8 July – 20 August 2011
The Way You Look At Me, takes place over two floors over 4A with new work developed especially for this exhibition. Central to the show are ideas of looking and being looked at and feelings of invisibility in adopted spaces. The ground floor galleries will come alive with site-specific works, including a digitally printed large scale wallpaper, and a new work by Naeem Rana commissioned specifically for 4A’s front window (the Urdu text translates as: ‘my shadow will be with you’ ) This work is constructed entirely within the digital space, incorporating poetry based on classical Urdu poems to express loss and the experience of living in adopted places.
The exhibition will also include a 13 metre digital print by Nusra Qureshi’s 25 x 1333 cm digital print, combining the eyes of women from Mughal miniature painting, advertising and women from her own circle of friends. The eye is a central motif in her work, one which relates not only to superstition and omens but intimacy, metaphors of love, surveillance and vision, trickling down to the doe eyed heroines in twentieth century Indian cinema.
Naeem Rana and Nusra Qureshi are Melbourne-based artists who trained in sculpture and the Mughal miniature tradition at the National College of Arts in Lahore. Nusra Qureshi is part of a generation of traditionally trained artists who have revived and innovated Mughal miniature painting traditions through the incorporation of contemporary ideas, a transition in scale and new subject matter. Naeem Rana combines traditional Urdu calligraphy, popular culture and advertising within a digital space. Both of their practices reflect on contemporary society, culture and politics.
Nusra Qureshi and Naeem Rana have been included in major international exhibitions as well as seminal surveys of contemporary Pakistani Art. Nusra Latif Qureshi has exhibited in the 53rd Venice Biennale, Italy (2009), 5th Asia Paci c Triennial at the Queensland Art Gallery (2006), Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan (2005) Her work has been shown internationally across Europe, US and India and is held in the collection of the MCA Sydney, Queensland Art Gallery. Fukuoka Art Museum among others. In Sydney her work has been shown at Sherman Galleries and Gallery Barry Keldoulis. She completed a Master of Fine Art from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2002.
Naaem Rana trained in the Nastalique style in Urdu calligraphy, traditional techniques passed down from his father. He has exhibited at the OZAsia Festival, Adelaide, UTS Gallery. His work is held in private collections in Pakistan, India, Australia, USA and UK. He completed a Graduate Diploma in Visual Art from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2001.
