The Imaginary Institution of India

★★★★★

Curated by Shanay Jhaveri
On until 5 January 2025

How does a curator tell an unfamiliar history yet evade the museum’ didacticism and the audience’s dulled expectations? Jhaveri’s ambitious review of India’s testing decades at the end of the 20th century could easily have been a torturous sermon: the period’s Wikipedia entry is full of social tension, abuses of power, even civil unrest. The absence of wordy labels in the gallery, then, is radically generous. The exhibition’s 50 paintings and the odd installation put forth their aesthetic narratives without competition.

Even unfamiliar with the events, one gets the sense of their near-Biblical magnitude. The political anxiety of Rameshwar Broota’s satirical Reconstruction gives way to the growth caught in Sudhir Patwardhan’s city-building vistas. Social transformations give rise to dream sequences in Nilima Sheikh oils and temperas. Pablo Bartholomew’s record of the Union Carbide disaster tickles the Western consciousness, as do Sunil Gupta’s gay liberation slogan-photographs.

Forms from the 1990s like Sheela Gowda’s clay assemblies feel more familiar still, but Jhaveri avoids the internationalised Indian art market’s greatest hits. Patwardhan now turns to rural desolation, while Jitish Kallat cryptically codes Mumbai’s political agitation. Nalini Malani’s nuclear anxiety video room finally breaks the end-of-history timeline, prompting a second look with the exhibition guidebook in hand. 


notes and notices are short and curt exhibition reviews. Read more:

Hany Armanious, Circle Square at Phillipa Reid ★★☆☆☆

Hany Armanious

Circle Square

★★☆☆☆

The lightness of being can turn unbearable.

Co Westerik, Centenary at Sadie Coles HQ ★★★☆☆

Co Westerik

Centenary

★★★★☆

Westerik catches his figures in deep contemplation in front of the mirror, in the gynaecologist’s chair, or even mid-orgy.

Harmony Korine, Aggressive Dr1fter Part II at Hauser & Wirth ★★☆☆☆

Harmony Korine

Aggressive Dr1fter Part II

★★☆☆☆

The garish colours which may have carried the story in cinema here are unfitting of their new medium.

A light here required a shadow at Maximillian William ★★★☆☆

Grant Falardeau, Rimantė Mikulovičiūtė, Benjamin Sasserson, Bu Shi, Dylan Williams

A light here required a shadow

★★★☆☆

Catch the wrong end of the spectrum and forever remain obscured.

Jack O’Brien, The Reward at Camden Art Centre ★★☆☆☆

Jack O'Brien

The Reward

★★☆☆☆

No narrative emerges from the tonnes of steel and plastic his work consumed

Machine Painting at Modern Art ★★★★☆

Machine Painting

★★★★☆

Ask DALL-E to paint an abstraction and it’ll confidently produce a museum-worthy clone

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