The spread of South Asia’s modern artistic talent in Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as India is being demonstrated in the region’s current art boom that has led to a record activity in London this summer. Events have spread from small venues to Tate Britain, Christie’s and Sotheby’s.This underlines London’s central role that is evident, not just in auctions generating record prices for individual artists, but in the demand for private sales and in not-for-sale exhibitions.Surendra Nair’s ‘Doctrine of the Forest’ in Sakshi’s exhibition.Following the past month’s major £19m Christie’s auction of the Goodricke tea estate’s collection, and the opening of the Hayward gallery’s Anish Kapoor exhibition, Christie’s and Sotheby’s auction houses both have their first non-auction exhibitions next month.Shows by many other galleries are under way, almost all leaving aside the famous Progressive group of artists that dominates the top end of auctions.The latest to open is Sakshi from Mumbai at London’s Mall Galleries, while Delhi-based Vadehra has a show at the Frieze in Mayfair, and Mumbai’s Jhaveri Contemporary opened an exhibition at its small private Kensington gallery last week. London galleries with exhibitions include the Victor Miro in Islington, the Grosvenor in Mayfair, and Tate Britain. Outside London there are exhibitions in Wakefield and Bradford, both adaptations of London shows last year.Many of these exhibitions are aimed at buyers making a mid-summer visit from India and looking for art deals that they might continue negotiating when they return home. Some of the artists and galleries have also been at this year’s Venice Biennale where India had a substantial presence.Called Unfolding Narratives, Sakshi’s week-long show celebrates the Mumbai gallery’s 40th anniversary and precedes a bigger institutional exhibition in London next year.Six contemporary artists – Amit Ambalal, Manjunath Kamath, Ravinder Reddy, Rekha Rodwittiya, Shine Shivan and Surendran Nair – reflect the traditions of tribal art by telling stories in a modern setting. “The narrative becomes fertile ground for playful reflection, speculation, autobiographical impulses, feminist resistance and socio-political critique,” says Geetha Mehra, the gallery’s founder and director.Amit Ambalal’s ‘The Bouquet’ acrylic on canvas in Sakshi’s exhibition.Reddy is perhaps the most widely known with large scale brightly coloured sculptures of heads and female figures. Sakshi says they span secular and sacred crossroads. Reddy told me when we met at the Jaipur literature festival in January that he started by shunning modern sculpture, which was “alien” to him. Instead he looked at folk, tribal and temple art for inspiration, as well as art from places like Egypt, South America and elsewhere.Other works include Ambalal’s fun depictions of animals including a happy elephant with a bouquet of flowers. Rekha Rodwittya, whose works have been described as “strong, politically vigilant feminist”, has two large water-colours over digital prints, one titled Home is Wherever You Are. Her partner Surendran Nair has striking human figures with distorted animal heads. All three are from Gujarat that is celebrated for its Baroda school of art.‘A Posh Supper’ by Sabrina Tirvengadum at Jhaveri.At Jhaveri, Sabrina Tirvengadum, a deaf British Mauritian artist of Indian origin based in London, has works that stem from her family’s history as indentured labour. Using AI and digital printing with collages, she reimagines old family photographs into works that she produces in runs of five. (She was featured on May 9 in the FT Weekend Magazine).Titled A singular Modernist, Vadehra is showing large paintings, drawings and sculptures by A. Ramachandran, a prolific artist who died in 2024, and is known for his rural and tribal focus on Rajasthan. Uma Nair, a leading Indian art critic, says that “the colours, the odhinis and turbans, dhotis and lehengas and lush tropicana and insects and lotuses all celebrate fauna and flora”. Also at the Frieze is a group show by the Mumbai gallery Project 88.‘Camel and the tent times’, acrylic on canvas by NS Harsha at Victor MiroTwo leading artists, American-Pakistani Shahzia Sikander and N.S.Harsha from Mysore in Karnataka, are on show at the Victoria Miro gallery.All the works by Harsha, who is represented by Mumbai’s Chemould Gallery, are believed to have been placed with collectors. His intricate, large-scale paintings mix Indian miniature traditions with contemporary imagery including people at work in the fields of Karnataka, along with another popular theme of small lamps.In an exhibition titled High Seas; Closed Skies the works by Lahore-born Sikandar are dominated by a powerful nine-minute animation called 3 to 12 Nautical Miles. This joins the popular negative theme of empire, trade and migration that was the focus of an animation at the Singh Twins exhibition in Kew Gardens six months ago.Started in 2015 (before the Singh Twins’ work), it is based on