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Three Indian galleries expand their presence in London with a unique showcase

Mint

16-07-2025

Entertainment
Mint

Three Indian galleries expand their presence in London with a unique showcase

In a significant showcase last month, three major Indian art galleries—Jhaveri Contemporary, Vadehra Art Gallery and Chemould Prescott Road—came together to spotlight South Asian resident and diaspora artists in London. Their joint presentation was displayed at No. 9 Cork Street, Frieze's exhibition space in the city. It also ended up being a part of the London Gallery Weekend, which drew participation from over 130 galleries. No. 9 Cork Street provided the Indian galleries a platform to be represented at this event despite not having a permanent physical space in the city. The Gallery Weekend is an important cog in London's art calendar and with Cork Street celebrating its centenary this year, the 2025 edition became all the more significant. The event was attended by the likes of Salman Rushdie, Ghanaian-British artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah, and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, as well as by representatives of key museums such as the Tate, Barbican and the Royal Academy. In a city where institutional interest for contemporary artists from the subcontinent has been growing steadily, this presentation by three Indian galleries could be a catalyst for greater interest in the long run. 'In London, collectors have a broader outlook. In the context of South Asian art, they are not necessarily collecting geographically but thematically or generationally. The works have to speak to issues that concern collectors independent of where they come from,' shares Amrita Jhaveri of Jhaveri Contemporary. 'Having said that, many international collectors are attracted to the India story. When they travel to our country for work, they also explore our art.' Jhaveri Contemporary presented Horizons, a group exhibition featuring works by Muhanned Cader, Seher Shah and Lubna Chowdhary. It also created a dedicated section of Permindar Kaur's works—intended to serve as a curtain raiser for her upcoming exhibition at the Pitzhanger Manor in London. Gieve Patel, 'Mourners III', acrylic on canvas, 2005. Courtesy: Vadehra Art Gallery Cader's series of small-sized oil paintings, Nightscapes (1999), which had been created during the most intense part of the Sri Lankan civil war, stood out. Painted in oil on plywood, they revealed evocative scenes where dusk grudgingly gave way to darkness. The irregular shapes of his canvases spoke of the lives distorted by the conflict, and echoed the marginalised voices from that period. Delhi-based Vadehra Art Gallery presented new work by contemporary artist Biraaj Dodiya, which was in dialogue with a selection of paintings by the late artist-poet Gieve Patel. 'We have been expanding our presence in London due to growing interest from institutions and prominent collectors,' shares gallerist Roshini Vadehra. The gallery had previously showcased at No. 9 Cork Street in 2022 with a solo of Anju Dodiya's works followed by a significant exhibition of Sudhir Patwardhan's paintings last year. In the recent presentation, one of the most compelling paintings on showcase was Patel's Crushed Head (1984), which showed the shattered remains of a person who had suffered great trauma. In response, Dodiya created funerary head rests inspired by ancient cultures as part of the larger series. 'Finding joy in Gieve's application of paint also means knocking one's head against his Crushed Head and the Mourners. Paint mimics the residue of the body. The violence of the encounter marks our spaces with grief and a quiet introspection,' she reflected in the curatorial essay. Chemould Prescott Road showed a solo exhibition of works by Rashid Rana. The highlight was Fractured Moment (2025), a frame-by-frame breakdown of a CCTV capture of the night sky in Gaza, which showed it being intermittently lit up by the Israeli air strikes. The large wallpaper work engulfed the whole room figuratively putting the visitor in the centre of a war zone. What made the work striking was that the subject of the images, which seemed innocuous from afar, became clear only upon closer observation. 'There is a need for artists to speak up with a sense of urgency, especially in the context of Gaza. When I saw Rashid's work, I immediately felt that having a room dedicated to it would be important at this point in time,' reveals Shireen Gandhy of Chemould Prescott Road. Whether it was Rana's array of images from Gaza, Cader's haunting reflections from the Sri Lankan conflict, or Patel's poignant rendition of the common man's trauma—the works stood out for their impact on the human psyche, and also allowed the three exhibitions to connect with each other. Anindo Sen is an independent art writer.

