(Photo: Public Notice 2, 2007 © Jitish Kallat)

This season Charles Saatchi’s roving eye settles on India. Amassed during the boom in the market a couple of years ago, this portion of his collection is presented to us at a time when the bubble in that market has now burst. Showcasing a multitude of India based artists - and a handful from the U.S., U.K. and Pakistan - the collection varies in quality: it includes a stuffed camel curled into a suitcase, a whirring, skeletal Xerox machine and a robotic army made of bulbs and stop lights. The artists play with various concerns: from uneasy, political dialogues between the past and present, to responses to its status as a rising economic power. The show starts strong, with a haunting rendering of Gandhi’s 1930 speech on the eve of the Salt March to Dandi. Monumental in size, it is comprised of letters sculpted to look like bones. Highlights include Bharti Kher’s imaginative interpretation of a blue sperm whale’s heart, decorated in a plethora of coloured bindis – a motif in her work. T. V. Santhosh’s duet of paintings impresses you with their lurid green and shocking orange: these colour photographic negatives are amped up with violent energy. Chitra Ganesh offers comic strip-style stories of a liberated Indian superwoman – a fresher transformation of the female stereotype than that presented by Pushpamala N. Rashid Rana’s print stitches together minute images of detritus into a surprisingly beautiful aerial view. However, the work of Jitish Kallat seems a favourite of Saatchi, as an entire gallery is devoted to the artist: a mammoth-sized sculpture of a child book-seller dominates the room, giving the street kids of Mumbai a sense of gravity and endurance. The exhibition is vast, flaunting myriad styles: it offers but a taste of work currently being produced in this subcontinent.

–Petra

Watch out for Coral Churchill’s new exhibition at the Menier Gallery, London on 16-20 February 2010.

“The Trouble with Women” brings together an eclectic body of work from a small group of Fine Art graduates from Central St Martins. The show is a humorous, lively yet sometimes dark exploration of femininity in a postmodern post feminist world. It is an exploration of women’s interior worlds as well as the way they are perceived and represented today. The works examine notions of femininity as enduring as motherhood and sexuality but also the ever changing expectations of women.

Coral Churchill is interested in intuitive art and the role of the woman as creator. The subconscious and the symbolic are central concerns, while automatism is interwoven with observational work. Recent work reflects the social construct of femininity in a patriarchal society, looking at transformation and the shape shifter archetype.

To find out more about Coral Churchill’s work, including sneak previews of her prints, please contact info@bluerimgallery.net.

This new show kicks off on 23-29 January @ The Factory (37 Camden High St, London), showcasing emerging artists from the artistic hot-house that is Central St. Martins. Here’s your chance to see work by Coral Churchill, soon to be represented by the Blue Rim team. Her work has been shown at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition; she has also taken part in group shows around London. Watch this space for more on Coral…

Private view: Friday 22d January 6-9pm, (23-29, 11-5 daily).

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