Mumbaikars are the latest muse for British visual artist Julian Opie who will be showing images of people from all walks of life as they literally walk on the street. From a sari-clad dusky lady carrying her child in her arms to the iPod-wielding teenager, woman wearing the headscarf and a man smoking under a umbrella, each personality figures in Opie’s recent artworks, which will be exhibited at a solo exhibition at Sakshi Gallery.

Woman in the rain with headscarf

Opie is renowned for being a part of the New British Sculpture movement. His works draw from classical forms and idioms, yet these are rendered in a contemporary fashion. His approach of distilling ideas and content to the minimum and still saying much, is reckoned to be highly instrumental in expanding the vocabulary of art.

Excerpts from an interview:
Tell us about the theme of your upcoming exhibition.
I make exhibitions in response to the venue — the architecture and the setting of the gallery, museum or public space. Making art is like mining. You dig and see what you find, and if it’s good, you keep digging in that direction. At the moment, I am expanding into new areas of portraiture while also spending a lot of time making landscapes. The Mumbai exhibition will show both these themes and at points these merge. The landscape project is all about walking — walking through space. It is the view outwards, from the body and the individual. The paintings of people walking are the view from the outside looking back at people. The rest of the works are portraits of faces.