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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.
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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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