Interview: Renowned Wirral-raised artists The Singh Twins

Rabindra and Amrit Singh – better known as the Singh Twins – are London-born, Wirral-raised artists whose Indian-influenced paintings have explored a broad range of social and political issues over the past three decades. 

With a new exhibition underway in Liverpool, the sisters sat down with us to talk about their latest work, how they began painting together and what life was like as the only Sikhs at a strict catholic high school. 

Words by Lawrence Saunders 

‘Slaves of Fashion’ at the Walker Art Gallery was heavily influenced by themes including empire, conflict and slavery. When did you decide history was going to be a major inspiration for this exhibition?

Our work has always been about looking at the past and making it relevant today. History is the starting point.

With this project it all started with a historical object – a case of fabrics we came across in a slavery museum in Nantes, France.

It was explained to us that the fabrics had been produced in India for the French, with the specific purpose of exchanging them for African slaves.

We’re really keen to expose these hidden histories – I’m sure the majority of people would not link India with the transatlantic slave trade.

Once we started researching these textiles produced for the French, it opened up a whole new area of interest, not just to do with the diversity and richness of Indian textiles, but also the politics of that trade. At the time of the slave trade, Europe was vying for a piece of India and trying to control its resources.

We’re almost having a replay of this following the Brexit vote. Britain now wants to become this ‘global Britain’ again and form partnerships with its former colonies.

The same things that have gone on in the past are continuing today. For example, you’ve got India using the same tactic that we [Britain] used on them, by land grabbing off the peasants, whether it’s in India or Africa.

This is what we try to do with our art – never throw the baby out with the bath water and say ‘history is gone, it’s buried, it’s got no relevance for the here and now’.

If you look at some of the objects in museums, a teapot is not just a teapot – it comes with a whole history which connects us to places like India, Europe or the Americas.

That’s what really interests us as artists, these cross-cultural connections and shared identities and histories.

In what is somewhat of a departure for you, most of the works in this series are mixed media – combining traditional handpainted techniques with digitally created imagery. What inspired you to go down this route now? 

A lot of these works are mixed media because for the last three years it’s something we have been exploring as artists. We’re always looking to push the boundaries of the medium we’re working in.

Of course we’re known more for our painted works which were inspired very much by the hand painted tradition which goes back to ancient times. But we’ve always been fascinated by digital technologies.

With this particular project we wanted to create works that had a visual impact. We wanted to go for something that was pretty large-scale compared to the detailed small-scale work that we’re known for. Digital seemed like the only way we could do that.

To create the 11 mixed media works in the show it has taken us three years. If we’d wanted to paint them all by hand on the same scale, it would have literally taken a year per piece. It was killing two birds with one stone.

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The exhibition tells us plenty about the history of the Indian textiles industry whilst making some pretty overt political statements. Was it always your intention as artists not to shy away from making your views clear? 

Politics has always played a part in trade and that’s where it comes into this exhibition.

For example, our painting ‘The King is Dead, Long Live the King’, which shows Donald Trump sitting on a catwalk, is about cotton.

It’s the idea that even hundreds of years on from the 19th Century, cotton is still one of the most valued resources within the textile and fashion industries.

You have this image of Trump sitting on a catwalk and either side of him you have the cotton fields. On the left we have a cotton field in Uzbekistan where workers are being forced to pick cotton and on the right side you have a farmer from India who is forced to grow a genetically modified strain of cotton.

The Trump painting is also about how individual politicians have gained from what we would call ‘unethical practices’ within trade.

“We’ve always presented ourselves as one artist. That goes back to the prejudice we experienced going through art school.”

In the old days it was people like George Washington – a so-called custodian of society who, himself, was a plantation owner. Today we have Tuump, who is reported to have employed models for his modeling agency who were illegal immigrants.

What made you decide to present yourselves as a pair rather than as individual artists? 

We’ve always created artwork side by side since the age of dot. From the age when we would get felt tip pens and art pads in our Christmas stockings, every spare minute would be spent drawing and painting together.

Our working relationship has been a natural progression. We’ve always been influenced by the same issues.

We’ve always seen ourselves, in a sense, as one artist and presented ourselves as one artist. That goes back to the prejudice we experienced going through art school.

At the time we both naturally gravitated towards this Indian miniature style as our source of inspiration and I think this was frowned upon by our tutors, who thought we were copying each other.

It was the old stereotype about twins and it couldn’t have been further from the truth, we just happened to be interested in the same things and that came through in our work.

That shared experience has led us to naturally want to work together and present ourselves as one artist.

Even when we are painting our own separate pieces within a series of works, we are side by side, keeping an eye on each other. If one of us gets stuck for an idea or wonders ‘what colour should I use?’ the other one is always there to chip in with advice.

They are never really individual pieces in the true sense.

Do you think your education at a strict Catholic high school had an impact on your career? 

We really enjoyed our time at Holt Hill Convent. We’re not Catholics, we’re actually Sikhs, but our faith is such that we recognise all religions.

We threw ourselves fully into the whole experience to the extent where we were in the choir, helping the priest during mass and putting the hymn books out.

In terms of our art, the school had a beautiful chapel attached and that’s where our initial inspiration from the decorative arts came from.

We remember sitting in there, looking around at these gorgeous stained glass windows and statues, and wondering what their meaning was. It definitely had an influence on our work as artists.