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Tallur L.N., Untitled, 2007, Inflatable bed, silicon, latex rubber, medical cot and forceps, 275 x 280 x 160 cm.

Rashid Rana, Veil Series I, II & III, 2004, 3 C prints + DIASEC, 51 x 51 cm each.

Justin Ponmany, Staple Agony II, Plastic Memory, 2006, Acrylic and holographic pigment on canvas, diptych, 191 x 325 cm.

Sakshi Gupta, Untitled (Xerox Machine), 2008, Metal, 92 x 150 x 60 cm.

T.V. Santhosh, Stitching An Undefined Border, 2007, Oil on canvas, 122 x 183 cm.

Bharti Kher, An Absence Of Assignable Cause, 2007, Bindis on fibreglass, 168 x 308 x 150 cm.

Probir Gupta, Anxiety of the Unfamiliar, 2006, Acrylic and iron oxides on canvas, 268 x 398 cm.

Bharti Kher, Untitled, 2008, Bindis on painted board, 173 x 311 cm.

Rajan Krishnan, Substances Of Earth, 2007, Acrylic on Canvas, 274 x 366 cm.

Jaishri Abichandani, Allah O Akbar, 2008, Leather whip, wire, paint, swarovski crystals, 65 x 450 cm (Dimensions variable).

Yamini Nayar, Sincere, 2006, C-print, 51 x 61 cm.

Huma Bhabha, Untitled, 2006, Clay, wire, plastic, paint, 114.3 x 243.8 x 152.4 cm.

Chitra Ganesh, Tales of Amnesia, detail (Roxanne), 2002-2007.

Hema Upadhyay, Killing Site, 2008, Acrylic, gouache, dry pastel, photograph on paper, aluminium sheets, resin, 183 x 122 x 61 cm.

Rajesh Ram, Heavy Load, 2008, Fibreglass, iron, paint, 112 x 79 x 48 cm.

Kriti Arora, Tar Man 6, 2008, Fibreglass and tar, 185 x 76 x 97 cm.

Pushpamala N. and Clare Arni, The Ethnographic Series: (Details), 2000-2004, Sepia-toned silver gelatin prints.

T Venkanna, Two Moon, 2007, Oil on canvas, 213 x 153 cm.

Chitra Ganesh, Twisted, 2001, Digital C-print, 76 x 52 cm.

Pushpamala N. and Clare Arni, The Ethnographic Series: (Details), 2000-2004, Sepia-toned silver gelatin prints.

Huma Mulji, Arabian Delight, 2008, Rexine suitcase, taxidermy camel, metal rods, wood, cotton wool, fabric, 105 x 144 x 155 cm (Open with lid).

Subodh Gupta, Spill, 2007, Stainless steel and stainless steel utensils, 170 x 145h x 95 cm.

Mansoor Ali, Dance Of Democracy, 2008, Installation with discarded chairs, Dimensions variable, approx: 427 x 244 x 244 cm.

Saatchi Gallery
Duke of York's HQ
King's Road
020 8968 9331
London
The Empire Strikes Back:
Indian Art Today
January 29-May 7, 2010

Contemporary Indian artists are making a diverse range of work, which responds to the complexities of 21st century India. The Raj and its legacy, the failure of Gandhi’s and Nehru’s hopes for a harmonious secular India, remain rich subjects for many of the artists, whilst others are engaging with the country’s incredible urban expansion, its slums — some of the biggest in Asia — and issues around migration.

Saatchi Gallery re-opened October 2008 in the 70,000 sq. ft Duke of York’s HQ building on King’s Road in the heart of London. With free admission to all shows, the Saatchi Gallery aims to bring contemporary art to the widest audience possible. Its first three shows, The Revolution Continues: New Art from China, Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East, and Abstract America: New Painting and Sculpture, have attracted over one million visitors to date.

