Post-Grad Community: Soft Focus - the art detour

This event is open to all UAL postgraduates, alumni, and staff. Booking and confirmation of attendance is essential.

A guided art detour through two moving image exhibitions, connected by a reflective walk in between. Moving at a shared pace, the experience encourages slow looking, gentle conversation, and moments to pause, making space for care, attention, and simply being together.

The journey explores the work of artist Rob Crosseand filmmaker Arash Nassiri across two galleries, Auto Italia and Chisenhale. Both artists examine forms of human habitation and the ways communities shape, and are shaped by, the spaces they occupy.

In A Bug’s Life, Nassiri centres on an opulent Beverly Hills mansion built in the 1980s by Iranian émigrés. The house stands as one of the last remaining examples of a distinctive architectural micro movement conceived by architect Hamid Omrani, which emerged in the decades following the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Crosse's Growing Wild, meanwhile, presents an intimate portrait of residents in one of Europe’s first and largest multigenerational TLGBQIA+ housing projects, established in 2023. The work offers a tender exploration of chosen family, shared space, and collective living.

We warmly welcome anyone who feels drawn to join us on this shared experience.

12.30pm -meet at Chisenhale Gallery
1.30pm - Move onto Auto Italia

Accessibility information:

• Chisenhale Gallery
• Auto Italia

Soft Focus is organised by UAL Post-Grad Community Ambassador Elif Cim. For more information please contact Elif via e.cim1120241@arts.ac.uk.

Image: A Bug's Life, Arash Nassiri, 2026 | Installation view, Chisenhale Gallery, London, 2026 | Photograph: Andy Keate