'Nalini Malani: Gamepieces' Comes to AGSA in November

The first major Australian survey exhibition by pioneering contemporary Indian artist Nalini Malani, born Karachi, British India (now Pakistan), 1946, will open exclusively at the Art Gallery of South Australia in November. Spanning five decades, Gamepieces will showcase Malani's radically inventive practice in film, video, photography, large-scale multimedia installation, painting, and animation, featuring works never before seen in Australia.

AGSA Director and Gamepieces curator, Rhana Devenport ONZM says, 'Nalini Malani is at once artist, conjurer and storyteller. It is her distinct visual language of the imagination which draws on literary, historical and mythical narratives that make Malani's exhibitions such immersive experiences for visitors.'

Heavily influenced by her childhood experiences as a refugee of the Partition of India, Malani has devoted her career to advocating for social, feminist, and environmental justice. Drawn from substantive collections of her work in AGSA's collection as well as key loans from other public Australian collections, the exhibition will present the scope of the artist's oeuvre - from her pioneering experimentations in film and photography in the late 1960s, to her 'video/shadow plays' that draw on mythology and political histories.

The centrepiece for the exhibition is a four-channel video installation titled Gamepieces, 2003-20. Conceived in direct response to the nuclear testing in India and Pakistan in 1998, Gamepieces exemplifies Malani's signature video/shadow plays. Encompassing six rotating Mylar cylinders, each individually painted, the installation combines video projection with sound, kinetic movement, and light to delve into history, poetic allusion and memory.

Rhana Devenport says, 'A recent major acquisition to AGSA's collection made possible through the James and Diana Ramsay Fund, Gamepieces is a career-defining work of art that coalesces Malani's fifty years of practice. This work embraces painting, proto-cinematic techniques and animation, cementing the artist's reputation as one of the most prolific cross-disciplinary artists of our time.'

Gamepieces will be displayed alongside a suite of thirty works from across Malani's career including photographs and camera-less photographic images from the 1970s, early experimental films, reverse paintings, and video installations. The exhibition will also encompass her most recent work, Can You Hear Me? comprising 88 stop-motion animations projected at scale in a total room installation - which the artist describes as 'Animation Chambers'.

Nalini Malani says, 'Exhibiting for the first time in Australia in 1996, at the second Asia Pacific Triennial at the Queensland Art Gallery, meant being able to exhibit my most experimental art, which led to Australian and international institutions collecting my work. More than 25 years later, to see many of these key works assembled from public collections across Australia for this exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia, feels like coming home.'

Malani's work has featured in major solo exhibitions internationally including at Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Castello di Rivoli in Turin, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Kiran Nader Museum of Art in New Delhi, and most recently in a major exhibition at Hong Kong's new art museum M+. Her works are held in major international collections including Tate, London, and MOMA (Museum of Modern of Art), New York.

Nalini Malani: Gamepieces is on display at AGSA from 5 November 2022 to 22 January 2023, entry is free.

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