoned it. His series of paintings pay attention to
the changing landscape, as man-made settings are occupied and
then deserted in the pursuit of something better. Krishnan’s
Substances of Earth is a colossal acrylic painting that offers a dull
palette and stylised forms. Recalling part of the grand-canyon, the
detail shows a vast landmark taken over by animated insects. The
surface appears overwhelmed by these creatures covering the
landscape. Boulders of rock appear to resemble a carcass laid out
on the face of the mountain.
T Venkanna
Dream In Dream 2007
Oil on Canvas 153 x 259 cm (Diptych)
From his studio in Baroda, Venkanna remakes two works of
French painter Henri Rousseau, famed for his fantastical illustra-
tions of jungle scenes and botanical gardens. Rousseau was
chastised and then celebrated for his imaginative escapism and
early primitive style in Paris. The political and social context of
works Venkanna references are quite different from when they
were made. He re-interprets these imageries and in the process
critically evaluates the norms existing within contemporary society.
Dream in Dream is appropriated from Rousseau’s 1910 painting
titled The Dream. The historical significance of this work is not lost
on Venkanna as he intentionally renders it as a post-modern image
with idiosyncratic undertones. In this work, Venkanna replaces the
woman from Rousseau’s original with a nude self-portrait. In the
second panel Rousseau’s verdant jungle becomes animated in
Venkanna’s hands. Turned on its side, the thin canvas takes the
same subject but satirises it using cartoons to the point where the
panel becomes garish.
T Venkanna
Two Moon 2007
Oil on canvas 213 x 153 cm
Two Moon is based on an original work by Rousseau entitled The
Sleeping Gypsy 1897. In his second canvas from the series
Venkanna has taken the original scene from Rousseau’s painting
and duplicated it as a repetition of the motifs within the painting
itself. With very deliberate alterations to his canvas, Venkanna’s
sleeping gypsy is both alive and dead, as he paints in a skeleton
where Rousseau had painted a resting figure in multi-coloured
dress. Venkanna’s figure brims with unrequited and unfulfilled lust.
The black moon painted below is a sinister twin of Rousseau’s
paler one, and symbolizes the tragedy of the figure’s former life.
Although his body has turned skeletal in death, his penis, so
charged with desire, stays alive with lust and remains fleshly, erect
and blackened. The painting also resembles post-war American
painting styles due to the additional red arrows on the surface of
the canvas, crudely labeling the edge of the work.
Gallery 5
Tushar Joag
The Enlightening Army Of The Empire 2008
Installation comprising 16 figures, perspex, plastic, brass, mild
steel, wood, electric bulbs, wire and mixed media. Figure size:
approximately 183 x 49 x 61 cm each
Tushar Joag is an interventionist and inventor of mock corporate
identities. He takes a satirical look at the urban classes and
suggests that art is responsible for maintaining cultural continuity.
This rhetoric leads him to conceive of unicell, a corporate body
of one, that mimics many of the absurdities of government
bureaucracy in a continent reliant upon social and political solu-
tions. The Enlightening Army of the Empire is an installation
comprising sixteen robot style figures that are animated by electric
bulbs and stop lights. This Disney styled army of dishevelled
robots appear to stand to attention holding florescent tube lights as
possible weapons against human kind. Each individual robot is
crafted with a subtly styled, quirky personality. Each of Joag’s steel
figures stands loosely to attention, as their individual light configu-
rations illuminate their location and tangled wires join their feet
collectively.
Shezad Dawood
The Bestower 2007
Neon, tumbleweed with enamelled aluminium plinth
London based artist Shezad Dawood’s British and Pakistani roots
are reflected in his works. Appropriating many of his ideas from
modern European and American aesthetics, Dawood generates
a critical examination of identity. This series of sculptures are
made of neon, entangled in tumbleweed and placed on aluminium
plinths. The Bestower, The Protector, The Judge and The Majestic,
utilise traditional scripts that radiate from the centre of a ball of
tumble-weed, reflecting an element of the divine.
Shezad Dawood
The Protector 2007
Neon, tumbleweed with enamelled aluminium plinth
Each of Shezad Dawood’s neon works reflects the artist’s interest
in the ninety-nine beautiful names of God. Each attributed to Allah;
the objective nouns are intended to describe every single aspect of
the divine. Dawood’s neon works examine Islam as well as the
doctrine of the early American frontier, since both grand ideolo-
gieswere born of similarly dry and desolate surroundings.
Shezad Dawood
The Judge 2007
Neon, tumbleweed with enamelled aluminium plinth
The neon works reject the rhetoric of a clash of civilisations,
looking at a formal synthesis between East and West. Dawood’s
works deliver a very complex set of notions that arise from
symbols that are inherent to the two cultures that Dawood is
familiar with.
Shezad Dawood
The Majestic 2007
Neon, tumbleweed with enamelled aluminium plinth
Dawood describes his attempt to formally represent notions of the
divine as strongly as he represents something of the formlessness
and abstraction at the heart of modern America. The dishevelled
tumble-weed balls that are anchored into each plinth exist as
symbols of time. The sculptures also reference the history of the
American West, acknowledging the rise of a new kind of social
religion embedded in bold patriotism.
T.V. Santhosh
Tracing An Ancient Error 2007
Oil on canvas 122 x 183 cm
Employing the themes of war and global terrorism, South Indian
artist T.V. Santhosh paints in lurid greens and shocking orange,
recreating the effect of a colour photographic negative. The artist
charges his large canvases with figures in contoured and compro-
mising positions. Like many of his politically motivated
contemporaries, Santhosh lifts pivotal episodes from recent history
and renegotiates their appearance with a shock-bulb of violent
energy that eclipses the work. Santhosh’s paintings of impending
doom, a world at the brink of an atomic end, are intentionally more
apocalyptic than cathartic. Tracing an Ancient Error is an illumi-
nated work of what appears to be a bearded man lain out,
revealing his chest, holding onto something resembling a thread.
An image from recent news events, Santhosh captures this scene
and reinvents its value as a piece of anonymous and charged
history.