Saatchi Gallery opens January 29, 2009 with The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today, an exhibition of 26 artists from the world’s largest democracy. Despite homegrown contemporary art being under represented in public museums in India, its commercial and international success has allowed small ventures to grow into thriving art galleries in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, with outposts opening in Europe and the US. The rapid flourishing of this art scene on one hand and the recent economic downturn on the other have prompted critical questions about Indian culture and globalization in a country torn between a proudly independent mindset and a dependence on global consumption.

The Empire Strikes Back brings together works by established and emerging artists, most of whom have never been shown in the UK before. These include Jaishri Abichandani, Mansoor Ali, Kriti Arora, Huma Bhabha, Ajit Chauhan, Shezad Dawood, Atul Dodiya, Chitra Ganesh, Probir Gupta, Sakshi Gupta, Subodh Gupta, Tushar Joag, Jitish Kallat, Reena Saini Kallat, Bharti Kher, Rajan Krishnan, Huma Mulji, Pushpamala N, Yamini Nayar, Justin Ponmany, Rashid Rana, TV Santhosh, Schandra Singh, Tallur L.N, Hema Upadhyay, T Venkanna.

Jaishri Abichandani (Born 1969, Bombay, India) produces material and ephemeral works that examine, subvert, and generate power by exploring the relationships between individual and collective selves and their effect on society. Her dual practices of art and cultural production manifest as installations, objects, videos, and performances. Primarily a political artist, her work integrates multiple aesthetics reflecting her identities as a feminist South Asian American artist to examine the implications of personal, political, and spiritual choices, creating psychologically charged works with a strong narrative element. Abichandani creates a cultural context for her work by activating democratic feminist networks (www.sawcc.org) and curating exhibitions.

Abichandani immigrated to New York City in 1984. She received her Master of Visual Arts Degree from Goldsmiths College, University of London and has continued to intertwine art and activism in her career, founding the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective in New York and London. She has exhibited her work internationally at various venues including P.S.1/MOMA, Queens Museum of Art, and Exit Art in New York; the 798 Beijing Biennial and the Guangzhou Triennial in China; Nature Morte and Gallery Chemould in India; the IVAM in Valencia; and the House of World Cultures in Berlin. Jaishri served as the founding Director of Public Events and Projects from 2003-06 at Queens Museum of Art, where she co-curated Fatal Love: South Asian American Art Now and Queens International 2006 Everything All at Once. Other international curatorial projects include Sultana’s Dream, Exploding the Lotus, Artists in Exile, Anomalies, and Transitional Aesthetics. Her work is included in various international collections including the Burger Collection (burgercollection.com), the Florian Peters-Messer Collection (www.fpmcollection.com), and the Saatchi Collection.

Mansoor Ali (B. 1978, Jasmatpur, Gujarat, India), lives and works in Baroda, India. He participated in the following 2008 group exhibitions Loosentiefirst, Gallery Maskara, Mumbai, India; Tracing Erasures– Durbar Hall Art Center, Ernakulum, Kochi, 789 – Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University. In 2007: Sandarbh Artist Residency – Partapur, Rajasthan.

The work of Pushpamala N (B. 1956, Bangalore, India) lives and works in Bangalore, India. Her work has been described as performance photography, as she frequently uses herself as a model in her own work. She uses elements of popular culture in her art to explore place, gender, and history.

Bangalore based Pushpamala N is a photo- and video-performance 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 stereotypes 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.

Kriti Arora (B. 1972, Delhi, India), studied for her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture from M.S. University, Baroda 1991-1995 and Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics from University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA 1995-1999. She has taught both Bachelors as well as Masters Students in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the M.S. University, Baroda between 1999 and 2001. Arora works in ceramics and photography and experimenting with painting and other media. She has also participated in various group shows across India and abroad, e.g. in New Delhi, Baroda, France, and New York. She has received a Junior Fellowship from the Department of Culture, Government of India in 2001-2003 and a scholarship from M.S. University Baroda in 1991-1993. She lives and works in New Delhi.

Her Tar Man Series sculptures are 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 tirelessly 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 political change.

