Post-Grad Community: Soft Focus - the art detour | Ibaaz and Sadie Coles HQ

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

Soft Focus: The Art Detour is a monthly, student led art walk that encourages slow looking, informal conversation and shared discovery. Open to students from all disciplines, it offers a welcoming and low pressure way to explore art together while building community beyond the classroom. Each detour is shaped around the idea that London holds many worlds close together. Within a short walk, we can encounter different histories, beliefs and artistic languages, both local and global.

This month, under the theme Worlds Within Walking Distance, we visit Ibraaz and Sadie Coles HQ.

At Ibraaz, we experience Cosmic Breath by Joe Namy, a sound installation composed of recordings of the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer. Reimagined for Ibraaz’s musalla, the work brings together historical and contemporary calls from across the world, including a recording of the first public call to prayer performed in London during the 2020 lockdown. The installation invites close listening and reflects on how sound can create connection across place and time.

We then move to Sadie Coles HQ on Savile Row, where a group exhibition inspired by Oscar Wilde’sLord Arthur Savile’s Crime explores social behaviour, performance and satire. Set within a restored nineteenth century arts club, the exhibition reflects on London’s artistic lineage and the enduring rituals of observation, judgement and display within social life.

Though very different in tone and form, both exhibitions reveal how much cultural breadth exists within close proximity. Together, they offer an opportunity to experience London as a city of many worlds, encountered slowly, locally and together.

Soft Focus is open to all.

12.30pm -meet at Ibraaz
1.30pm - Move onto Sadie Coles HQ

Accessibility information:

• Ibraaz
• Sadie Coles HQ

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: Joe Namy,Cosmic Breath,2023. Installation view at Islamic Arts Biennale 2023. Courtesy of the artist.