A Story of South Asian Art review banging sculpture marred by dreary neighbours

"As you enter the galleries you can't avoid the slobbish giant. Maybe it is drunk or drugged as it towers and slumps, a red and brown creature with a demonic face and sagging stomach. If the cord suspending it from the ceiling snapped it would just be a pile of hemp on the floor. Exhilarating Jauba, by Mrinalini Mukherjee. Photograph: Tate/Courtesy of Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation"

"This monster has all the qualities that make the art of Mrinalini Mukherjee, who was born in Mumbai in 1949 and died in 2015, funny, fascinating and surreal. She created it in 1985, making it, like many of her works, with tightly woven, intensely coloured natural fibres. It is called Pakshi, meaning bird, and now I see it, the feathery flanks and floppy wings. Mukherjee's sculpture is a hallucinatory but sharply observed response to nature"

Mrinalini Mukherjee produces tightly woven, intensely coloured sculptures in natural fibres that transmute birds, flowers and trees into hallucinatory, often grotesque forms. Signature works such as Pakshi (1985) present oversized, slumping, feathery creatures suspended from ceilings, combining humour, fascination and surrealism. The sculptures evoke the Indian landscape and skies while remaining sharply observed responses to nature. The Royal Academy places these works within a broad A Story of South Asian Art framework, grouping Mukherjee with mentors, friends and family, a curatorial choice that diffuses energy and urgency and surrounds the works with less compelling pieces. Mukherjee's parents were artists, and her father Benode Behari Mukherjee struggled with visual impairment.

Read at www.theguardian.com