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 outstretched as if in prayer, it echoes humility and reverence; its aura of calm perversely interrupted by a rigid tail trailing out from behind.

Bhabha (B. 1962, Karachi, Pakistan), is a sculptor based in New York. Her sculptures are composed from basic construction media and found objects. Bhabha studied at the Rhode Island School of Design (BFA, 1985) and Columbia University (MFA, 1989). Bhabha has been widely exhibited in North America and Europe, and has been included in several important shows including Greater New York at PS1 Contemporary Art Center and MOMA in New York, and USA Today at The Royal Academy in London. Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, awarded its 2008 Emerging Artist Award to Bhabha. The award came with a $5,000 prize and a solo exhibition at the museum, scheduled for September 14, 2008 to February 8, 2009. Huma Bhabha is represented by Salon 94 and ATM Gallery in New York, and Greener Pastures Gallery in Toronto. She lives and works in Poughkeepsie, New York.

American-born Ajit Chauhan (B. 1981, Kansas, U.S.A.) lives and works in San Francisco, attempts to subvert our sense of perception by reorganizing existing 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 & 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.

London-based artist Shezad Dawood’s (B. 1974, London) 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 tumbleweed, reflecting an element of the divine.

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 ideologies were born of similarly dry and desolate surroundings.

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.

Through his paintings and assemblages, Atul Dodiya (B. 1959, Mumbai) 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 artworks. 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 Manray’s Cadeau, emphasising his painting as an offering or gift.

In Portrait of Niko Pirosmani (1862-1918) Dodiya portrays the Georgian primitivist Niko Pirosmani, who was revered for having invented 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 influenced 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. Dodiya lives and works in Mumbai.

Chitra Ganesh’s (Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York) 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 preconceptions of the representation of women.

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 interest 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.

Subodh Gupta (B. 1964, Khagaul, Bihar, India) 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. Gupta lives and works in Delhi.

Reclaiming the wreckage of an old dilapidated Xerox machine that appears to have been used to the point of its extinction, artist Sakshi Gupta (B. 1979, Delhi, India) 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 uselessness 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. She lives and works in Delhi.

Probir Gupta’s canvases are enormous in their scale and narrative. A Kolkata art student during the Maoist uprising in India in the early 1970s, Gupta (who lives and works in Delhi) 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 reorganises history into something messy, troubling and rueful in which nothing appears to take precedence.

Tushar Joag (B. 1966, Mumbai) explores art in the public sphere. As 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 solutions. The Enlightening Army of the Empire 2008 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 configurations illuminate their location and tangled wires join their feet collectively. He lives and works in Mumbai, India.

Reena Saini Kallat (B. 1973, Delhi, India) works in photography, sculpture, installation, and painting. Her work often brings the intimate imagery of — and objects associated with — the human body into the expanse of the public and political arena. Kallat is married to fellow artist Jitish Kallat.

Kallat's Penumbra Passage (Canine Cases) comprises of a series of portraits 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 neighboring 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.

Jitish Kallat (B. 1974, Mumbai) says: "Within my practice, Public Notice 2 (2007) links up with two key antecedents,'Public Notice (2003), and Detergent (2004), both works wherein a historical speech is summoned as the central armature of the work. Blurred and sometimes forgotten due to the passage of time, the historical speech is fore-grounded and held up as an apparatus to grade our feats and follies as nations, as humankind.

"'Public Notice 2' (2007) reinvokes the momentous speech delivered by Mahatma Gandhi on the eve of the historic 400-kilometer 'Dandi March' lasting about 24 days during the Indian Freedom Struggle. On the 11th of March 1930, prior to setting out to break the brutal Salt Act instituted by the British, Gandhi laid out the codes of conduct for his fellow revolutionaries. He called for complete 'Civil Disobedience'; the only fierce restriction being that of maintaining 'total peace' and 'absolute non-violence.'