hand-painted images and traces the “entangled histories” of the British East India Company, the Mughal Empire and Qing dynasty along with “colonial extraction, the opium trade and contested sovereignty”. Drawing on miniature painting traditions, Sikander questions “power, identity and historical memory while offering poetic visions of resilience and renewal”.An image from Shahzia Sikander’s “3 to 12 Nautical Miles” animation at Victor Miro.Mohammed Z. Rahman, a young British-Bengali artist, has a small innovative exhibition at Tate Britain titled Never the Same. It consists of two collections of small paintings, enclosed in open-sided timber framed pavilions, based on two works already in the Tate collection. One pavilion titled The Spaghetti House starts with a story the artist created with his six-year-old niece and continues the spaghetti theme inside. The Lovers starts with six people in a tight embrace and continues with a love and creation theme.Mohammad Z. Rahman’s “The Spaghetti Hoiuse” at Tate BritainGrosvenor Gallery in Mayfair will be showing paintings by Pakistani artist Jamil Naqsh, who is best known for his figurative oil paintings of women with pigeons, from next week.In Wakefield, there is a continuing exhibition at the well-known Hepworth Gallery of 150 works by Mrinalini Mukherjee and four other leading women sculptors. This moves on from a Mrinalini retrospective in London’s Royal Academy of Arts (RA) at the end of last year.Mrinalini Mukherjee’s ‘Forest Flame’ bronze sculpture with a large hanging hemp sculpture in the background at the Hepworth. Photo: John ElliottTitled Mrinalini Mukherjee: Unbound Forms – Women Sculptors of India and Bangladesh, it places Mrinalini, who died in 2015, with two other Indian Bengalis – her mother Leela and Meera Mukherjee (no relation) along with Novera Ahmed from Bangladesh and Pilloo Pochkhanawal from MaharashtraThe focus is on Mrinalini’s massive hanging textile sculptures and other striking bronze works. There are also drawings, etchings and watercolours, plus Ahmed’s sculptures. Here and elsewhere in the exhibition there is a backdrop of a strong green wall reminiscent of Bangladesh’s national colour, though officially it was chosen to set off the bronze sculptures.The star piece, which was also at the RA, is Pakshi, Mrinalini’s iconic 7ft high suspended sculpture of voluminous golden-brown to pinkish red knotted hemp resembling both a deity and a human figure. Some people find works such as this one disturbing; others see sensuality and eroticism or spirituality. It is dramatically set off by larger bronze sculptures that Mrinalini worked on in her final years.“They were five pioneers of modern art, working in the same direction in terms of craft traditions, spirituality, eroticism and the natural world,” says Laura Smith, the co-curator and Hepworth’s artistic director. “This constellation of interests and techniques is present across all of the work on show, from Mrinalini’s approach to macrame [knotting], the erotic, mythologies and nature, to Meera’s use of very traditional casting techniques and Pilloo’s incorporation of natural materials.”‘Snake painting’ by Novera Ahmed – spray paint on canvas – at the HepworthIn Bradford, 20 miles north of Wakefield the works of young contemporary artists from across South Asia are on show, following on from an exhibition at SOAS in London last year. This has drawn attention from the local Pakistani diaspora that makes up 25% of city’s population.The co-curator, Manmeet Walia, told the BBC that Bradford’s history as the wool capital of the UK led to the inclusion of textiles that had helped increase the number of South Asians visiting the gallery “to explore their shared history”.Next month’s exhibitions by Sotheby’s and Christie’s will be the first time that the two top international auctioneers have held coinciding exhibitions in London. They follow a large selling exhibition at Philips auction house last year. Both start within three days of each other in mid-July.Christie’s announcement came first, a month ago, saying it would be displaying not-for-sale works acquired by Kiran Nadar, India’s foremost collector, for her expanding museum activity in New Delhi.Sotheby’s followed this week, saying it would have works by six famous artists spanning painting, printmaking, sculpture and ceramics. Most will be for sale: those that are not will include works by F.N. Souza, a leading Progressive, from the Delhi-based Alkazi Collection of Art.Also underlining the role of London is AstaGuru, a Mumbai based online auctioneer, opening an office and small gallery in South Kensington. It generated auction sales of approximately $14m this month. Market leader Saffronart, which has had a gallery in Mayfair since 2008, had $11m sales, while London-based Bonhams had a live £2.1m auction.John Elliot is a semi-retired British journalist, and blogger and author at Riding the Elephant.This article is republished from Riding the Elephant. Read the original article.