Saatchi Gallery, London

The Empire Strikes Back is a wet punch. One might expect Charles Saatchi to show just the sorts of things that are presented: a stuffed camel in a suitcase, a taxidermied dog morphing with a furry vacuum cleaner, photographs of veiled women whose burkas turn out to be pixelated with tiny porn shots, yet more of Subodh Gupta's over-familiar sculptures made from cooking utensils, a black medical cot piled high with tarry mattresses that breathe wheezily to the power of ­compressed air. There are painted gags about Jasper Johns, dystopian jokes about technology, including a rattling old Xerox machine with half its ­gubbins missing, and an army of figures made from old floor lamps, neon tubes, ­discarded bits of plumbing. I see a GCSE-level art project coming on.

This isn't to say that The Empire Strikes Back is all bad. Some pieces are worse than bad, others just ­obvious. A speech by Gandhi spelled out in bones adds nothing to any argument. It just took a long time to make. T ­Venkanna's reworked ­versions of Douanier ­Rousseau are fun and sexy, and so is ­Chitra Ganesh's cartoon of a liberated Indian ­superwoman. Rashid Rana's ­pixelated view of an ­endless sea of ­rubbish is queasily beautiful, and – best of all – Yamini Nayar's photographs of half-abandoned rooms take us somewhere strange and oddly threatening.

A lot of the work looks ­exoticised for the gallery, the artists playing up their post-colonial otherness as a gimmick, rather than making art of substance. This exhibition gives us no clearer view of the art of a subcontinent than did a recent Serpentine gallery exhibition. There's also no film or video – areas where some of the best work is made.

Rating: 2/5

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Saatchi Gallery, London

The Empire Strikes Back is a wet punch. One might expect Charles Saatchi to show just the sorts of things that are presented: a stuffed camel in a suitcase, a taxidermied dog morphing with a furry vacuum cleaner, photographs of veiled women whose burkas turn out to be pixelated with tiny porn shots, yet more of Subodh Gupta's over-familiar sculptures made from cooking utensils, a black medical cot piled high with tarry mattresses that breathe wheezily to the power of ­compressed air. There are painted gags about Jasper Johns, dystopian jokes about technology, including a rattling old Xerox machine with half its ­gubbins missing, and an army of figures made from old floor lamps, neon tubes, ­discarded bits of plumbing. I see a GCSE-level art project coming on.

This isn't to say that The Empire Strikes Back is all bad. Some pieces are worse than bad, others just ­obvious. A speech by Gandhi spelled out in bones adds nothing to any argument. It just took a long time to make. T ­Venkanna's reworked ­versions of Douanier ­Rousseau are fun and sexy, and so is ­Chitra Ganesh's cartoon of a liberated Indian ­superwoman. Rashid Rana's ­pixelated view of an ­endless sea of ­rubbish is queasily beautiful, and – best of all – Yamini Nayar's photographs of half-abandoned rooms take us somewhere strange and oddly threatening.

A lot of the work looks ­exoticised for the gallery, the artists playing up their post-colonial otherness as a gimmick, rather than making art of substance. This exhibition gives us no clearer view of the art of a subcontinent than did a recent Serpentine gallery exhibition. There's also no film or video – areas where some of the best work is made.

Rating: 2/5

]]> http://www.muraclay.com.au/the-empire-strikes-back-indian-art-today-visual-art-review/1781/feed/ 0 http://www.muraclay.com.au/the-empire-strikes-back-indian-art-today-visual-art-review-2/1782/ http://www.muraclay.com.au/the-empire-strikes-back-indian-art-today-visual-art-review-2/1782/#comments Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:15:01 +0000 Adrian Searle http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/feb/02/the-empire-strikes-back-indian-art-today-review

Saatchi Gallery, London

The Empire Strikes Back is a wet punch. One might expect Charles Saatchi to show just the sorts of things that are presented: a stuffed camel in a suitcase, a taxidermied dog morphing with a furry vacuum cleaner, photographs of veiled women whose burkas turn out to be pixelated with tiny porn shots, yet more of Subodh Gupta's over-familiar sculptures made from cooking utensils, a black medical cot piled high with tarry mattresses that breathe wheezily to the power of ­compressed air. There are painted gags about Jasper Johns, dystopian jokes about technology, including a rattling old Xerox machine with half its ­gubbins missing, and an army of figures made from old floor lamps, neon tubes, ­discarded bits of plumbing. I see a GCSE-level art project coming on.

This isn't to say that The Empire Strikes Back is all bad. Some pieces are worse than bad, others just ­obvious. A speech by Gandhi spelled out in bones adds nothing to any argument. It just took a long time to make. T ­Venkanna's reworked ­versions of Douanier ­Rousseau are fun and sexy, and so is ­Chitra Ganesh's cartoon of a liberated Indian ­superwoman. Rashid Rana's ­pixelated view of an ­endless sea of ­rubbish is queasily beautiful, and – best of all – Yamini Nayar's photographs of half-abandoned rooms take us somewhere strange and oddly threatening.

A lot of the work looks ­exoticised for the gallery, the artists playing up their post-colonial otherness as a gimmick, rather than making art of substance. This exhibition gives us no clearer view of the art of a subcontinent than did a recent Serpentine gallery exhibition. There's also no film or video – areas where some of the best work is made.

Until 7 May. Details: www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk

Rating: 2/5

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Saatchi Gallery, London

The Empire Strikes Back is a wet punch. One might expect Charles Saatchi to show just the sorts of things that are presented: a stuffed camel in a suitcase, a taxidermied dog morphing with a furry vacuum cleaner, photographs of veiled women whose burkas turn out to be pixelated with tiny porn shots, yet more of Subodh Gupta's over-familiar sculptures made from cooking utensils, a black medical cot piled high with tarry mattresses that breathe wheezily to the power of ­compressed air. There are painted gags about Jasper Johns, dystopian jokes about technology, including a rattling old Xerox machine with half its ­gubbins missing, and an army of figures made from old floor lamps, neon tubes, ­discarded bits of plumbing. I see a GCSE-level art project coming on.

This isn't to say that The Empire Strikes Back is all bad. Some pieces are worse than bad, others just ­obvious. A speech by Gandhi spelled out in bones adds nothing to any argument. It just took a long time to make. T ­Venkanna's reworked ­versions of Douanier ­Rousseau are fun and sexy, and so is ­Chitra Ganesh's cartoon of a liberated Indian ­superwoman. Rashid Rana's ­pixelated view of an ­endless sea of ­rubbish is queasily beautiful, and – best of all – Yamini Nayar's photographs of half-abandoned rooms take us somewhere strange and oddly threatening.

A lot of the work looks ­exoticised for the gallery, the artists playing up their post-colonial otherness as a gimmick, rather than making art of substance. This exhibition gives us no clearer view of the art of a subcontinent than did a recent Serpentine gallery exhibition. There's also no film or video – areas where some of the best work is made.

Until 7 May. Details: www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk

Rating: 2/5

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