T.V. Santhosh
Stitching An Undefined Border 2007
Oil on canvas 122 x 183 cm
Santhosh has switched positive for negative colours in this work.
An aged man appears to be operating a machine in a confined
space, standing tall against the projector on a table. The artist
riddles the surface with wisps of illuminated light that fall over the
image like uncontrollable energy or an explosive force. Santhosh
often borrows from news images in his works but in representing
them through negative colours, suggests otherwise hidden impli-
cations to be surmised.
Jaishri Abichandani
Allah O Akbar 2008
Leather whip, wire, paint, Swarovski crystals 65 x 450 cm
Allah O Akbar is created from black whips, painted in green and
red and mounted against a white wall. The work incorporates the
colours of the Iraqi flag (green, red, black and white) and also uses
the same Kufic script to recreate the phrase or takbir used on the
flag and recited by many Muslims. Literally translated the words
mean ‘God is Great’, but as an American opposed to the war in
Iraq, Abichandani references recent political violence unleashed in
the country, by using leather whips and Swarovski crystals to form
this phrase.
Gallery 6
Probir Gupta
Rats And Generals In A Zoological Park 2007
Acrylic and oxides on canvas 229 x 448 cm
Probir Gupta’s canvases are enormous in their scale and narrative.
A Kolkata art student during the Maoist uprising in India in the
early 1970’s, Gupta demonstrated against routine acts of violence
and terrorism. Gupta’s paintings appear as grand history paintings,
containing intricate details and pulsating backgrounds. In Rats and
Generals in a Zoological Park, a sombre looking full-length portrait
of Mahatma Gandhi stands robust in front of a coloured version of
the Bayeux tapestry. Throughout the work, contoured figures and
morose forms riddle the canvas. With his works, Gupta reorgan-
ises history into something messy, troubling and rueful. Nothing
appears to take precedence.
Probir Gupta
Free Passage 2007
Acrylic and iron oxides on canvas 226 x 396 cm
Free Passage has been likened to Pablo Picasso’s 1937 painting
Guernica. Gupta’s somber figures are depicted in black and white,
with the words free passage painted across the canvas in Urdu.
The inverted head of the statue of Liberty, camouflaged in army
fatigue, emerges from what appears to be a pelvic region to the
right of the canvas, as if in birth. The black and white figures
possess a theatrical quality; they are shown witnessing the birth
of an era of intolerance and violence. The forms, appear on the
brink of dissolving, as colour disappears from the foreground and
becomes rooted into the distance.
Probir Gupta
Anxiety Of The Unfamiliar 2006
Acrylic and iron oxides on canvas 268 x 398 cm
In Anxiety of the Unfamiliar Gupta’s figures appear to have trans-
formed into beetles laid out as dreadful corpses. Man, machine
and insect intertwine into incomprehensible forms resembling
scenes from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Beneath these
grotesque figures are a series of miniature negative portraits of
men at the epicentre of significant episodes in India’s politically
charged history.
Probir Gupta
The Bene Israel Family 2006
Acrylic and iron oxides on canvas 229 x 396 cm
Gupta’s portrait of the Bene Israel Family is a thoroughly engaging
examination of the past. The Bene Israel were a group of Jewish
emigrants, who settled in Cochin, in the southern part of the Indian
sub continent, at the turn of the century. Research indicates that
the Bene Israeli community soon rose to prominence and thrived in
the Indian sub continent, at a time when Jewish communities faced
persecution in Europe. In Gupta’s painting, the distorted back-
ground draws on the history of the Holocaust, whilst the Bene
Israel Family emerges from this background in indigenous attire,
as native Indians of the subcontinent. This work displays the
artist’s ongoing examination of identity and social history.

