"Drawing Space: Contemporary Indian Drawings"
2000-10-07 until 2000-11-19
Institute of International Visual Arts
London, , UK

The intimate connection between Britain and India maps an unusual path through contemporary drawing and the history of Company paintings. In the nineteenth century, Company paintings led to a new relationship between Indian artists and their colonial patrons, the East India Company. These artists were schooled in the tradition of easel painting and they were employed to depict the life of the British in India. Within this context, the drawn line was used as a means of defining social and physical space.

Drawing Space is an exhibition of contemporary drawings by three artists, all of whom use the drawn line as a device for negotiating space in ways that are self-empowering, exploring the complexity of making and exhibiting work in an increasingly global context.

Nasreen Mohamedi, Sheela Gowda and N.S.Harsha's practice encompasses visual forms from the West filtered through an Indian sensibility. Mohamedi's fine line drawing both adopts and subverts its point of reference appropriating the grid and departing from it with the diagonal. Gowda's restrained and complex installations connect with and extend the parameters of craft traditions by creating three-dimensional drawings in space. In Harsha's wall drawings, the tradition of botanical illustration becomes a fragile dream world threatened by the imposition of industrialisation and progress.

Curated by Suman Gopinath and Grant Watson
Co-produced by inIVA and Beaconsfield in collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum.

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