“Nikhil’s performative practice has very often been driven by his fascination with museum collections and their repressed histories, and with the practice of drawing, so he was a compelling choice for a gallery that holds both a world textile collection and 3 centuries of prints and drawings. It was, however, only as his research visits took him into the Whitworth stores and out exploring across post-industrial Manchester that we become truly excited and indeed slightly terrified at the colonial and imperial strands of history that his investigations revealed. 

From 18th century landscape to a city’s post-industrial regeneration through culture Nikhil’s Manchester trilogy opened up a new way of thinking about artistic, cultural and political histories as it also created a new public for those ideas.  As he continues to mine the potent intersection of the objects, histories and people his art reminds of the complicated interpentration of dissident pasts in our now.  It is a practice of revelatory critique that has never been more necessary.”

- Maria Balshaw