Kriti Arora
Tar Man 5 2008
Fibreglass and tar 176 x 72 x 63 cm
Tar Man 5, is a sculpture informed by the working men that Arora
encountered along mountain routes through Kashmir. For Arora,
roads are the social arteries that connect this region to the rest of
the sub-continent. The struggling allegiance of men working tire-
lessly to re-cultivate the land for profitable redevelopment is the
subject of her investigations. Unlike classical Indian statues or
modelled deities, these very ordinary men are covered from head
to toe in a suffocating layer of black tar as a demonstration of the
almost incomprehensible work that is required to change India.
The tar-man is emblematic of a continent seeking social and polit-
ical change.
Kriti Arora
Tar Man 6 2008
Fibreglass and tar 185 x 76 x 97 cm
Tar Man 6 is a mummification of one of the working men that
struggle through the war-torn landscape of Kashmir. The routine
with which they go about their laboured work in extremes temper-
atures is testament to the will of the people to contribute to
change. Arora’s figure appears rooted to the spot, coated in a thick
skin of tar smothering his ability to show any expression. The artist
is examining the generation of men working on the road side, as-
signed to the difficult task of reconstruction and repair.
Kriti Arora
Tools And Boots 2008
Fibreglass, cloth and tar 130 x 120 cm
Continuing her preoccupation with labour, Tools and Boots 2008
contains tools of the trade, organised and arranged to bring some
semblance of order to the brutal task that lies ahead of these indi-
viduals. Black shovels, pick-axes and gloves are all coated with
thick tar. The installation appears to be consumed by this material,
used to coat the roads and level the arteries of the mountains for
the vehicles that thread through. The inanimate objects in Tools
and Boots have been organised as one might arrange a still-life,
which highlights the humanity that is missing from them. They
serve no purpose without the army of men routinely utilizing them
on cliff-faces and road-sides.
Kriti Arora
Coat And Trousers 2008
Fibreglass, cloth and tar 153 x 102 cm
Blackened coats and heavy trousers operate as the residual skins
of the people employed to build the road-sides. These fibres, orig-
inally coloured and textured, appear stiff and impossible to use as
they are drenched in tar. Hung out to dry by the artist, the tar is too
thick to remove, alluding to the combined and inseparable nature
of the men and their labour.
Gallery 7
Jitish Kallat
Death Of Distance 2007
Black lead on fibreglass, a rupee coin and five lenticular prints
Sculpture 161 cm diameter, prints 46 x 60 cm
In Death of Distance five lenticular prints bring together contrasting
experiences of living in India today. Each of the panels highlight
two divergent news stories; the launch of ‘one rupee a minute’ tele-
phone rates across India and a disturbing story of a girl who
committed suicide because her mother couldn’t afford the one
rupee she wanted for a school lunch. A rigid rupee coin is bal-
anced on the gallery floor, while the two narratives flip and
interchange depending on the position of the viewer.
Jitish Kallat
Rickshawpolis 4 2006
Acrylic on canvas with bronze gargoyles 178 x 274 cm
Rickshawpolis 4 is like a vast collision portrait of a thumping,
claustrophobic city-street. The vehicles collide on the face of the
canvas like a mushroomed explosion; battered vehicles are inter-
mingled with figures that appear to negotiate a way through this
chaos and calamity. The painting itself is mounted on bronze
sculptures that are re-creations of gargoyles that are found atop
the 120 year old Victoria Terminus Building in the center of
Mumbai.
Tallur L.N.
Untitled 2007
Inflatable bed, silicon, latex rubber, medical cot and forceps
275 x 280 x 160 cm
Bangalore born Tallur is an Indian artist who has rarely ventured
outside India and grew up in the rural community. His works speak
of the grinding poverty in the cultivated countryside. Employing
Indian signs and symbols, Tallur conceives works that are charac-
teristic of the underbelly of India, while still successfully managing
to translate the anxiety of his subject matter to a larger audience.
Untitled contains a hospital bed, with battered and torn bronze
mattresses piled high. Tallur’s work delivers an incredibly de-
pressing sight and sign of the objects of social utilitarianism. His
sculptural works are riddled with the agony of laboured situations.
For the artist, there is a pleasurable absurdity in the dishevelled
traditions of the farmlands and the villages when compared to the
new American-styled hyper-real cities that function as cash accu-
mulators.

Hema Upadhyay
Killing Site 2008
Acrylic, gouache, dry pastel, photograph on paper, aluminium
sheets, resin 183 x 122 x 61 cm
Baroda born and Mumbai based Hema Upadhyay uses photog-
raphy and sculptural installations to explore notions of personal
identity, dislocation, nostalgia and gender. Upadhyay’s work Killing
Site draws on the theme of migration and human displacement
across Asia. The top of the work is based on Mumbai’s dilapidated
shanty towns, here appearing upside down and protruding out like
a canopy over Upadhyay’s decorated montage. Upadhyay draws
on her own personal and family history of migration to express her
concerns and this is expressed through the way she portrays
herself in her works. The upturned slums reference the repercus-
sions and socio-economic inequalities that emerge as a hidden
consequence of the relentless tide of urban development in the
city.
Justin Ponmany
Staple Agony II, Plastic Memory 2006
Acrylic and holographic pigment on canvas, diptych 191 x 325 cm
There is a Darwinian approach to much of Ponmany’s practice, as
he continually reorganises and reinvents reality. Rebranding by
digitising, Ponmany duplicates figures in electric landscapes that
are stylised beyond comprehension were it not for the reoccurring
markers and motifs of figures and skyscrapers that appear in his
works. Using plastic paints, silver holograms, rich pigments of
colour and distorted photographic-negatives, Ponmany is as inter-
ested in the production of his works as he is in the object that
exists thereafter. Staple Agony II, Plastic Memory is a work that
might appear to come from the lyric of a Radiohead song, in which
the solitary shell of a hooded figure is seated at the centre of an
enclosed space with what appears to be an industrial staple-gun,
illuminated in orange, floating in the foreground.
Gallery 8
Subodh Gupta
Spill 2007
Stainless steel and stainless steel utensils 170 x 145 x 95 cm
Subodh Gupta employs many of the original techniques of French
conceptualist Marcel Duchamp by elevating the ready-made into
an art object. Gupta chooses signature objects of the Indian sub-
continent and relocates them as art objects in monumental
installations of stainless steel and tiffin-tins. Spill is an overbearing
work of great scale that has at its centre a larger than life stainless
steel water vessel, with many smaller steel utensils spilling over
the edge like water pouring out.
Subodh Gupta
U.F.O 2007
Brass utensils 114 x 305 x 305 cm
U.F.O is another work made up of hundreds of brass water utensils
that are soldered together to resemble a flying saucer. This
gleaming sculpture is amusing yet pertinent to ideas of sustain-
ability, poverty and notions of otherness. The repetition of forms
and the exaggeration of scale is a common element in Gupta’s
work.
Subodh Gupta
Still Steal Steel #1 2007
Oil and enamel on canvas 198 x 366 cm
Gupta’s painting Still Steal Steel is a strange juxtaposition of a still
life of steel utensils in the fore-ground, with a slightly garish floral
design in the background. Gupta employs the effectiveness of a
hyper-realist palette to suggest that the objects are more real than
reality might allow. Gupta’s configuration of steel utensils along
with the introduction of a floral element appears to reference a
hierarchy of decorative forms.
Subodh Gupta
Untitled (Pot) 2004
Oil on canvas 168 x 229 cm
With Untitled (Pot) Gupta manages to illuminate and elevate his
ready-mades to positions of greater grandeur. His still-life paintings
appear to celebrate objects in space almost as successfully as his
ready-mades do. Row upon row of copper based utensils and
tiffin-tins hang from a kitchen ceiling. Gupta’s paintings transform
the objects to appear more valuable than usual.

