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Past exhibition
Curated by Mark Sealy
The Photographers' Gallery
16-18 Ramillies Street
London W1F 7LW
The first major retrospective of UK based photographer, Sunil Gupta (b. 1953, New Delhi, India), offering a complex and layered view of his unique transcontinental photographic vision.
Born in New Delhi, India, relocated to Montreal, Canada, before studying at the Royal College of Art in London, Gupta has been using photography as a critical practice since the 1970s. Subversive, impulsive, personal and political, Sunil Gupta's socially engaged projects have focused on such issues as family, race, migration and the complexities and taboos of sexuality and homosexual life. His work has been instrumental in raising awareness around the political realities concerning the fight for international gay rights and of making visible the tensions between tradition and modernity, public and private, the body and body politics.
“What does it mean to be a gay Indian man? This is the question that follows me around everywhere I go and is still ever present in my work”
— Sunil Gupta
The exhibition is curated by Mark Sealy (Autograph ABP, London) in collaboration with The Photographers’ Gallery (London) and the Ryerson Image Centre (Toronto).
Bringing together works from across his divergent and extensive career, From Here to Eternity features a range of series’ from street photography (Christopher Street, 1976) to narrative portraits (From Here to Eternity, 1999), along with highly staged and constructed scenes (The New Pre-Raphaelites, 2008) and a selection of early investigations into digital image making (Trespass, London, 1992-1995).
From participating in New York's active Gay Liberation Movement in the 1970s to his more recent campaigning for gay liberation in India, Sunil Gupta has been inspirational to generations of photographic activists and LGBTQ+ rights campaigners.
Sunil Gupta (b. 1953, New Delhi, India/Canada/UK) was educated at the Royal College of Art, London, England, and received a PhD from the University of Westminster, England. His work uses independent photography as a critical practice, focusing on race, migration, and queer issues.
Gupta's recent show (with Charan Singh), Dissent and Desire was presented at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi, India (2018) and his project Christopher Street 1976, published in 2018 (Stanley Barker) was presented at Hales Gallery in New York (2019).
His work has been exhibited in various group exhibitions, including Paris, Bombay, Delhi... (Pompidou Centre, Paris, France, 2011) and The Place is Here (Nottingham Contemporary, England, 2017). It was also displayed as part of the permanent collection at Tate Modern and Tate Britain, London, England (2018).
Gupta is a Visiting Tutor at the Royal College of Art and was the Lead Curator for the 2018 Fotofest in Houston, USA.
His work can be found in many private and public collections, including the George Eastman Museum (Rochester, USA), the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (Japan), the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto, Canada), the Tate (London, England), and the Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA).
Published to accompany Gupta's retrospective. A new publication tracing Sunil Gupta’s life through his personal archive
Shop now Tickets to this exhibition are booked through, and managed by, The Photographers' Gallery. For information on their ticketing and privacy policies, visit The Photographers' Gallery website.
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From Here to Eternity: Sunil Gupta. A Retrospective is co-organised by The Photographers’ Gallery and the Ryerson Image Centre (Toronto, Canada), in collaboration with Autograph.
Banner image: Sunil Gupta, Untitled #9, 2010. From the series Sun City. Courtesy the artist and Hales Gallery, Stephen Bulger Gallery and Vadehra Art Gallery
Slideshow images: 1) Sunil Gupta, Untitled #22, 1976. From the series Christopher Street. Courtesy the artist and Hales Gallery, Stephen Bulger Gallery and Vadehra Art Gallery. 2) Sunil Gupta, Untitled #13, 2008. From the series The New Pre-Raphaelites. Courtesy the artist and Hales Gallery, Stephen Bulger Gallery and Vadehra Art Gallery. 3) Sunil Gupta, Jama Masjid, 1987. From the series Exiles. Courtesy the artist and Hales Gallery, Stephen Bulger Gallery and Vadehra Art Gallery. 4) Sunil Gupta, Untitled #7, 2008. From the series The New Pre-Raphaelites. Courtesy the artist and Hales Gallery, Stephen Bulger Gallery and Vadehra Art Gallery.
Other page images: 1) Sunil Gupta. Photograph by Mark Sealy, March 2019. 2) Cover and spread from the new book Sunil Gupta: From Here To Eternity.
Autograph is a place to see things differently. Since 1988, we have championed photography that explores issues of race, identity, representation, human rights and social justice, sharing how photographs reflect lived experiences and shape our understanding of ourselves and others.
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