SYDNEY. THURSDAY 22 AUGUST 2019. 6.00 – 8.00PM.

4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art
invites you to join us at the opening of: 

Nursa Latif Qureshi: Strategies of Intent

Exhibition opening: 6.00-8.00PM, Thursday 22 August

Exhibition to be opened with an address from artist, filmmaker and academic Helen Grace.

RSVP here.

Nusra Latif Qureshi’s first solo Australian institutional exhibition presents her ongoing investigation into the symbolism and assumptions embedded in art history. Reflecting on almost two decades of practice Qureshi’s attempts to undermine, shift and negate historical imagery reads as a warning for the contemporary age, where assumed realities can be little more than constructed visions.

Qureshi’s practice is characterised by meticulous layering, fragmentation, erasure and juxtaposition of visual material. Through such intervention, she investigates little known histories of colonial eras, questions established narratives and engages with the politics of representation. Through an examination of the visual histories of the South Asian region Qureshi has developed a new visual vernacular in which to examine and interrogate the act of historicisation.

Strategies of Intent brings together key works from Qureshi’s oeuvre as well as a series of new commissions by 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. These commissions are Qureshi’s most ambitious to date and include a series of installations that draw on key colonial imagery, engage with the reverence of weaponry and critique the museological convention of collecting and ownership.

About the artist:
Nusra Latif Qureshi (b. Lahore, Pakistan, lives and works in Melbourne, Australia) attended the National College of Arts, Lahore and completed her Masters of Fine Art at the University of Melbourne. Qureshi’s practices engages with the visual histories of the South Asian region and Australian culture, questioning conventional interpretations, pulling apart and reconfiguring the found patterns to construct new narratives. Her work has been exhibited widely in Austria, Germany, New Zealand, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Afghanistan, Italy, India, Japan, France, Switzerland, Finland and her home countries of Pakistan and Australia. Most recently she was exhibited at the Kunst Historisches Museum, Vienna, Austria as well as Brisbane’s QAG/GOMA. Her work has been collected widely including the British Museum, London, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Qureshi is represented by Sutton Gallery, Melbourne and is currently the artist in residence at the Lyceum Club, Melbourne.

About our opening speaker:
Helen Grace is a new media artist, filmmaker, writer and academic interested in the nexus between art & politics, memory and history. Her work has played an active role in the development of art, cinema, photography, cultural studies and education in Australia and regionally for 30 years. Grace’s work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; and has been exhibited internationally in Hong Kong, the US, the UK, France, Spain and Finland. She recently completed a major new video installation, entitled The Housing Question in collaboration with Narelle Jubelin.  The work is currently exhibited at Penrith Regional Gallery, Home of the Lewers Bequest.

Grace is the author of Culture, Aesthetics and Affect in Ubiquitous Media: The Prosaic Image, (Routledge, 2014) and she co-edited (with Amy Chan Kit-Sze and Wong Kin Yuen) Technovisuality: Cultural Re-Enchantment and the Experience of Technology (IB Tauris, 2016). She was Founding Director of the MA Programme in Visual Culture Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and is now Adjunct Professor in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies at CUHK and an associate in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, at the University of Sydney. She is a member of the Film Advisory Panel of Sydney International Film Festival, where she focuses on Asian and independent cinema.

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