Artists' eastern premise

ANYONE who imagines that Bollywood kitsch is the only Indian art form thriving in Britain this summer will find the work of the Singh twins an eye-opener.

Amrit and Rabindra Kaur Singh, London-born twin sisters, are young British artists with a unique style and a growing international reputation.

Their main inspiration comes from Indian miniatures, exquisite court painting that had its heyday in the 16th century but survives only among the copyists of the tourist trade. The twins updated it to celebrate the domestic intimacies of British Asian life, and to satirise targets ranging from the Reagan and Thatcher love-in to nuclear arsenals and genetic engineering.

A 15-year retrospective opens at Watermans' gallery in Brentford on Saturday. It is their biggest-ever show in the capital, and later tours to India, the US and Canada.

Born in Richmond in 1966, the sisters moved to the Wirral, on Merseyside, when they were seven. Now 36, they still live there in the extended family home.

They had ideas of becoming doctors like their father, a retired GP, but discovered miniature paintings when they were teenagers on their first trip to India, in 1980.

"It was a whole new world," says Rabindra. "There weren't many Asians on the Wirral then. We were bowled over by the miniature technique, the skill and the symbolism", especially from the time of the Mughal emperors, who built the Taj Mahal. Yet they were disappointed to find no trace of that heritage in India's modern art galleries. "Artists were aping western art.

It's a hangover from colonialism, where West is best."

They took up art full time as a " backlash" to a course in 20th century art history. "The tutors didn't think our work fitted in to what contemporary art should be," says Amrit. One examiner refused to mark their work, and they fought a five-year battle to have their degrees upgraded.

"It opened our eyes to institutionalised prejudice. We were encouraged to follow the fathers of modern western art - Gauguin, Matisse, Monet, Van Gogh - who looked to non-European art forms for inspiration, but it wasn't OK for us to draw on our own cultural heritage." This, despite the fact, that masters such as Rembrandt and Joshua Reynolds collected Indian miniatures.

"We were taught that self-expression was the be-all and end-all of being an artist. Yet when we tried to express ourselves as Asians or twins or women, it wasn't accepted."

"Tutors thought our work was too similar; they assumed we were copying," Rabindra adds. "We are individuals, but as twins we don't put great importance on that. As Asians, too, individuality is secondary to community."

While the sisters paint their own works, they do commission paintings as a team. Sometimes each does a drawing and they decide whose works best.

They paint, says Amrit, "on a rota system, clocking on and off", or side by side. "We're so in tune. Sometimes one's facing the painting the right way up, while the other's upside down."

Court miniaturists often worked as teams, too. The twins trained by copying reproductions from books, creating what they call their "past modern", rather than post-modern, style. Other inspirations range from the Catholic iconography of their convent school days to fairytale illustrations by Edmund Dulac (Hans Christian Andersen and The Arabian Nights), art nouveau and the Pre-Raphaelites.

Much early work celebrates family life, often showing the artists, dressed identically, as they are in life. "All That I Am" tells their father's story, from leaving Amritsar during the partition of India in 1947 and working as a salesman in Manchester, to succeeding as a doctor. In scenes of Indian weddings, barbecues and Christmas dinners, Indian dress and the religious icons of the twins' Sikh faith sit alongside camcorders and Superman toys. In one, women prepare a groom under the fascinated gaze of white neighbours, while the men play snooker. "Early on we felt forced to make a choice between being Asian or English," says Amrit. "But our domestic scenes are about being able to balance both happily." In some paintings, support for Liverpool FC unites the city.

SOON after Princess Diana's death, they depicted her simultaneously as Virgin and Child, the eight-armed Hindu goddess Durga and Britannia, clutching a portrait of Dodi Fayed. Yet she sits on a white elephant, an Indian symbol of compassion, but a western one of obsolescence. The painting fixes a moment of social debate and change. "Satire is fantastic for getting a point across without being too heavy-handed," says Rabindra.

Sportlight, the twins' series of 12 paintings on the links between sporting celebrity, the media and sponsorship, will be on show at the Grosvenor museum, Chester (20 July-22 September). Large-scale paintings that mimic advertising boards portray icons such as Muhammad Ali, Venus Williams and David Ginola.

They juxtapose Prince Naseem and Mike Tyson under the title "From the ridiculous to the slime". A painting of the Beckhams offended some Hindus when it was unveiled in March.

Tabloids described it, wrongly, as depicting Posh and Becks as Hindu deities. The twins took pains to explain that they were picturing them as "the new Royal Family".

They are keen to show "there's more to modern art than unmade beds and sharks in formaldehyde". They fault an "art Establishment" as "self-indulgent, centred on the individuality of the artist, and removed from the wider world", says Amrit. "Our work is there to communicate, to get people to rethink. Art has to look beyond the emotions and psyches of the artist."

The Singh Twins' Collection is at Watermans, 40 High Street, Brentford, (020 8232 1010) from Saturday until 15 August, 12-9pm. Free admission.

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