A conceptual artist who lives and works between India and South Korea, Tallur’s work encompasses sculpture, site-specific installations and interactive media. The many migrations in Tallur’s life — from the village of Koteswara (where he was born) and Mysore (now Mysuru), Karnataka, to Baroda, then UK and finally Seoul (his wife’s home city) — and their colliding and opposing influences are reflected in his work and through his distinctive choice of materials and methods. In his treatment, bronze, wood, silver stone, oil, artefacts, coins, LED screens, machines and mechanical devices are synthesised in unfamiliar and unconventional juxtapositions of sacred and secular; urban and rural; purpose and futility; and the generative and destructive, among other binaries. His concerns with the anxieties, fears and desires that shape history, colonialism, globalisation and capitalism form the pith of his artistic work, while his material configurations often parody relationships between object and symbol and challenge the accumulation of meaning over time.

After earning a BFA in painting from Chamarajendra Academy of Visual Arts, Mysore, in 1996, Tallur pursued first an MFA in museology from the MS University, Baroda, in 1998 and then an MA in Fine Art from the Metropolitan University in Leeds, UK, in 2002. Much of Tallur’s early output is typified by the recurring theme of value — monetary and otherwise — as a historical gauge of interpersonal and intersocietal relationships. The works created during the period of this particular preoccupation include Unicode (2011), Obituary (2013) and Milled History (2014). In the former, a Chola-era bronze of Nataraja is seemingly obscured by a lump of concrete embedded with coins. Unicode, named after the universal coding protocol used across all computing devices, is a commentary on the homogenising potential of globalisation and the elevation of money to the status of God. Obituary consists of a palanquin that bears a wooden log with coins hammered into it and upon which more can be added by viewers. Lit by incense, the structure is evocative of both an altar and a funeral pyre, simultaneously parodying the shifting quantifications of value and the transience of wealth. Milled History consists of a sandstone copy of an artificially degraded replica statue and expands on these themes, making pointed references to the politically motivated imitation and displacement of material cultures.