Bharti Kher
Untitled 2008
Bindis on painted board 173 x 311 cm
Highly regarded for her sculptural works, Kher has also produced paint-
ings and installations that challenge cultural and social taboos in India.
Untitled is composed of multi-layered and multi-coloured bindis. These
numerous circles of coloured felt are concentrated on painted board. A
reoccurring motif in her work, like the wheel rooted to the centre of the
Indian flag, the bindi is at the centre of social and cultural identity and
can be seen as a sign of the marital woman and her place in society.
The bindi also traditionally represents a third eye, linking the spiritual
and material world. In recent times, it has been reformed as a fashion
accessory, available in different colours and shapes. With this work the
artist is signalling a need for social change and challenging the role of
the women entrenched in tradition, whilst also commenting on the com-
moditisation of the bindi as a fashion accessory.
Gallery 9
Mansoor Ali
Dance Of Democracy 2008
Installation with discarded chairs 427 x 244 x 244 cm
Ali’s free-standing installation of discarded chairs piled high,
without direction or reason, balances precariously and may at any
moment fall to the ground. Ali often employs ready-made objects
such as the chairs used in this work, which are wrecked and bat-
tered in their appearance. Rising from its elevated base, Dance of
Democracy appears to stay upright by sheer luck, infusing his art
with humour and poignancy.
Sakshi Gupta
Untitled (Xerox Machine) 2008
Metal scrap, gears, motors 92 x 150 x 60 cm
Reclaiming the wreckage of an old dilapidated Xerox machine that
appears to have been used to the point of its extinction, artist
Sakshi Gupta appears to have prized the shell apart as though a
forensic scientist, looking over the anatomical organs under the
natural light of the operating theatre. The work redefines useless-
ness as useful; stripped of its conventional productive function, the
work alludes to the impact or consequences of what, in life, is
otherwise hidden from sight. Elevating the machinery off the
ground and positioning its integral parts side by side, Gupta
manages very resourcefully to deliver something quite beautiful
back. This recent work demonstrates Gupta’s ability to scrutinize
reality for opportunities for creativity, even where death and decay
appear much more prevalent.
Chitra Ganesh
Tales Of Amnesia 2002- 2007
21 C-prints
New York based artist Chitra Ganesh studied literature at Brown
and painting at Columbia. For the artist, the comic book appears to
epitomise and perpetuate a perverse sense of good over evil.
Such scenarios are at the centre of classic Indian literature such
as the Ramayana in which men and women indulge in episodes of
absolute and unsolicited power. The stylised simplification of the
comic book style is central to Ganesh’s work Tales of Amnesia
2002-07 in which the audacious female character confronts sub-
scribed notions of compliance in order to explore alternative
models of femininity and power. By rewriting popular history,
Ganesh appears to empower her character Amnesia with an op-
portunity to directly challenge the original fairy tale. For Ganesh,
such preconceived social codes have always been heavily influ-
enced by religion and literature and her work reconfigures these
codes.
Chitra Ganesh
Secrets 2007
C-print 122 x 114 cm
Chitra Ganesh’s accomplished illustration is a wondrous scene in
which reality appears to have been forsaken for something much
more troublesome. Ganesh’s landscape of tranquil water is littered
with female forms that appear to come directly from the artist’s
imagination. Composed of vengeful double heads rooted on hands
with decapitated fingers, adolescent school-girls sprouting from a
tight-fitting skirt and blouse with multiple limbs and a naked figure
hanging from a forlorn tree with lotus leaves and a hand; Ganesh’s
vivid illustration is born of a deliberate stream of consciousness
and a dream like state that very graphically challenges preconcep-
tions of the representation of women.
Chitra Ganesh
Hidden 2007
Photographic triptych 61 x 63.5 cm
Chitra Ganesh’s photographic triptych Hidden depicts the artist
performing bizarre acts of mutilation and mysticism. The timeless
backdrop and the indecipherable objects speak of Ganesh’s in-
terest in the symbolism of classical literature that she actively
critiques in her Amnesia works. Rather than indulging in beauty
and heroic drama, Ganesh exposes herself to the vulnerability of
performing for the camera.
Chitra Ganesh
Twisted 2001
Digital C-print 76 x 52 cm
In Twisted, the artist appears to be twisted on a bed of leaves
deep in the forest, illuminated by artificial light and struggling to
find her feet in a strange juxtaposition of beautifully tailored
costume and contoured body parts. It becomes almost impossible
to rationalise what might have happened to Ganesh’s central char-
acter and why this figure stretched out appears utterly of another
world. The work references notions of the plight of women in
modern India and a willingness on Ganesh’s part to refer to very
classical views of women and their subservient role to men.
Schandra Singh
The Lazy River 2006
Oil on linen 229 x 274 cm
Beautifully stylised and helplessly satirical, Singh’s oil works
appear to be preoccupied by the absurdity of social notions of rest
at a time of incredible unrest. Singh’s large scale paintings on linen
depict figures of leisure wrestling with the oddities of the artificial
water pool and inflatable rubber rings. Mocking them for their idle-
ness, Singh depicts a landscape as far removed from reality as
appears possible and in so doing draws attention to possibilities of
social escape during a time of heightened violence. The Lazy
River is an amusing work of tired and exhausted figures haplessly
floating as they rest upon inflated clouds of white cushions.
Schandra Singh
Neha 2008
Oil on linen 274 cm x 183 cm
Neha is a large scale work of a girl standing knee deep in shallow
waters, with a recurring logo of a small lobster floating over the
canvas. Singh’s figure appears to resemble a mosaic, composed
of varying shapes and fragments of colour pressing against each
other to formulate her face and body. Unfortunately Singh’s figure
appears more perplexed than relaxed and as with all her stylised
characters resting in these shallow waters, the audience are
almost invited to laugh at the absurdity of these cumbersome indi-
viduals seeking solace in their artificial surroundings.
Ajit Chauhan
ReRecord 2009
162 erased record (album) covers 279.4 x 560 cm
American born Ajit Chauhan, based in San Francisco, is an artist
attempting to subvert our sense of perception by reorganizing ex-
isting visual languages. For one of his most recent body of works
entitled ReRecord Chauhan uses old vinyl albums. The work is
composed of 160 erased record covers pinned together onto a
wall, forming unresolved and slightly faded portraits that recall
and highlight the ephemeral nature of things. The record covers
can be seen as a marketing tool and a form of expression. They
are an expression of marketing, which is playfully undermined.
Chauhan’s unresolved portraits are rendered abstract and a
reoccurring absence of detail unsettles any sense of something
more substantial. Chauhan’s playfulness, upon what already
exists, amounts to a work of delicate resolve and mild amusement.
Gallery 10
Jitish Kallat
Eruda 2006
Black lead on fibreglass 419 x 169 x 122 cm
Eruda is a mammoth iconic sculpture of a young boy selling books
on the traffic lights of Mumbai. The children (who could sometimes
be illiterate) often sell these books authoritatively, playfully en-
gaging in conversations about the book’s interest value; their
rigour, audacity and endurance making them mascots for the re-
silience of a city such as Mumbai. Kallat’s sculpture has feet
shaped like homes, forming the quintessential image of a nomad
whose home is where he lays his feet. Treated in black-lead,
‘Eruda’ ensures that you take back a black stain on your fingers if
you choose to touch him; also black-lead is the softest form of
