Ladies and Gentlemen. It is my great honour to welcome you today to The Noble Sage Art Gallery, the first gallery in the UK to specialise exclusively in South Asian contemporary art. My name is Jana Manuelpillai, Director of The Noble Sage.
The Noble Sage Art Gallery is very much a reaction to the rise of Indian art in the world art market. It is a worthy response to the cunning investor’s needs for a space in London in which he or she can access and purchase high quality art from India, particularly South India – art that he or she can be certain will appreciate in the years to come. Rooting back further, the gallery is also a consequence of the growing empowerment of India as a world power and financial authority. India like never before is prospering – in some areas in the South (such as Chennai, for example) growth is measured at a rate of 8% a year, a staggering figure in this day and age! India is on the up. In a financial sense, looking at figures on a page, the people of India are closer than ever before to us here in the UK and we are closer than ever before to them. The gulf is closing and where chasms close, bridges are made.
The Noble Sage is a bridge.
The Noble Sage, a commercially-viable platform for emerging and established artists working in India. It is (to use an over-used phrase) a window on a world very different to ours through the prisms of these different artists and their varied styles and subject matter. The Noble Sage doesn’t just mean to be a place that you can purchase paintings and sculpture of high quality from India, it is also an active gallery building a longer lasting relationship between the East and West. Building a dialogue.
So in a nutshell, The Noble Sage does what has never been done before. It is the first gallery in the UK to specialise in contemporary Indian art, particularly that of South Asia. It is also the first commercial space to bring the artists of India, and indeed India itself, to our doorstep with absolute elegance and grace (if I do say so myself!). It is a transplant operation for your pleasure and enjoyment!
For these reasons and many more, I am very proud to welcome you to my gallery today.