"The speech has within it several themes that may aid our ailing world, plagued as it is with aggression. In today's terror-infected world, where wars against terror are fought at prime television time, voices such as Gandhi's stare back at us like discarded relics. The entire speech will be constructed out of about 4500 recreations of bones shaped like alphabets. Each alphabet in this speech, like a misplaced relic will hold up the image of violence in clinical clarity even as their collective chorus makes a plea for peace.

"Within the Indian context as well, we have the worst instance of subversion of Gandhi's words in the year 2002 within his own home state of Gujarat. The historic 'Dandi March' and the speech were delivered not far from the site where India saw one of the worst communal riots and bloodshed since the Indian Independence."

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. Jitish Kallat lives and works in Mumbai.

In part inspired by artists such as Hieronymus Bosch, Francisco Goya and William Blake, Bharti Kher (B. 1969, London) 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 lives and works in Delhi.

Rajan Krishnan’s (B. 1967, Kerala) 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. Krishnan lives and works in Kochi, Kerala.

Bangalore-born Tallur L.N. (B.1971) has rarely ventured outside India and grew up in rural community. His works speak of the grinding poverty in the cultivated countryside. Employing Indian signs and symbols, Tallur conceives works that are characteristic 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 inflatable mattresses piled high. The bed with the added sound of breathing, inflates and deflates like lungs. Tallur’s work delivers an incredibly depressing 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 accumulators. He lives and works in India and Korea.

Pakistani-born Huma Mulji’s (B. 1970, Karachi) 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 suitcase, legs thrown in disarray, is a humorous comment on the perceived "Arabisation" of Pakistan as another Muslim state.

Yamini Nayar’s (B. 1975, Rochester, New York) constructs recall the work of German artist Thomas Demand, renowned for his paper interiors that, once photographed, 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 away 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, photographic archives and mass media to create these interiors.

There is a Darwinian approach to much of Justin Ponmany’s (B. 1974, Kerala, India) 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 interested 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.

Rajesh Ram’s (B. 1978, Jharkhand, India) work suggests a complex culture, reorganising and rebranding itself as a thriving new superpower. Lofty ambitions and purposeful intentions introduce a wealth of opportunity for many in India while creating dreadful anxieties for the people that are detracted by their circumstances. The artist’s bronze sculpture Heavy Load has the figure almost bent double with two arms to his right, one hand desperately trying to hold up his cotton trousers while the other pushes a wire netted sack over his shoulder. On his left side, the bronze figure appears to be holding his ear, listening to the earth with a second hand coming out from behind his head. The weight appears to be overbearing. Ram’s figure, elevated to the statuesque, appears to be crippled by the weight of the consequences of the global food crisis. Objects such as vegetables are stuffed into a flimsy wire sack, representing the need for sustenance as global trade. This work celebrates the ordinary person entrenched in a country that is suffocating for its numbers. Rajesh Ram lives and works in Allahabad, Bihar, India.

Rashid Rana (B. 1968, Pakistan) 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 effectively 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 lives and works in Lahore.

Employing the themes of war and global terrorism, South Indian artist T.V. Santhosh (B. 1968, Kerala) 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 compromising 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 illuminated 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.

Beautifully stylised and helplessly satirical, Schandra Singh’s (B. 1977, Suffern, New York) 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 idleness, 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. She lives and works in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Baroda-born (1972) and Mumbai-based Hema Upadhyay uses photography 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 repercussions and socio-economic inequalities that emerge as a hidden consequence of the relentless tide of urban development in the city.

From his studio in Baroda, T Venkanna (B. 1980, Gajwel, India) remakes two works of French painter Henri Rousseau, famed for his fantastical illustrations 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.

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’ssleeping 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. T Venkanna lives and works in Baroda, India.

Reena Saini Kallat, Penumbra Passage (Canine Cases), 2006, Acrylic on canvas, bonded marble, wooden box, stainless steel, velvet, glass, Canvas: 135 x 90 cm Wooden case: 31 x 122 x 80 cm Steel stand: 38 x 122 x 78 cm.

Shezad Dawood, The Bestower, 2007, Neon, tumbleweed with enamelled aluminium plinth, 163 x 51 x 51 cm.

