LONDON - Reviews: Indian Art at the Serpentine

There's nothing offensive about Britain's first round-up of contemporary Indian artists. And therein lies the problem, says Tom Lubbock. Ignorance is a start. And I'd better admit that, until a few days ago, my own ignorance of contemporary Indian art was complete. I didn't know of Subodh Gupta or Dayanita Singh or Sheela Gowda. I didn't know of Nikhil Chopra or Shilpa Gupta or Bharti Kher or Bose Krishnamachari. I didn't know of Nalini Malani or the Raqs Media Collective. I know, I probably should have.

Safe passage to India: Inoffensive Indian contemporary art (Independent - UK)

Two London exhibitions, the Serpentine Gallery's Indian Highway and Aicon's Signs Taken for Wonders, are the UK's most ambitious attempts yet to distil coherence into the chaotic rush of art emerging from the Indian subcontinent. The marriage between the conceptually minded Serpentine and Indian art - whose overriding characteristics are narrative drive, flamboyant figuration and sensuous colour - is interesting because it is so unlikely.

Indian art defies global conceptualism (Financial Times)

The chairs are rickety, the typewriters are prehistoric, and the files sit in fat heaps. This is an Indian courthouse circa 2008, recreated in London by Subodh Gupta as an artistic take on modern India. Gupta -- an art-market favorite whose works have fetched as much as $1.4 million at auction -- is showing his installation at the Serpentine Gallery as part of "Indian Highway," a survey of contemporary art from the subcontinent (through Feb. 22, 2009).

India's Slow Judiciary Captured in Gupta's Hyde Park Courthouse (Bloomberg)