Opening reception: Saturday 1 October, 7pm

For her exhibition at 126, Naheed Raza will be showing recent film and photographic works arising from her micro-residency at the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop between April-May 2011, which hint at the way sculptural ‘gestures’ might permeate culture, mediating many aspects of our experience. By considering activities involving highly physical, rapid and automatic gestures in the first instance and complex, painstaking ones on the other, the exhibition isolates moments of transformation and malleability in both art and the everyday.

Naheed Raza’s background is in both Art and Science, having initially studied Medicine at Oxford University before switching to Fine Art, first at Chelsea College of Art and then at the Slade. Much of her practice, which spans sculpture, installation and film, explores the limits of knowledge and ideas relating to haptic and tacit awareness – a corporeal intelligence, which lures and locks the viewer into a complex relationship between eye, mind and material. The themes of weaving, spinning and drawing recur in her work with outcomes often heavily influenced by process.

Her recent works have been exhibited at the Centre for Contemporary Art Glasgow, the Edinburgh Film Festival, Bloomberg SPACE and the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Naheed is currently living and working in Edinburgh.

126 is Galway’s first artist-led exhibition space. 126 was established in 2005 by local artists in response to the urgent need for more non-commercial gallery spaces in Galway. 126 has developed a reputation as an organisation, which supports traditionally unrepresented artistic projects. Because 126 is a non-profit, publicly funded gallery space, it is able to make decisions on an artistic rather than an economic basis. As such, 126 is gaining recognition and support as a place of cultural innovation in Ireland and is becoming an integral part of Galway’s cultural fabric.

126 is generously supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Galway City Council and its membership.