carbon while diamond remains the hardest.
Jitish Kallat
Annexe 2006
Black lead, fibreglass, stainless steel base
(Including the base) 145 x 46 x 46 cm
Annexe is a sculpture of a young child, whose upstanding posture
suggests a determination to survive. Weighing over his shoulder is
a heavy serpentine rope used as a whip with which to lash himself
in order to seek alms. Like Eruda, his feet shaped like homes
appear rooted to the spot while his glistening black-lead body
stands on a stainless steel base with a drain, perhaps representing
a punctured sculpture pedestal or the societal gulf between the
veneer of wealth and the perceived stain of real poverty.
Jitish Kallat
Untitled (Eclipse) 5 2008
Acrylic on canvas 229 x 518 cm
Kallat’s paintings from the Eclipse series are rendered in the epic
scale and format of a film hoarding with the hard edge of a propa-
ganda poster. The portrait of the city, rendered as a crumbling
cascade of countless narratives, interlaces with the overgrown hair
of the children as if they were raconteurs of the city’s inner secrets.
The brimming debris forms a linkage between the heads of the chil-
dren seeming to signify their common overlapping reality.
Jitish Kallat
Untitled (Eclipse) 3 2007
Acrylic on canvas 274 x 518 cm
Similarly in Kallat’s huge triptych Untitled (Eclipse) 3, rays of sun-
shine emanate from the background; the grand radiance that
forms the backdrop for the portraits is in sharp contrast to the car-
icaturesque rendition of the urban detritus brimming out of the
unkempt locks of the children. Thus above their forehead are ren-
dered a thousand colliding stories; perhaps the complex narrative
of 18 million people living on an island of 600 square kilometers
that is Mumbai.
Gallery 11
Rashid Rana
Veil Series I, II, & III 2004
3 C prints + DIASEC 51 x 51 cm each
Rashid Rana critiques culturally constructed, negative stereotypes
of women through his work, whether in relation to the sexual
objectification of women through the pornography industry or in
relation to how the burqa is worn and perceived as a political
symbol in a post 9-11 era. In Veil I, Veil II & III, Rana depicts an
anonymous figure dressed in a burqa. Upon further inspection, the
work is actually a fragmented collage made-up of thousands of
small, unfocused pornographic stills of women. By using both
these representations of gender in a rigid manner, Rana is effec-
tively destroying them both, forcing the viewer to look beyond them
and critique the so-called machinery of truth from which they are
born.
Rashid Rana
Ommatidia I (Hrithik Roshan) (Salman Khan) (Shahrukh Khan)
2004
C Print + DIASEC
Rashid Rana’s work takes its title from the units that form an
insect’s eye, the ommatidia, which individually provide picture ele-
ments for the brain to compose an image from. Rana uses digital
images to similar effect in his Ommatidia series, where he takes
some of the leading actors of contemporary Bollywood cinema,
Hrithik Roshan, Salman Khan and Shahrukh Khan, and re-con-
structs their portraits from smaller individual elements.
These renowned figures from contemporary cinema are the stable
diet for millions of people in India, Pakistan and throughout the
Indian subcontinent who almost religiously frequent the cinema
and absorb the choreographed dance routines and songs that are
the signature of every musical. Rana draws together hundreds of
smaller crudely cut portraits of young Pakistani men; workers, at-
tendants, shopkeepers, who appear haphazardly photographed by
the artist, in order to compose a kaleidoscopic portrait of each of
these actors.
The minute faces look in adulation at their idols. Rana suggests
that these cinematic heroes are the invention of the viewing public,
who invest their own imaginations and desires in the hyper-reality
that make up the lives of these Indian superstars. The Ommatidia
Series ultimately subverts and re-appropriates the concept of
desire and fantasy world created in Indian film, while pointing out
the complexity of attempting to fabricate a cultural narrative.
Rashid Rana
The World Is Not Enough 2006 - 2007
C Print + DIASEC 221 x 296 cm
In The World is Not Enough Rashid Rana creates an impossible
image of immense beauty from his personal accumulation of pho-
tographs of social waste, taken mostly from a landfill site outside
Lahore, the cosmopolitan city of Pakistan where he lives, as well
as from the city itself. Reduced to miniature pixels of information,
the details that form the much larger image, of what appears to be
the undulating sea, are in fact hundreds of images of trash digitally
‘stitched’ into a non-existent aerial view that bear an uncanny re-
semblance to the large canvases of non-representational art from
the post-war era. A sense of the scale and singularity of man’s
ambition is indicated, not through great feats of industry or the
miracle of science, but through one of the residual by-products of
our age. Here, as elsewhere in the artist’s work, the juxtaposition
of beauty and the macabre forces the viewer into an acknowl-
edgement of the politics of the piece. A work that appears on one
level to represent a notion of ideal beauty is in fact based on a
more troubling examination of the increasing detritus and decay of
the city.
Reena Saini Kallat
Synonym 2007
Acrylic paint, rubberstamps, plexiglas 195 x 134 cm
The work stands like a screen, holding up a portrait formed by
several hundred names of people, rendered in scripts of over 14
Indian languages. From a distance they come together as a
portrait, but up-close they almost seem like a circuit-board of rub-
berstamps. The rubberstamps are made with names of those
officially registered as having gone missing in India from different
geographical zones. These include the names of those lost
through natural calamities such as landslides, floods and earth-
quakes, the names of those who have gone missing during riots or
large scale mishaps and the names of those abducted or
absconding, with the police still trying to ascertain their where-
abouts. These are people who seem to have slipped out of the
radar of human communication, who have been thrown off the
social safety net. The portrait of a sub-continental citizen is formed
by numerous such names; the back of the portrait emerges as a
sea of invisible identities, a bird’s eye view of a large human con-
gregation.
Yamini Nayar
Being There 2006
C-print 51 x 61 cm
In Being There, Nayar conceives a miniature room of paneled
glass and fake columns with coat-hangers and a protruding guitar
handle residing close to the floor. The walls and the floor appear
uneven, resembling a kitsch corner for idle recreation. In the centre
of the photograph is a bamboo stick bent slightly, jutting from the
wall with a lamp-shade shaped like a beehive. Nayar explains her
photographic works as a series of “spaces that question the iconic
in photographic memory, where found images are pivot points for
imagined, alternate structures.”
Yamini Nayar
Sincere 2006
C-print 51 x 61 cm
Nayar’s constructs recall the work of German artist Thomas
Demand, renowned for his paper interiors that, once pho-
tographed, allude to something significant having taken place.
However unlike Demand’s work, her fictionalised interiors such as
Sincere are less a reconstruction from recent history and more a
way into the artist’s imagination, in which objects and emblems are
juxtaposed in architectonic niches. The artist uses both made and
found objects as well as images sourced from cinema, photo-
graphic archives and mass media to create these interiors.
Yamini Nayar
What Is Essential 2006
C-print 51 x 61 cm
Yamini Nayar’s work What is Essential is composed of ready-
mades juxtaposed into an interesting configuration of modern
narrative. A photograph of a parachutist in faded black and white
is resting between the tiled floor and the laminated fake wooden
wall. The photograph and the array of porcelain and plastic objects
appear to be organised as one might arrange a desk. The work ex-
plores the intimacy of objects in space, as they reference that of a
found photograph central to the composition.

