Art

Sister Act: Retrospective of The Art of The Singh Twins

by LEO MIRANI

 

 

The Exhibition - The Singh Twins: Retrospective - will be at The Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens, Burdon Road, Sunderland, United Kingdom, until January 3, 2011. Tel: (0191) 553 2323; Textphone: 18001 0191 553 2323. Opening hours: Monday - Saturday 10am - 5pm; Sunday 2pm - 5pm. Closed: 25 & 26 December & 1 January. Admission is free.

The exhibition will also offer an opportunity to see The Singh Twins' award-winning films -  Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Via Dolorosa Project (a short documentary about their painting Nineteen Eighty-Four which makes links with the Christian tradition of Christ's Passion) and The Making of Liverpool (their first animation, which combines the Indian miniature tradition with the latest digital technology.)

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SISTER ACT

If it hadn't been for a misguided teacher, Amrit and Rabindra Singh would never have become artists.

Convinced that the sisters were being pressured into studying medicine despite a natural talent for art, the teacher warned the university to which they had applied that the girls' decision was "because of family tradition and parental persuasion". Stymied, the twins were forced to enrol on a humanities programme at University College of Chester studying, among other things, comparative western art.

Thanks to the meddling tutor, their art went from being a hobby to a vocation. They've had exhibitions in the U.S., Canada, India and the UK, made short films about their work, and this summer, they showed 27 of their paintings at the National Portrait Gallery as part of an exhibition of Indian miniature portraits.

This winter, a retrospective of their work over the last two decades is on show at the Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens.

Ranging from the intensely personal to the deeply political, they draw on the tradition of Indian miniature art, every available inch of their work crammed with patterns, colours and references. At the same time, their paintings address familiar, universal subjects such as globalisation, migration and celebrity culture.

Yet despite their success, the sisters really did want to study medicine. "What we experienced as teenagers was negative stereotyping," says Amrit. "You know, that whole thing of oppressive extended families and forced arranged marriages."

"Which is why," adds Rabindra, "a lot of the earliest works we did were about the family and community and expressing our pride in our own traditional values and heritage, even though we were living here."

Nyrmla's Wedding II (1985/86), for instance, depicts the twins painting henna on their sister's palms. It is an idyllic domestic scene: children play in the foreground, toys are scattered about, souvenirs line the shelf. But through the window can be seen polluting industry, nuclear cooling towers and a terrifying Ronald McDonald peeping in. The picture could also be read as a critique of western values, until Rabindra points out the Batman and Power Rangers figures the children are playing with, as well as the cameras and technology that appear in much of their work, which "celebrate the duality of our identities".

The Twins also took a rebellious view of their mixed, multiple identities - English, Liverpudlian (born in London but raised in Birkenhead, they were appointed "honorary Scousers" by the Lord Mayor of Liverpool last year), Sikh, Indian. Unwilling to be slotted into any one bracket, they questioned the idea of stereotypes and, inevitably, tearing them apart. They attended a strict convent school - the only non-Catholic girls to do so. Told they didn't have to attend the compulsory chapel service, the twins insisted on it, eventually representing the school when Pope John Paul II visited Liverpool in 1982.

Soon they were rebelling against the idea of individual identities. It started at school where the teachers insisted on separating them into different classes and continued into university when, "in one of our exams, the external examiner snapped: 'Haven't you ever tried to be different?' We had never really questioned it up to that point. It was only then that we realised it's a problem for other people," says Rabindra.

One of the most arresting aspects of the artists is that they have always operated as a single-identity artist-duo, the Singh Twins, which could draw comparisons with Gilbert & George. They call themselves "twindividuals" (questionable wordplay abounds in their work: their painting for the Museum of London is titled enTWINed; they refer to their style of art as "past modern") and dress alike, down to matching earrings, bangles and accoutrement.

"If you want us to be different, we're actually going to be the same," says Rabindra. Some paintings are collaboratively painted, some entirely by Amrit and some by Rabindra, but the credit is always shared. The twins encourage galleries to refer to them as one. Email correspondents are politely requested to address them simply as the "Twins".

"It's because it is such a big concept that it's something that we wanted to challenge," says Amrit of individualism. "There are so many ideologies and definitions that are bandied about and everybody accepts. But accepting them without questioning leads to the kind of prejudice that I'm sure all of us have experienced. People should question a bit more."

The Twins clearly like the idea of being outsiders. Despite the extensive list of commissions, exhibitions and awards, they aren't as well known as they could - or should - be. "There are always going to be obstacles," says Rabindra. "There are areas of the establishment that will probably never accept our work. It is decorative, it's figurative, it's narrative, it's small scale, and it comes from a non-European perspective, all of which are totally taboo, it seems."

Then again, it's hard to shake the feeling that the Twins wouldn't have it any other way.

 

The Singh Twins: Retrospective is on at the Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens until 3 January 2011. The Making of Liverpool: Portraits of a City by The Singh Twins is published by Twin Studio, price £18.

Images of paintings: Copyright - The Singh Twins.

November 23, 2010

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