A series that juxtaposes Australia’s environmental concerns and the Indian independence movement

Artist Jonathan Jones’s untitled (salt) on view at Mumbai based Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke collates a number of contemporary works of art that respond to research done in India.

This Aboriginal Australian artist developed the series by investigating the correlations, which exist between Australian and Indian post-colonial cultures, curiously from within an Aboriginal paradigm. This pointed to a shared cultural dialogue in myriad materials like salt & the built apart from natural environs of architectural features as well as designs. The exhibition addresses this dialogue in several different ways.

The core subject of salt emanated from the environmental degradation and the gradual destruction of his traditional country in the south-east of Australia. Rising salt, owing to colonial farming practices over years, encrusts the landscape, inflicting a massive damage. The artist deftly acknowledges the paralleled Indian history in which salt has played the role of a catalyst for change.

Jonathan Jones references the Independence movement under Mahatma Gandhi and the Salt March. His work ‘revolution’ a group of light sculptures along with works on paper, denote contemporary concerns of the damage and social upheaval because of the commercial harvesting of salt from the Rann of Kutch.

An accompanying text excerpted from Anna-Marie White's curatorial essay elaborates that Australia’s environmental concerns and the Indian independence movement are cantilevered by the artist against each other seamlessly in the structure of revolution to construct one narrative. A suite of dense albeit minimal graphite drawings based on meticulous surveys of salt crystal structure complement these sculptures.

Another core objective of his practice is to understand the symbiotic relationship shared by the individual and the community. This is acknowledged by grouping lights that overlap and simultaneously share space for creating one body of light quite similar to ways a community will operate. Individuals and light sources here act as the reference points in process of reading the body of light.

On the other hand, untitled (lean-to), a site-specific artwork, sits within the artist’s practice of sheathing cultural patterns, as traced in fluorescent lights, in the pervasive and banal material of blue tarpaulin.