Rajesh Punj is a London based freelance art critic, curator, and collector of contemporary works of art. With an academic background in European and American art history and curating from Oxford Brookes, Warwick University and Goldsmiths College respectively; and a specialist interest in the emerging markets. India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Middle East. As an art correspondent and critic he is regularly commissioned by international publications and gallerists, including Saatchi Gallery (London), Flash Art International (Milan), Sculpture (Washington DC), al art magazine (Antwerp), Harper’s Bazaar Art, (Dubai), Art Paper and Selections (Beirut), ARC (Saint Vincent and the Grenadines), Elephant (London), Art Zip (Beijing, London), and Asian Art newspaper (London), among others.
Curating exhibitions in Lahore and Dhaka; and as an artist’s assistant, assistant curator, and associate curator, he has previously worked with Andrea Zittel (US), Anish Kapoor, (UK), Monica Bonvicini, (IT), David Goldblatt (ZA), Simon Patterson, (UK), Julian Opie, (UK), David Batchelor (UK), and Jake and Dinos Chapman, (UK), among others. And more recently interviewing Fiona Banner, (UK), Richard Jackson, (US), Polly Morgan (UK), Katie Paterson, (UK), Liu Xiaodong, (CN), Imran Qureshi (PK), Amar Kanwar (IN), and Dayanita Singh (IN), for print.
Besides writing exhibition previews, reviews and commissioned to write catalogue essays, he is more currently focusing on an ‘interview series’; with leading practitioners from contemporary art, photography, fashion, design, and contemporary criticism. With an archive that includes; Jitish Kallat, (Mumbai), Bharti Kher, (New Delhi), Tammam Azzam, (Damascus/Dubai), Sara Rahbar (New York), Rina Banerjee (New York), Tala Madani (Los Angeles), Berndnaut Smilde (Amsterdam), Steve McQueen (Amsterdam), Nikhil Chopra (Mumbai), Mania Akbari (Tehran/London), Shilpa Gupta (Mumbai), and Rashid Rana (PK), among others. With specific focus on India, and subsequently looking to China and the Middle East; the first volume of interviews is due for publication in late 2015, early 2016. Crucially having focused more on the emerging markets, and taken an interest in interdisciplinary approaches to contemporary aesthetics. Drawing attention to painting, photography, installation, sculpture, drawing, design, fashion, film, collecting, and curating; Rajesh has cultivated a blueprint for his inimitable ambitions, of curating and commentating on international contemporary art from a wider perspective.
Europe/America
The Middle East
Asia
Curatorial Projects
© Chinook 2014, installation shot, courtesy of the artist, Fiona Banner, YSP and Frith Street Gallery; Photo Jonty Wilde
Born in Glasgow in 1981, and educated at Edinburgh College of Art, and the Slade School of Art, respectively. Paterson belongs to a successful crop of Scottish artists who have broken onto the international art scene in recent times. While her fellow...
Imran Qureshi is at a point now where he possibly spends much more of his time hovering just above the clouds than he is rooted to earth. Softly spoken and looking exhausted for the all of the accumulated air miles under his belt, Qureshi is fundamen...
In terms of everything positive that is of the contemporary Indian art scene now, then Lekha Poddar is its tour-de-force. Demonstrative and equally demanding of what she expects of those around her, Poddar’s original interests, fashioned by her son...
Amid the melee of commotion that proliferates during the art world’s most significant calendar event, Frieze; there are other shows that more regularly would be considered critically necessary. Ceased upon they are choreographed into the autumn art...
Attending the Ecole de Recherche Graphique in Brussels in 2002, before moving to London in 2006 to read an MA in Communication Design at Central Saint Martins. Adopting the city as his own, Eric Schockmel initially exhibited between London and Luxemb...
With childhood ambitions to act; Polly Morgan, born and bought up in the Cotswolds; completed school and studiously decided to attend Queen Mary’s, University of London instead. Pedestrianly graduating in 2002 with an English Literature degree. It ...
They may not have been born here, they may not belong here but this is home as their heart beat s here and so does their art....
INTERVEN TIONS IN KITSCH - Leading Portuguese contemporary artist Joana Vasconcelos talks to Selections about crafting the future, re-appropriating domestic materials, and how art can be a catalyst for change...
From the North of England, Fiona Banner was born in 1966, and attended Kingston University in the late 1980’s, before going onto Goldsmiths College, London in 1990. She had her first solo show at City Racing; (1994), an artist run space in South Lo...