Yamini Nayar
Underfoot And Overhead 2008
C-print 76 x 102 cm
Yamini Nayar works with installation and architecture as photog-
raphy, creating imagined, psychologically laden interiors from
found and discarded materials. These installations are destroyed
after the work is photographed, so that the photographic image
serves as a stand-in for the original work. In representing invented
spaces as still images, any sense of scale is concealed from the
audience. The interiors appear destroyed by acts of nature. In
Underfoot and Overhead a dishevelled staircase falls precariously
from a doorway with a thread of foliage hanging over the darkened
entrance. Once inside, a single light-bulb appears to illuminate a
darkened room. The work takes its name from a Rudyard Kipling
poem.
Yamini Nayar
Luck Is The Residue Of Design 2007
C-print 51 x 61 cm
Luck is the Residue of Design shows a seemingly abandoned
space which the earth appears to have shaken dramatically. The
delicate shell of walls and floor appear to have cracked under the
weight of temporary motion. The alcove at the back seems to have
taken some of the force of an act of nature or the weight of some-
thing man-made. The use of foreshortening creates a sense of
compression and claustrophobia in this imagined interior.
Yamini Nayar
Cleo 2009
C-print 76.3 x 101.5 cm
A more recent photographic work Cleo (2009) shows a darkened
attic with broken floorboards and an unfinished partition wall with
an eye crudely cut into the back wall. The composition resembles
a scene from a faded horror film. Nayar conceives and then con-
structs scenes of heightened melodrama. Nayar’s works lie
somewhere between post-explosive moments of reality and dream
like scenarios in which humanity has been wiped out.
Pushpamala N and Clare Arni
From The Ethnographic Series Native Women of South India:
Manners & Customs 2000- 2004
Medium set of 45 sepia-toned silver gelatine prints
Bangalore based Pushpamala N is a photo- and video-perfor-
mance artist who is the subject of her own compositions. In this
series of works, the artist explores photography as a tool of
ethnographic documentation and humorously challenges the
authenticity of the photographic image. Created in collaboration
with photographer Clare Arni, The Ethnographic Series draws
attention to the choreographed stylistics of early anthropological
studies, enacting and thereby transforming stereotypes of women.
Dressing in period costume, Pushpamala refashions these stereo-
types to subvert and critique the forensic classification of humanity.
The strength of The Ethnographic Series lies in Pushpamala’s wit
in reconstructing such scenes and playfully deconstructing them,
acting both as subject and object to the camera.

