Arina Bhimiji: Lead White


Intriguing exhibition at Tate Britain of new work by Arina Bhimiji.

The show takes “Lead White”, the pigment, to be a symbol of purity plus an implication of the painterly. It consists of stripped back references to real events. One wall was enlarged stamps and the others bits of text and impressions on paper taken from archives. I loved the fact one had the metal deposit from a paper clip left on it. A touch to appeal to a real archive geek!

Each item is an unknown story. What was the letter from Downing Street? Who was writing from Calcutta on 31 March 1879? What and where was the “Native authority”? Do they say more about the subject of the piece, the creator of it or us the viewer? There was a whiff of colonialism about the whole piece but any criticism was left unsaid but implied.

Closed on 2 June 2019 

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