Jitish Kallat, Public Notice 2, 2007, Fibreglass sculptures, Dimensions variable, Courtesy of the Saatchi Gallery, London, © Jitish Kallat, 2009.

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.

Richard Wilson, Square the Block, northwest corner of the London School of Economics' New Academic Building, corner of Kingsway and Sardinia Street in London.

Richard Wilson, Turning the place over, installation Moorfields, Liverpool City Centre.

Saatchi Gallery
Duke of York's HQ
King's Road
020 8968 9331
London
Richard Wilson: 20:50
Open January 7, 2009
Permanent Installation

Saatchi Gallery has reinstalled Richard Wilson's 20:50 in its new location at Duke of York's HQ. Originally created in 1987, it was permanently installed at the Saatchi Gallery at Boundary Road in 1991 and County Hall in 2003, each time responding to the architectural context of its surroundings, providing a different impression in each location.

Wilson's 20:50 fills the whole space to waist height with a reservoir of recycled engine oil (the material after which the work takes its name). A walkway invites visitors directly though the work, so that they are surrounded by the reflective horizontal plane of sump oil from all sides. Inspired by the idea of a Tardislike space, the mirroring surface of this viscous black mass fills the gallery yet doubles it in appearance, playing back to the architecture of the room by reflecting it upside down.

"If I was going to have to call it something I suppose it would be a conceptual installation. 20:50 is essentially an idea. It can be applied to any internal space and in each space it will be radically different in appearance - because it will reflect that specific space and adapt to that space's physical parameters."

— Richard Wilson

Richard Wilson is one of Britain's most renowned sculptors. Working from his interest in architecture, engineering and monumental feats, Wilson uses the individual information of each place for which his work is intended to create new spatial experiences.

Wilson has exhibited widely nationally and internationally for over thirty years and has made major museum exhibitions and public works in countries as diverse as Japan, USA, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Australia and numerous countries throughout Europe. Wilson has represented Britain in the Sydney, Sao Paulo, Venice Biennials and Yokohama Triennial and was nominated for the Turner Prize on two occasions. His latest architectural intervention, Square the Block (2009), located on a corner facade of the LSE Building in London, both mimics and subverts the existing facade, shifting our perception of the solidity of the stone from which it is constructed.

Often singled out for his concentration on site-specific projects, Wilson's name has perhaps more than that of any other become synonymous with the idea of installation in Britain.

Emily Prince, row 1, Giovanny Maria, Queens, New York, November 29, 2001, © Emily Prince 2004, Michael J. Jakes, Jr., Brooklyn, New York, December 4, 2001, © Emily Prince 2004, Jefferson D. Davis, Watauga, Tennessee, December 5, 2001, © Emily Prince 2004, row 2, Daniel H. Petithory, Cheshire, Massachusetts, December 5, 2001, © Emily Prince 2004, Brian C. Prosser, Frazier Park, California, December 5, 2001, © Emily Prince 2004, Nathan R. Chapman, San Antonio, Texas, January 4, 2002, © Emily Prince 2004, row 3, Matthew W. Bancroft, Redding, California, January 9, 2002, © Emily Prince 2004, Bryan P. Bertrand, Coos Bay, Oregon, January 9, 2002, © Emily Prince 2004, Stephen L. Bryson, Montgomery, Alabama, January 9, 2002, © Emily Prince 2004, row 4, David L. Hurt, Tucson Arizona, February 20, 2009, © Emily Prince 2004, Mark C. Baum, Telford, Pennsylvania, February 21, 2009, © Emily Prince 2004, Michael B. Alleman, Logan, Utah, February 23, 2009, © Emily Prince 2004, row 5, Michael L. Mayne, Burlington Flats, New York, February 23, 2009, © Emily Prince 2004, Zachary R. Nordmeyer, Indianapolis, Indiana, February 23, 2009, © Emily Prince 2004, William E. Emmert, Fayetteville, Tennessee, February 24, 2009, © Emily Prince 2004, row 6, Schuyler B. Patch, Owasso, Oklahoma, February 24, 2009, © Emily Prince 2004, Scott B. Stream, Mattoon, Illinois, February 24, 2009, © Emily Prince 2004, David J. Thompson, Madison, Wisconsin, February 24, 2009, © Emily Prince 2004, row 7, Brian H. Connelly, Union Beach, New Jersey, February 24, 2009, © Emily Prince 2004, Donte J. Whitworth, Noblesbille, Indiana, February 28, 2009, © Emily Prince 2004, Simone A. Robinson, Dixmoor, Illinois, March 1, 2009, © Emily Prince 2004.