Yamini Nayar
Study 1 2008
C-print (architectural drawing on photograph) 26.5 x 34.3 cm
By drawing directly onto photographs, Nayar’s 2008 series recalls
the work of French architect Yona Friedman and his portfolio of
working sketches and formal solutions for which he draws and
scores directly onto documentation of pre-existing architectural
spaces. Such inventiveness is at the root of Nayar’s geometric in-
terventions that have her redesigning damaged cityscapes in order
to suggest greater possibilities. In this work, Nayar manages to
invent order out of chaos, to seek sense where there are only the
remnants of destruction.

Yamini Nayar
Study 2 2008
C-print (architectural drawing on photograph) 26.5 x 34.3 cm
Thin white lines are spread very precisely over the surface of the
photograph as the artist uses previous documentation as a place
from which to invent something else. Nayar’s drawings appear to
suggest that she has arrived too late to save this piece of reality
and is instead seeking order in the remains of littered chaos. The
end of everything is the point at which Nayar introduces creativity
to consider what can still be possible.
Project Room Gallery 13 Lower Ground Floor
Emily Prince Richard Wilson
American Servicemen And Women Who Have Died In Iraq And 20:50 1987
Afghanistan (But Not Including The Wounded, Nor The Iraqis Nor Used sump oil, steel Dimensions variable
The Afghans) 2004 to the present
Richard Wilson’s 20:50 is truly a contemporary masterpiece. The
Pencil on color coded vellum Project comprised of 5,213 drawings
work is the only permanent installation at the Saatchi Gallery and
Each image: 4 x 3 in Dimensions variable
has been continuously shown in each of the gallery’s venues since
Emily Prince’s American Servicemen and Women Who Have Died 1991. Currently on display in Gallery 13 – a room custom built for
in Iraq and Afghanistan (but not Including the Wounded, nor the the piece – 20:50 transforms the gallery into a site of epic illusion.
Iraqis nor the Afghans) is a genuinely awe inspiring tribute.
Viewed from the entrance platform 20:50 appears as a holographic
Comprised of over 5100 drawings – each an intimately rendered
field: simultaneously a polished floor, infinite clear pool, an expan-
portrait of a fallen soldier – its scope is beyond rationale as the
sive and indefinable virtual space that clinically absorbs and
statistics of war are re-transformed into real faces, real people:
mirrors the gallery architecture. The room is in fact entirely flooded
identified, mourned, cherished, and remembered. Prince’s work is
in oil.
inspired by a memorial website where families post photographs of
their loved ones killed in action. She visits this site several times a Visitors are invited to examine the piece close-up via a walkway
week and makes drawings for every update; those without photos that extends into the lake, placing the viewer, waist deep, at the
are represented by an empty square labeled with the individual’s centre of a perfect mathematically symmetrical scope. Through
name and other biographical information. this altered perspective 20:50’s phantasmical aura is enhanced,
amplifying the disorientating and mesmerising experience of the
Rendered in pencil on small uniform cards, each portrait is an
space, and further confounding physical logic.
attempt to ‘see’ each individual: through studying their facial fea-
tures, posture, and expression, and noting personal details such as 20:50 takes its name from the type of recycled engine oil used.
their name, age, and place of origin. The coloured paper indicates It is thick, pitch black, and absolutely indelible: please take extreme
the soldiers’ ethnic origin, further enhancing their individualism, care with your clothing and belongings, and no matter how
and illustrating the socio-economic factors which play a part in tempting, please do not touch. 20:50 often has to be demonstrated
American military recruitment. Through this humble ritual, Prince to be believed: the liquid can be seen by blowing very gently on the
pays her respects and creates an astounding visual record of surface.
every soldier killed in action since 2004.
The installation was originally hung in 2005 at the Yerba Buena
Center for the Arts, San Francisco before being installed in the
Arsenale of the Venice Biennale in 2007 in the shape of a 14
metre long US map, with each portrait positioned according to the RICHARD WILSON
soldier’s hometown; however, in the two short years since this
showing, US troops have suffered casualties at an alarming rate: 1953 Born in London, UK
the vast number of new drawings makes this format of presenta- Lives and works in London, UK
tion impossible. The project is now installed in chronological order,
as it was at the Wanas Centre in 2009, mirroring the Honor The
Fallen page on www.militarycity.com. This fills 3 entire walls of the
Saatchi Gallery, and spans 40 metres. Its sheer incomprehensible
scale resolves as a moving and powerful protest.
Exuding an overwhelming obeisance and dignity in its simplicity,
the project breaks down the abstract enormity of war into count-
able, personal, knowable human terms. Its immense scale is
commensurate with the enduring public monuments of past wars. EMILY PRINCE
Its meek construction in pencil and paper, however, does not point
to glory and grandeur, but rather a tender fragility and imperma- 1981 Born in Gold Run, California, USA
nence, recording history’s making, its collective heroicism and loss, Lives and works in San Francisco, USA
with touching and rarefied intimacy.
American Servicemen and Women Who Have Died in Iraq and
Afghanistan (but not Including the Wounded, nor the Iraqis nor the
Afghans) is an ongoing project which will not be complete until
American involvement in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan ends.
The project is ongoing and of note, 2100 drawings have been
added since it’s initial presentation in Venice.

Text © Rajesh Punj

Text on Huma Bhabha, Emily Prince and Richard Wilson © Patricia Ellis
Printed by ArtQuarters Press, London
Artist biographies
JAISHRI ABICHANDANI MANSOOR ALI BHARTI KHER RAJAN KRISHNAN

1969 Born in Mumbai India 1978 Born in Jasmatpur, Gujarat, India 1969 Born in London, UK 1967 Born in Kerala, India
Lives and works in New York, U.S.A. Lives and works in Baroda, India Lives and works Delhi, India Lives and works in Kochi, Kerala, India

KRITI ARORA HUMA BHABHA HUMA MULJI PUSHPAMALA N

1972 Born in Delhi, India 1962 Born in Karachi, Pakistan 1970 Born in Karachi, Pakistan 1956 Born in Bangalore, India
Lives and works in Delhi, India Lives and works in Poughkeepsie, Lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan Lives and works in Bangalore, India
New York

AJIT CHAUHAN SHEZAD DAWOOD YAMINI NAYAR JUSTIN PONMANY

1974 Born in London, UK 1974 Born in London, UK 1975 Born in Rochester, New York, U.S.A. 1974 Born in Kerala, India
Lives and works in London, UK Lives and works in London, UK Lives and works in New York, U.S.A. Lives and works in Mumbai, India

ATUL DODIYA CHITRA GANESH RASHID RANA TV SANTHOSH

1959 Born in Bombay, India 1975 Born in New York, U.S.A. 1968 Born in Lahore, Pakistan 1968 Born in Kerala, India
Lives and works in Bombay, India Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York Lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan Lives and works in Mumbai, India

PROBIR GUPTA SAKSHI GUPTA SCHANDRA SINGH TALLUR L.N

1960 Born in Calcutta, India 1960 Born in Calcutta, India 1977 Born in Suffern New York, U.S.A. 1971 Born in Karnataka, India
Lives and works in New Delhi, India Lives and works in New Delhi, India Lives and works in Poughkeepsie, Lives and works in India and South Korea
New York, U.S.A.