The Hindu

10-07-2025

Entertainment
The Hindu

Pensive portraits

The ongoing exhibition 'Unedited, Like An Afternoon Dream', at Vadehra Art Gallery, brings together the finest names in contemporary and modern art. While abstraction has its own amorphous aura in the world of Sachin George Sebastian's Impossible Size of Nothingness and Shailesh B R's Riverbank , it is the human portraits with their lucidity and lithe strokes that steal the limelight at the show. Benode Behari Mukherjee's pair of masterly portraits of feminine fervour on rice and regular paper are a quaint study in the power of drawing. Poise and allure both sit gently in this pair. Atul Dodiya defines a distinctive stealth in abstracted portraiture, and we glimpse a set of works that capture the human gaze in multifarious ways. Atul's portraits have a cadence of unfolding currents that makes the viewer think of the pulse of time. The colours and the textural nuances invite viewers to engage with his richness of sensitivity intimately responding to human perceptions and perspectives. There is a single portrait of Anju Dodiya by Atul, that bridges a feminine layered past with its evolving present and demonstrates how in a singular portrait there can be convergence of art, place and, time. Zaam Arif's portraits explore themes of memory, transformation, and continuity, reflecting on a seamless dynamism. The artist mirrors the power of presence and the works encourage direct engagement, inviting viewers to experience art in real time and be fully present in the unfolding moment. Conversations in time The beauty of the exhibition lies in the narrative that hinges on history, memory, and contemporary experience fostering a poignant connection to human identity and ever-changing reality. The exhibition has been structured as a visual thought experimentin two parts:abstraction and portraiture. It explores a philosophy of the image following the relationship between representation and truth, reality and human consciousness. The portraits are built on myriad moods of narrative context and offers viewers the freedom to interpret multiple meanings. In this adroit selection of faces frozen in time, viewers get to see a series of portraits in which the real becomes a novel story, woven into unknown corollaries. At Vadehra Art Gallery, D-40 Defence Colony; Till July 18; 10am to 6pm

Of dreams and childhood josh in Vicky Roy's b/w frames at Delhi exhibition Bachpan

The Hindu

27-05-2025

Entertainment
The Hindu

Of dreams and childhood josh in Vicky Roy's b/w frames at Delhi exhibition Bachpan

What does it mean to grow up with nothing and still find joy? Vadehra Art Gallery invites viewers to ponder over it through a photo series titled Bachpan (childhood) by Vicky Roy. The photographs, filled with laughter, are a fleeting magic of play of moods and emotions. They display the resilience of childhood shaped not by material comfort, but by imagination, community and survival. Vicky's lens captures children who find delight in the simplest things, even as they live in the shadow of poverty and displacement. His work is inspired by his own humble beginnings. Originally from Purulia, West Bengal, he left home at the age of 11 and began working as a rag picker at the New Delhi Railway Station. His life took a pivotal turn when he was taken in by the Salaam Baalak Trust, a Delhi-based NGO supporting street children. Reflecting on the time he spent playing with his friends in his village, the photographer says, 'We didn't need electronic gadgets. A ball made out of plastic was enough for us to play and have fun.' It is a sentiment that runs through much of his work: the idea that joy does not have to be bought but can be built from what is available. Bachpan, developed over 16 years, documents children in both rural and urban parts of India, including Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Delhi, Maharashtra and West Bengal. The photographs show children creating games with discarded materials and forming a strong sense of community and deriving joy from what little they have. Bachpan evokes a sense of nostalgia for a simpler time and an awareness of childhoods that are prematurely cut short. Vicky has also showcased photographs under series Janwaar, which were taken between 2015 and 2018. These shift the focus to a rural community in Panna district of Madhya Pradesh. Designed by his friend, Ulrike Reinhard, the series captures the transformation of a village after the creation of a skatepark, built to uplift children from the Adivasi and Yadav communities. With no formal training, the children taught themselves to skate by falling, getting up, and trying again. 'The motivation behind developing such a park in a rural area was that these children have the resilience to get up after a fall and continue to push their boundaries,' Vicky says. Today, some of the children travel internationally, representing India in skating competitions across Europe and China. Bachpan and Janwaar do not assert themselves loudly. There is no heavy-handed messaging in the 45 black-and-white frames. Vicky's photography resists spectacle. They stay close to the everyday acts of balancing on a skateboard, a pause in the middle of a game, a shared glance between friends. The strength of Bachpan and Janwaar lies in their quiet specificity. By placing the two projects side by side, it becomes evident how environments—rural or urban, improvised or designed—shape the way children move, play and grow. There's no singular narrative of hardship here. Instead, Vicky offers parallel photographs of energy, resourcefulness and change. By the time one exits the gallery, the question is not just about what these children lack, but about what they have made, how they have moved forward, and what new futures are already in motion. Rhea Kapoor and Akhya Shriti At Vadehra Art Gallery, D-53 Defence Colony; Till May 30; 10am to 6pm

