The Seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Raised in rural India and not leaving the country until 1999, LN Tallur now lives in both India and South Korea and exhibits internationally. This ongoing movement has determined the unique character of his work, which is able to convey themes of humble values in a post- industrial world. His large sculptural installations are a blend of traditional craftsmanship, complex technology and characteristically modest social critique. Physically striking and marked by a conceptual apparatus extending to the very substance of their materials — often a combination of the organic, the readymade, the industrial and the electronic — Tallur’s works are also distinguished by the fluency and freedom with which they employ traditional and contemporary Indian vernaculars. Tallur’s versatility and acuity — his capacity to combine ancient and modern materials and convey sophisticated considerations with marked economy — has been attributed to the unusual geographical character of his background, education and lifestyle. On leaving his rural hometown of Koteswara in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, Tallur studied art in Mysore before undertaking postgraduate studies in museology in the north-western city of Baroda, in Gujarat. A Commonwealth scholarship then took him to Leeds Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom. He now divides his time between Koteswara and Daegu, South Korea, the home of his wife’s family. 1 It is possible to locate his work as operating within the tradition of the culturally hyper-literate ‘subversive absurdity’ in Indian art, as exemplified by the late Bhupen Khakhar and Atul Dodiya, as well as drawing on the cosmopolitanism and post-conceptual object and installation practices encountered at Leeds. 2 The body of work that Tallur has themed ‘Chromatophobia’ conflates the fear of money with the fear of colour to invoke the contradictions of global exchange through the medium of currency and the standardisation of value. His Chromatophobia 2010 is a giant, seesawing log whose various exhibition locations are recorded by local coins nailed into its ridges by audiences. An accompanying wall text drolly praises the gesture’s existentially cleansing properties. Similarly, silver currency glistens from within a great lump of concrete aggregate in Unicode 2011, displacing the god Shiva from the ornate armature of a Chola dynasty-era Nataraja (‘Lord of the Dance’) bronze. Tallur has clearly not missed the frequent citation of Shiva’s paradoxical character as a source for the notion of capitalist ‘creative destruction’ in a political economy. 3 Aurophobia – the fear of gold 2012 shifts the artist’s attention slightly to the precious yellow metal — to the monetary standard that has historically mediated international economic relations and which continues to operate globally as reserve currency. As the artist has argued, the gold reserve is a guarantee of value; its price controls international markets and it has also long been seen as a symbol of greed. It constitutes shared territory for India and Australia — gilding the ostentatious votive offerings made by the wealthy at Hindu temples, and prompting the first wave of Asian immigration to Australia after Aboriginal settlement, with the gold rushes of the mid to late nineteenth century. Aurophobia takes the form of a South Indian chariot, specially handcrafted for the gods. Golden chariots of extravagant design were given to temples as offerings by the rich as a kind of status symbol, a gesture the artist likens to showing off in a Rolls Royce. Produced with the assistance of traditional chariot makers, the shape of Aurophobia is a hybrid of traditional forms and Holtermann’s nugget, the largest single mass of gold ever discovered, which was unearthed in Hill End, New South Wales, in 1872. Low-relief carvings on the chariot depict the history of gold mining in Australia, the politics of the gold standard and the development of coin minting, along with the influence of the gold rush on labour relations, security systems, the financial sector, criminal law and land title, as well as on immigration. At over three-and-a-half metres in height, Aurophobia also contains a cheeky interactive element. A hole atop the sculpture, the diameter of which is roughly that of a basketball hoop, invites audiences to try their luck by flicking a coin into the chariot’s interior, visible through peepholes, and making a wish. In doing so, LN Tallur adds the role of chance and personal desire to his consideration of the role of value in mediating social relationships. Reuben Keehan 1 Peter Nagy, ‘The acumenical pursuits of Mr LN Tallur’, in Chromatophobia: The Fear of Money [exhibition catalogue], Arario Gallery, Seoul, and Nature Morte, New Delhi, 2011, p.61. 2 Chaitanya Sambrani, ‘International vernaculars and throwaway epiphanies: The recent work of Tallur LN’, in Placebo: Tallur LN [exhibition catalogue], Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai, and Arario Gallery, New York, 2009, p.7. 3 See Hugo and Erik Reinert, ‘Creative destruction in economics: Nietzsche, Sombart, Schumpeter’, in Jürgen G Backhaus and Wolfgang Drechsler (eds.), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900): Economy and Society , Springer, New York, 2006, pp.55–86. LN TALLUR What are you afraid of? LN TALLUR India/South Korea b.1971 Unicode 2011 Bronze, coins, concrete / 183 x 152 x 117cm / Image courtesy: The artist 206