Subodh Gupta

Born 1964 in Khagaul, Bihar, India Lives and works in New Dehli, India Subodh Gupta’s practice shifts between different mediums including painting, sculpture, photography, video and performance. Throughout his work, he uses objects that are recognisable icons of Indian life – domestic kitchenware, such as stacked stainless steel tiffin boxes and symbols of the street such as bicycles, scooters and taxis. By relocating them from their original context and placing them in museums and galleries, he elevates their status from common object to valued artwork. Born in a small town in the northern province of Bihar, one of the poorest regions of India Gupta completed a painting degree in Patna before moving to New Delhi. His experience of the stark contrasts between rural and urban experiences and cultural dislocation are themes that permeate his artistic practice. His work is a commentary on the threat to traditional ways of life resulting from India’s rapid modernisation and urbanisation. In Pure, 2000, Gupta is filmed covered in a thick layer of cow dung, then hosed off in a shower. Cow dung is a domestic fuel for many Indian homes, but also used for ritual cleansing in villages, something Gupta observed was a tradition not transferred to city life. He reflects on such differences in a series of sculptures entitled Cow, where he juxtaposes bicycles and scooters with milk-churns, representing his surprise at seeing milk being delivered on bikes in cities rather than being collected directly from the cow. Gupta is acclaimed for communicating effectively on both local and global levels. He has exhibited widely to an international audience, presenting indigenous elements of his culture through an immediately accessible language and aesthetic. He liberally employs clichés about the concerns and preoccupations of the Indian populace with humour and touching sentimentality. Gupta is particularly celebrated for sculptural installations of shiny brass, copper, aluminium or stainless-steel kitchenware – bowls, plates, pots, pans, cutlery and other cooking utensils – such as in Curry, 2005. Such objects are now commonplace in kitchens across India but are still powerful signifiers of middle-class aspirations for prestige and sophistication. In his large-scale installation, The Silk Route, 2007, tiffin boxes are stacked high and rotate on a conveyor belt, creating a dizzying array of gleaming towers that echoes the skyscrapers of India’s ever expanding cities. Other works by Gupta explore India’s increasingly globalised vision of travel and the economic migration of its workforce. Bulging packages - ghathris - are cast in bronze and presented on a rotating airport baggage carousel, as in his large-scale installation Across Seven Seas, 2004 or precariously balanced on the roof of a sinking Ambassador taxi as in Everything Is Inside, 2004. Such bundles contain the prized consumer goods brought back to India by migrant workers travelling from the Gulf States and represent their pride in bringing back wealth for their families. The recent work, Gandhi's Three Monkeys, 2008, is an overtly political work, which makes reference to India’s famous hero of peace ironically portrayed as three colossal heads in militaristic headgear. Using worn and patinaed brass domestic utensils, the forms of a soldier’s helmet, a terrorist's hood and a gas mask reinforce Gupta's dialectics of war and peace, public and private, global and local: themes that run throughout his work.  Rebecca Morrild

Subodh Gupta Date by Date, 2008