Tampered Surface

The past few years have seen a number of exhibitions in Britain of work by contemporary artists from India, one of the most recent being ‘A Critical Difference’. It was not until very recently that British-based curators have turned their attention to India’s north-0western neighbour, Pakistan. A year ago we had ‘An Intelligent Rebellion’ a large scale exhibition of work by women artists from Pakistan. And this year we have ‘Tampered Surface’, an equally substantial exhibition of work by six artists, three men and three women.

Although ‘An Intelligent Rebellion’ and ‘Tampered Surface’ both lie within the conventional mould of imported exhibitions, they differ from such exhibitions in one critically important way. That is, they were both selected by curators who had a credible proximity to countries such as Pakistan. Thus, within these exhibitions we are spared the familiar scenario of the white bwana-type curator continuing the tradition that can be traced back to the likes of David Livingstone. That is, the missionary/explorer. The modern missionary spreads the gospel of post-modernism amongst the world’s darker peoples, while the explorer returns to civilisation with knowledge and examples of what the art-producing natives are up to…

… Dadi reminds us about the wide-ranging brutality and the exploitation that made this trade possible. His prints feature a range of grim and gruesome historical images from colonial India and Victorian Britain. One print reproduces a group execution by the colonial authorities in India, another print features the expansive interior of a cotton mill in operation, in which the regimented ranks of machinery take on sinister characteristics of instruments of torture. Repression and production. Production and repression. Dadi presents these images in an almost seductive manner, utilising as he does the restrained process of silver gelatine printing…

…The English tour of ‘Tampered Surface’ continues the tradition of assorted galleries in the north periodically supporting Black artists’ exhibitions, whilst galleries across the whole of the south stubbornly refuse to take or collaborate on such touring products. After its showing in Huddersfield, ‘Tampered Surface’ goes goes on to galleries in Oldham, Middlesbrough, Leeds and Liverpool. In other words, nowhere south of the Greater Manchester area.

The above extracts are from "Tampered Surface", exhibition review by Eddie Chambers, Art Monthly, London, Number 190, October 1995: 30-31 [RTTJ]