Abdullah M. I. Syed is a Western Sydney based Pakistani born artist and designer who sees art as a balancing act of archiving and re-articulating forms of memory, myth, tradition and belonging.
Known for his gritty, pain-inflicting endurance performances, Syed transformed the rose, a desirable cultural and spiritual material symbolizing love, purity, soul, and melancholia in South Asian cultures, into a bloody pulp to bring attention to the deteriorating conditions of life in the Islamic world as a result of internal and external bloody conflicts.
Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize
Flying Buck Exchange is a special presentation of an ongoing ‘Bucking’ performance project by Pakistani-Australian artist Abdullah M.I. Syed. Showcased over three days at MPavilion as part of the inaugural Asia TOPA, Syed’s tongue-in-cheek turn of phrase, Bucking, will see him consuming, distributing and exchanging currency, in this case, in the form of the fabled US dollar bills.
Abdullah M.I. Syed Exhibition at Fairfield City Museum & Gallery Sydney
Aicon Gallery is presenting The Altar of Convenience, an exhibition of new sculpture by Debanjan Roy. The exhibition, on view through February 1, 2014, is comprised of more than twenty masterfully hand-carved wooden sculptures of oversized everyday objects, all of which will inevitably find themselves consigned to the trash-heap of modern living.
Stamped with a provocative title ‘Brut-Nama’ (The Chronicles of Brut) currently showing at Aicon Gallery, New York, is the first major US solo of Karachi and Sydney-based artist Abdullah M. I. Syed.
Brut-Nama represents the culmination of ten years of research born from Syed’s award-winning installation, Discourse within Discourse: The Circle at the IAO Gallery in Oklahoma City (2003) and developed over the past decade through a series of international solo and group exhibitions while living, working and studying between Karachi and Sydney.
In 1964, Faberge launched Brut for Men, their now immensely popular fragrance, in an attempt to create a new male market within the traditionally feminine realm of perfumes.
Aicon Gallery is proud to present Brut-Nama: The Chronicles of Brut, the first major U. S. solo exhibition by Australia-based Pakistani artist Abdullah M I Syed.
Review of Adeela Suleman's works by Donald Kuspit