Rana Begum: Ordered Form

8 Dec 2023-14 Apr 2024

Overview

St Albans Museum + Gallery and UH Arts and Culture are delighted to present a solo exhibition by acclaimed artist Rana Begum.

Internationally renowned for her work that spans across sculpture, painting, and architecture, Rana Begum has become synonymous with exquisite colour relationships and visual perceptions of pattern. Working in a wide range of mediums, from the intimate to the monumental, Begum’s practice focuses on the interplay between light and colour, shape and form. The artist’s use of repetitive geometric patterns alongside her refined language of Minimalist abstraction, creates a spatial and visual experience.

In a much-anticipated return to her former home city, St Albans, this solo exhibition focuses on Begum’s geometric works created over the past three years. Curated by University of Hertfordshire Arts + Culture, Ordered Form presents sculptures, paintings and screenprints, and also features newly created relief works and a panel painting installation, fabricated especially for this exhibition. Also displayed are Begum’s studio experiments, maquettes and sketches which provide a fascinating insight into the artist’s practice.

Rana Begum is influenced by the geometric abstraction of minimalism and constructivism and the work of artists such as Agnes Martin, Donald Judd, and Josef and Anni Albers. She works with industrial materials, such as stainless steel, aluminium, copper, glass and wood to make sculptures and reliefs that explore geometry, colour and light. The artist is inspired by the urban landscape and her childhood memories of the geometric patterns of traditional Islamic art and architecture.

"I have always found the feeling of repetition calming – bringing back memories of daily recitals of the Qur’an. I remember a feeling of tranquillity that accompanied these rhythmic recitations. This feeling has pulled me towards repetition and order, and the idea of the infinite.”

– Rana Begum

To extend the exhibition in the underground Weston Gallery, Begum is also taking over the Museum + Gallery’s historic Assembly Room upstairs. In January, the space will be filled by the artist’s vast site-specific installation No. 670 (Mesh installation). Originally made for a 2016 exhibition at Parasol Unit in London, the installation was then acquired and moved to the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, in 2017, from where it is being lent to the exhibition. Constructed from a series of coloured modular components, the work is site-specific and capable of expansion or contraction depending on the space in which it is reconfigured. The installation transforms the gallery space for the viewer and creates an immersive sensory and participatory environment.

This kind of architectural intervention and the juxtaposition between the two vastly differing spaces is typical for Begum. The appreciation and understanding of architectural principles and the notion of space is rooted within the artist’s practice. Begum creates pure, sharp and honed works that exude order and structure. Yet at the heart of it, there is a clear sense of exploration and playfulness in the ordered form.

Now living and working in London, Rana Begum grew up in St Albans where she moved to with her family from Bangladesh at the age of 8. The young artist studied her foundation course at University of Hertfordshire, which she has said had a pivotal impact on her in opening up ideas and disciplines. This solo exhibition poignantly brings Begum’s work to her former home city and celebrates the success of an alumna of the University.

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