The Aziz-Dube saga: A sleight of copyright?

Hindustan Times

23-05-2025

Entertainment
Hindustan Times

The Aziz-Dube saga: A sleight of copyright?

Artist Anita Dube recently found herself in the middle of a controversy after she used lines from activist and poet Aamir Aziz's poem, Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega, in her art without his permission. The Patna-born poet alleged that the lines were used without his 'knowledge, consent, credit, or compensation' by Dube and exhibited at the Vadehra Art Gallery in Delhi. The poem and the artwork both fall under the purview of copyright law in India, governed by the Copyright Act of 1957. A wide range of creative works are protected under this legislation, which does not extend to ideas, themes, or plots but only to the particular form in which those ideas are expressed. The author is typically the first owner of copyright. Independent contractors may retain ownership unless a contract specifies otherwise. When work is created under a contract of service (employee-employer relationship), the employer is generally the first owner. Copyright arises automatically upon creation of an original work, and registration provides evidentiary support in disputes. The Aziz–Dube matter highlights enduring ethical and legal questions about adapting the works of both living and deceased artists, in terms of consent, attribution, and commercialisation. In India, the general rule for original literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works is that copyright protection endures for the author's lifetime plus 60 years. For other categories of work such as cinematographic films the period of protection is 60 years from the date of first publication. Indian copyright law grants copyright owners the exclusive right to create derivative works, which include adaptations, translations, and other modifications. Adaptation, a subset of derivative works, usually involves changing the format or medium of the essence of the original work is retained, but it is presented differently to reach new audiences or serve new purposes. Derivative works are also protected and copyright in the derivative work vests with the adapter to the extent of the new, original contributions — subject to the subsisting rights in the original work. The right to adapt a work is one of the exclusive rights conferred upon the copyright owner. In the absence of a licence from the from the copyright owner, the adapter may be exposed to legal consequences for copyright infringement. Unauthorised derivative works typically constitute infringement. However, the fair dealing doctrine allows limited use of copyrighted material without permission. There are specific exceptions for purposes such as criticism, review, reporting of current events, and private use including research. Fair dealing seeks to strike a balance between protecting intellectual property and facilitating access to knowledge. While some political expression may intersect with public interest, there are limits to this doctrine. Moral rights protect an author's personal and reputational interests in their work, distinct from their economic rights. These rights survive the assignment of economic rights and are often described as inalienable. A legal claim by an author against unauthorised modifications to their work must succeed in establishing that the treatment of the work has been prejudicial to their reputation. In her public statement, Dube acknowledged an 'ethical lapse' in not seeking Aziz's permission, although she had credited him. She also clarified that the artwork has since been withdrawn from sale. Aziz, for his part, objects to the manner in which his poem was used. Dube also invoked the spirit of the commons and 'copyleft', referencing frameworks the Creative Commons framework, which encourage the free sharing of copyrighted material provided all derivative versions are shared under the same terms. The incident has reignited a discourse on the commercial appropriation of politically resonant and marginalised voices in art. Using the work in a commercial context without consent may be seen as a modification that violates the integrity rights of the author irrespective of any assignment of economic rights. WH Auden, in Law, like Love, likens law to love that 'we seldom keep'— a fitting metaphor for the delicate balance between artistic inspiration and the safeguards that ensure a more equitable field for both emerging and established artists, as well as those who support and facilitate their work. Sana Javed is a lawyer focused on policy and contract advisory. The views expressed are personal

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