Probir Gupta’s canvases are enormous in their scale and narrative. A Kolkata art student during the Maoist uprising in India in the early 1970’s, Gupta demonstrated against routine acts of violence and terrorism. Gupta’s paintings appear as grand history paintings, containing intricate details and pulsating backgrounds. In Rats and Generals in a Zoological Park a sombre looking full-length portrait of Mahatma Gandhi stands robust in front of a coloured version of the Bayeux tapestry. Throughout the work, contoured figures and morose forms riddle the canvas. With his works, Gupta reorganises history into something messy, troubling and rueful in which nothing appears to take precedence.