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PRESS
RELEASE
‘ART BELOW
ZERO’
Azam: Antarctica - London Underground & Tokyo Subway, 11th - 25th April
2011
For immediate release: 4th March
2011
The London-based artist Nasser Azam will be showing displays of
photography, painting and video, made on a mission to Antarctica in early 2010,
in the Tokyo Subway and London Underground this
April.
Azam’s painting practice explores the limits of creativity in extreme and
unfamiliar physical conditions - “Life in Space”, was carried out in
Star City, Moscow in July 2008 where Azam completed two triptychs in zero
gravity, made as a homage to the artist Francis
Bacon.
Azam commented ‘I wanted to expose the desolate, silent, spacious and
empty environment of the South Pole in a diametrically opposite and probably the
most crowded, hectic, busy and noisy space in the
world’
In February 2010 accompanied by a camera crew, Azam conducted a mission to
Antarctica, where he endured extreme weather conditions to produce 13 large
abstract oil paintings responding to different Antarctic landscapes, including
ice lakes, ice caves, glaciers and ice
deserts.
Starting 11th April Art Below will take over a 16 metre long billboard space on
the Ginza line platform in Shibuya Tokyo with images of Nasser Azam’s
Antarctica series for 2
weeks.
Simultaneously, 6,000 miles across the globe on a westbound central line
platform in London’s Liverpool Street Station tube, travelers will be able
to view the Tokyo platform - the poster display and all the public activity
going on around it as a time lapse film on a 2 by 3 metre-wide projection
screen.
Also featuring, as part of the same video projection will be a short film made
in collaboration with Bafta nominated British Film Director Ed Blum, documenting
Nasser’s expedition in Antarctica showing scenes of him painting inside
ice caves and different Antarctic
landscapes.
-END-
For more information about Nasser Azam please contact Seven Ilyas
or
Ben
Moore
T: +44 (0)207 288 1951 / 0207 731
0333
E: Seven@starofseven.com /
ben@artbelow.org.uk
For more information please refer to:
www.azam.com
Notes for
Editors:
About the Artist – Nasser
Azam
Nasser Azam (b. 1963, Jhelum, Pakistan) is a London-based British contemporary
artist. Azam’s reputation was established in the early 1980s, with
exhibitions at galleries in Birmingham and the West Midlands, including the
Barber Institute of Fine
Arts.
He also featured in a BBC documentary. In 2007, after an extended period living
and traveling in Japan, Europe and America, Azam became Artist-in-Residence at
County Hall Gallery, London, mounting a series of major exhibitions of early and
recent work, including the
critically-acclaimed
Anatomica in April 2008. He began working with sculpture, and in February 2008 a
monumental bronze, The Dance, was unveiled on London’s South
Bank.
Pursuing an ongoing interest in painting as performance, in 2008 Azam completed
two triptychs aboard a specially modified parabolic aircraft, in weightless
conditions similar to those in
space.
Subsequently, in 2010 Azam travelled to Antarctica to complete a series of
thirteen paintings in subzero conditions, using specially designed materials.
Azam has collaborated with numerous artists in the worlds of fashion, music and
film, and has initiated a number of projects benefiting
younger
artists, including an emerging artist investment fund, and a scholarship scheme
for young sculptors to work in the Zahra Modern Art Foundries, launched by Azam
in
2010.
About Art
Below
Over the last 5 years Art Below has staged over 50 exhibitions from over 800
artists worldwide using billboard space in the London Underground, the Tokyo
Subway, and on the streets of East Berlin.
Exhibitions have involved taking over entire walkways, escalators, platforms and
passenger lifts, presenting fine art in a completely new and different way that
has attracted attention from media organisations
worldwide.
Art Below display a diverse range of talent and some of their more established
exhibitors include street artist Banksy, Iluustrator Jon Burgerman,
Architectural designer Ben Pentreath, and contemporary fine artist Henry
Hudson.
As well as displaying those who are well established, Art Below have also
nurtured and cultivated the growth of some remarkable new talent including
Saatchi award winner Sarah Maple, Eco fashion designer Ada Zanditon, and and BP
Portrait Award Winner Johan
Andersson.
Art Below host a range of ongoing collaborations with groups including the
Hospital Club, Courvoisier Future 500, The Sovereign Arts Foundation,
Don’t Panic Media, Tank Magazine, Dazed and Confused, the East End Film
Festival and the University of the Arts
London.
Wherever possible Art Below seek to support student talent and run an ongoing
collaboration with City and Guilds of London Art School, transforming the
passenger lifts at Kennington Station into an art
gallery.
This April marks Art Below’s 5th Anniversary and will be the first
time they have displayed an artist on a digital projection screen in the London
Underground.
Nasser Azam first exhibited with Art Below in 2008 and displayed a series of
works in poster form in major London Undeground stations including Bond Street,
Baker Street, and Covent
Garden.
About
Shibuya
Buzzing with art, technology & culture, being the spiritual home of
Tokyo’s urban cool
kids.
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