Echo, Saturn—The Courts (2021)

Black barrister’s gown suspended on orange hooks — Barrister’s Coat (2021), 55 × 110 × 10 cm, black UK barrister/graduation gown, three UV-orange fishing hooks

Installation view of Echo, Saturn—The Courts — Installation view, Barrister’s Coat (2021), Removal #2 (2021), The Courts (seating) (2021), The Courts (film) (2021), Blue Fan (2021)

Tea service installation in Echo, Saturn—The Courts — Cha (2021), variable dimensions: metal kettle from Pakistan, wooden spoon, whisk, mesh sieve, electrical hob, sheet-metal tray, 80 kulhad clay cups, thermos, proprietary ingredients and handwritten recipe

Two CRT monitors showing The Courts film — The Courts (film) (2021), dual-channel, 3:51, 4:3, colour, ProRes, no sound; two synchronised Hantarex 28-inch monitors and media players

Headphones and archival details in Echo, Saturn—The Courts — Archive Vinyl (2021); Couplings (2021); Transcript 2016 (2021), 28:57 mono recording, looped FM transmission with interference

Mobile archive shelving filled with aged papers — Archive shelving (2021), 160 × 200 × 232 cm, mobile metal archive shelving, book supports, tea-soaked paper folder, papers c. 1940 and organising labels

Storage doorway left ajar with a blue filter — Ajar (2021), variable dimensions, blue filter, storage door left ajar and screwed in, radio playing All India Radio (Kolkata)

Galvanised steel security grill installed across an office window — The Courts (grill) (2021), 138.5 × 92 × 5 cm, galvanised steel security grill, welds, wooden banister, silver paint and metal bolts. Removal (2021), large glass window removed from the founder’s office

Long framed photograph installed above ajar glass doors — Barristers (2021), 66 × 610 × 3 cm, aluminium information frame with D-Print photograph on archival semi-gloss paper, keys and glass doors left ajar

Wooden Chambers sign installed above a doorway — Chambers (2021), 15 × 45 × 2.5 cm, CNC-machined oak, wood stain and metal fitting

Two framed landscape photographs titled Land Images — Land Images (some time apart) (2021), two 21 × 29.7 × 3 cm aluminium-framed D-Print photographs on archival semi-gloss paper

Framed photograph titled Rope and Chains — Rope and Chains (2021), 50 × 40 × 3 cm, aluminium-framed D-Print photograph on archival semi-gloss paper

Echo, Saturn—The Courts (2021) overlays the working spaces of Annet Gelink Gallery with fragments of the law courts and archives of Rajshahi: a city within a city. The reception, offices, kitchen and basement remain in use, while taking on the atmosphere of crowded lawyers’ chambers, tea stalls, barred windows and deteriorating archives where papers disappear and petitioners wait. Gallery employees are recontextualised as visitors move between these two institutions, cities and moments in time. Bureaucracy emerges not as an abstract system but as a condition of delay, repetition and obstruction. Memory accumulates and every attempt to negate the past sinks one further into it.

Visitors encounter fragments: a barrister’s gown hangs in a passageway, tea is served in clay cups, a security grill replaces a window, and a ceiling fan turns overhead. Downstairs, mobile shelving, ageing papers, cabinet doors and broken handcuffs evoke the administrative viscosity of an archive slowly falling apart. The exhibition is haunted by Dr Shahidul Zaman, who visits the law courts of Rajshahi in the early 1980s, searching for the deeds to family land he hopes to sell to finance his emigration to Europe. Missing documents lead back to Partition, forced migration and an exchange of property between Hindu and Muslim families.

A ruptured voice arrives through headphones and an FM transmission disturbed by interference; two synchronised CRT monitors show silent images from Rajshahi; photographs recur like uncertain evidence. Moving through spaces normally hidden behind the gallery’s public face, the visitor becomes part client, part witness and part intruder. The exhibition produces a dissociative haunting in which memory, migration and bureaucracy become impossible to separate—and the past refuses to let its subjects leave.

View in complete works sequence