VT in the afternoon

The Wednesday before Bombay's Art Night Thursday

Sathyanand  Mohan Show closes at the Guild. Love this photograph of plants and baubles reflected in shards of mirror.

The Big Move

This week I moved to Bombay( Mumbai)* after nearly four years in London, studying and working with contemporary art. 

             In the autumn of 2008 I began my MA studies at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London. In my first week of classes I attended the infamous Damien Hirst sale at Sotheby’s which made a whopping  £111 million. The same week Lehmann Brothers collapsed. Studying the art business in one of the  worst recessions in history  has been startling but also invaluable.

(Mum and I at Sotheby's, Bond Street at my graduation, 2010)

After Sotheby's  I worked with a series of art organisations including a a French gallerist dealing in Indian art, a not for profit gallery representing Pakistani and Middle Eastern artists, a rare books dealer and even had a stint inspecting real estate before landing a job at Phillips de Pury.

Working at Phillips was wonderful. I got to work on editorial features published alongside their auctions – BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China), Latin America and  Music among others  which  included interviews with some incredible artists such as Marina Abramovic, Lawrence Weiner, Ai Wei Wei,  as well as leading curators, museum directors and collectors, including Hans Ulrich Obrist, Carolyn Christov Bakargiev ( Documenta) and Richard Flood ( New Museum).

The last few years have been a whirlwind of museums, art fairs, biennales, blockbuster shows, art council exhibitions,artists,  art historians, curators, fundraisers, specialists, critics, collectors, dealers, auctioneers and  oligarchs. Returning to Bombay and looking for art may seem more than a little daunting but it is a question of learning how and where to look.

I am not new to the Bombay art world, having worked with never-say-die Neville Tuli at Osian’s – the auction house, art fund, museum and cinema festival among other things, the pinnacle of art world schizophrenia. 


However my first connection to art in Bombay was as an artist. I started young and had my first solo show at age eleven when I was obsessed with ballet and young enough to be persuaded by a local TV channel and my mother to put on a tutu and prance around the gallery in front of my paintings.

(Image: Phone bidding at an Osian's auction, 2007)

Bombay cannot be compared to London or Berlin. There are no museums, art isn’t curator coated, there is nothing along the lines of the art council and little to no public support, there are only a handful of galleries and even fewer are open to everyone. However all of this is changing and the transition is ripe with opportunity. It gives people the chance for perhaps the last time to make up their own minds, to make their own discoveries and to participate in a world which ironically will become increasingly more exclusive as it grows in size.

Bombay may not be anywhere near New York, Hong Kong or even Dubai for reasons that are mainly economic but it has something different to offer. There is art and a great deal of potential and it is perhaps more extraordinary than anywhere else on earth. It is raw and unpackaged, fresh and age old all at once.

I will do my best to document as much of my own journey – places, people and art in galleries or elsewhere and hope that you will share your own discoveries too.

*Having been a  Bombaywalla for long before the 1997 change to “Mumbai" , like most other locals I  have preferred to stick with Bombay.