SUBODH GUPTA TUSHAR JOAG HEMA UPADHYAY T VENKANNA

1964 Born in Khagaul, Bihar, India 1966 Born in Mumbai, India 1972 Born in Baroda, India 1974 Born in Mumbai, India
Lives and works in New Delhi, India Lives and works in Mumbai, India Lives and works in Mumbai, India Lives and works in Mumbai, India

JITISH KALLAT REENA SAINI KALLAT

1974 Born in Mumbai, India 1973 Born in Delhi, India

Lives and works in Mumbai, India Lives and works in Mumbai, India
Phillips de Pury & Company Gallery

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areglobe
rarely,that
if ever,
are rarely,
placedifon
ever, placed on

Lee YongBaek, Plastic

LeeFish
YongBaek,
(2008) Plastic Fish (2008) public view. Each
public
exhibition
view. Each
willexhibition
bring together
will bring together

established and
established
emerging artists
and emerging
to reflectartists
a to reflect a

different collector’s
different
personal
collector’s
vision
personal
on the most
vision on the most

exciting developments
exciting developments
in contemporary
in contemporary
art. art.
Floorplan

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SAATCHI GALLERY BECOME PHILLIPS DE PURY &
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SHOWDOWN WINNERS
Saatchi Online hosts Showdown, where artists submit their works to go head-to-head for
visitors’ votes
MEZZANINE The public voted on thousands of artworks entered and the outright winners, and round
winners, are shown on the top floor and in the gallery restaurant. The works are for sale with
no commission charged to buyer or seller. Please ask at reception for prices and purchase
details.
GALLERY 10 See details on www.saatchigallery.com/showdown

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SAATCHI GALLERY / SUNDAY TELEGRAPH ART PRIZE FOR SCHOOLS
All Primary and Secondary schools around the world are now able to create school profiles
LEVEL 1 GALLERY 8 GALLERY 7 and display artwork created by pupils between 4-18 years old.
A panel of leading art critics invited by the Sunday Telegraph and the Saatchi Gallery will
choose their favourite works, and a first prize of £10,000 will be awarded to the winning
school’s art department. A further £2000 will be given to the winning pupil to be spent on com-
puter and art equipment. There will be prizes of £5000 each awarded to the second and third
place schools with a further £1000 to each of the winning pupils. Some of the submitted art-
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works are shown in a small gallery on the top floor, prior to a large scale exhibition. More works
are displayed in the Education Room on the lower ground floor.
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BOOKSHOP EDUCATION

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 SAATCHI ONLINE The Saatchi Gallery
and Phillips de Pury & Company would like to thank
www.saatchigallery.com

Saatchi Online provides a place where art can be displayed, discussed and sold free Gallery Patron
from commission to either buyer or seller. It is now the world’s largest Art Gallery website,
as ranked by Alexa, the internet’s leading research organization

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Saatchi Online Artists Saatchi Online Street Art

Saatchi Online profiles can be created free of charge by Visitors can display and discuss graffiti, murals, street pho-
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In total there are over 120,000 artists registered on Saatchi countries around the world Founding Patron
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Works presented by artists for critique and comment by
through Saatchi Online is free of commission to either
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Colleges
Ongoing weekly head-to-head competition open for all vis- Education Patrons
Curriculum details and information from over 3000 of the
itors to vote for their favourite works submitted by Saatchi
world’s top universities and colleges who have entered
Online artists, the winning works to be exhibited at the
their profiles Deutsche Bank
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Video Artists, Photographers and Illustrators million votes each week
Over 6,000 artists’ videos are displayed on the site and Google
thousands of photographers and illustrators have created Art Fairs
their free profiles to showcase their work Previews all the leading art fairs from around the world Lille 3000
who have entered their profiles
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Over 3000 schools from around the world display their Over 9,800 galleries worldwide have entered their profiles
pupils’ work on this online schools showcase. Over 22,000 to detail their exhibitions and display their artists’ work
Corporate Patrons
entries from around the world were submitted in the 2009 Saatchi Online Saleroom
Saatchi Gallery / Sunday Telegraph Art Prize for Schools Artists who wish to sell their work directly to visitors can Allford Hall Monaghan Morris
worth £24,000. load their images for viewing on this section. Over 100,000
Saatchi Online TV, Daily Magazine and Blog artworks are available to be seen, with no commission Arup
Daily interactive magazine combining editorial and charged to artist or buyer
visitors comments, providing art news from all over the Grants and Prizes ClearChannel Outdoor
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Reviews and essays can also be submitted here by visi- ERCO
tors. Mixing editorial with direct video blogs, Saatchi Online Chatroom
TV features vox pops, films of art openings, interviews, Users can chat live with other visitors and speak with guest Goedhuis & Company
artists’ studios, art performances and reviews artists hosting online discussions

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Collection highlights and visitor information from over 3000
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A direct linking facility where artists, media and cultural in-
stitutions can place a link to their website, creating easy
access for visitors
Meet Others
Users can post details about themselves and meet other
people interested in art.
Over 30,000 students from around the world use the
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contact with other students. An annual competition,
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Walker Morris
in the UK
Saatchi Online Studio
Where artists can make and display work online. Each
month a winner is selected by a guest critic and £500
donated in the winner’s name to a children’s hospital of
their choice. There is also a popular children’s version on
the site, Artroom.
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