Vibha Galhotra - New Now London Thursday, July 13, 2023 | Phillips

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  • “My work narrates the life of a disordered (or hyper ordered) society, with all the clashes and tensions that contemporary life brings.”
    —Vibha Galhotra

    With a practice spanning installation, sculpture, drawing, and film, New Delhi based artist Vibha Galhotra represents an urgent and important voice in our globalised world. Often executed on a large scale, her works demonstrate a sustained emphasis on environmental and ecological issues, as well as global wealth inequality and the uneven legacies of Western colonialism on both local and international levels.

     

    In the present work, three shovels, edged in gold foil ask pointed questions about labour, commodity capitalism, and the environmental and social damage caused by the rampant extraction of the planet’s natural resources. In her adoption of everyday objects recontextualised by their new relationships with one another, the present work recalls the early Readymades of Marcel Duchamp, especially his  In Advance of a Broken Arm from 1915. Belonging to the artist’s Utopias of Difference series - several works of which were included in her first solo exhibition in New York, hosted by Jack Shainman Gallery in 2012 – the work speaks more directly to the ways in which a history of colonial exploitation, globalisation, and growth have shaped India’s physical and social landscape.   

     

    As well as being the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, Galhotra has exhibited extensively in India and worldwide, including with The Asia Society, New York in 2019 and 2021, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin in 2020, and Exhibit 320 in New Delhi in 2017, amongst others. Her works are also held in numerous prestigious public and private collections including the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, India, Casa Masaccio Arte Contemporanea, Italy Most recently, Galhotra was included in One that includes myth, a group exhibition with Goodman Gallery in London focused on questions of materiality, traditional craft practices, and the collective memory of colonialism.

    • Provenance

      Exhibit320, New Delhi
      Tiroche DeLeon Collection
      Acquired from the above by the present owner

    • Exhibited

      New Delhi, Exhibit320, The Contemporary Sultanate, 25 January - 3 February 2012

142

Lot offered with No Reserve

+ & - (from the series Utopia of Difference)

mud, concrete and gold foil on shovel, in 3 parts
each 99 x 27 x 16 cm (38 7/8 x 10 5/8 x 6 1/4 in.)
installation dimensions approx. 99 x 125 x 16 cm (38 7/8 x 49 1/4 x 6 1/4 in.)

Executed in 2012.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
£8,000 - 12,000 •‡

Sold for £1,524

Contact Specialist

Charlotte Gibbs
Associate Specialist, Head of New Now
+44 20 7901 7993
CGibbs@phillips.com

New Now

London Auction 13 July 2023