Saatchi Gallery
Duke of York's HQ
King's Road
020 8968 9331
London
Project Room
Emily Prince: American Servicemen and Women Who Have Died in Iraq and Afghanistan (But not Including the Wounded, nor the Iraquis nor the Afghans)
January 7-May 7, 2010

Emily Prince's American Servicemen and Women Who Have Died in Iraq and Afghanistan (but not Including the Wounded, nor the Iraqis nor the Afghans) is a tribute to every American soldier killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2004. Comprising of 5,158 drawings — one for every fallen soldier to date — this ongoing memorial project brings attention to the human cost of war, turning statistics back into portraits of real lives sacrificed on the field.

Rendered in graphite pencil, each portrait appears on small coloured cards which correspond to the skin tone of soldiers, including details about their appearance, posture, and expression, and personal facts such as their name, age, and place of origin. American Servicemen and Women … pays homage to the individuals who have died and operates as a study of racial demographics for soldiers sent to fight. Previously hung in the shape of the US map, each portrait was pinned on to the soldier's hometown location; as the death toll rose, the installation at the Saatchi Gallery will now instead follow a chronological order, drawing attention to seemingly endless conflict.

American Servicemen and Women … is an ongoing project which will not be complete until American involvement in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan ends. The work is constantly developed up to and including the day of the exhibition installation. Drawings hung with white pins indicate soldiers who died prior to the installation at Saatchi Gallery, red pins denote men and women who lost their lives during the making of this exhibition. Prince monitors the website www.militarytimes.com several times a week, meticulously collecting information and making drawings for every update; those without photos are represented by an empty square labeled with the individual's name and other biographical information.

•"The numbers kept coming up in the daily reports. Five here, fourteen there, one day after another. And then the growing figure mounting to over a thousand. Peripherally it was ever-present, but still only an abstraction. It was no longer enough to know how many. I needed to see pictures of them, to familiarize myself just a tiny bit more with what was happening far from my warm home. And it really isn't much. It too is a mere summary, just one more step beyond bare numbers. Yet for me it is something. It means spending time with each one. It is looking into their eyes to see who is now gone. It is following the line of their brow and trying to perceive the expression there. It is a visual and visceral exploration of these individuals by way of their faces. It is my own eyes and my hand tracing out some very slight acquaintance with what's occurring. As an investigation it is little, and it is incomplete. It addresses only the Americans who have died. Neither the Iraqis nor the Afghanis are pictured. However, this gap in my own representation does not symbolize any deliberate or meaningful exclusion. I feel deep sadness for the people of these nations."•

— Emily Prince

Emily Prince is an artist based in San Francisco. She holds a double degree in Fine Art and Psychology from Stanford University and is currently enrolled in the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of California, Berkeley. Although the Iraq war officially began March 20, 2003, Prince did not conceive of her project until November 3, 2004; one day after President George W. Bush was elected to his second term in office. For more information about the project, visit www.theamerican servicemenandwomen.com.

Emily Prince, American Servicemen and Women Who Have Died in Iraq and Afghanistan (but Not Including the Wounded, nor the Iraqis nor the Afghans), 2004 to the present, Pencil on color coded vellum, Project comprised of 4,325 drawings, Each image: 4 x 3", installation view, Kent Gallery, 2007, Dimensions variable, Collection of Saatchi Gallery, London.