In this exhibition Sohail Salem presents a collection of paintings executed in acrylics, inks and mixed media. The artworks were inspired by a number of different subjects and are the result of work in Gaza and Amman, where he participated in a summer workshop at the Shoman Foundation. Landscapes are a prominent theme in the paintings which the artist represents from different perspectives. In Gaza, the artist depicts the chaos of the built up environment, as homes are layered upon one another. His landscapes are crammed with concrete and electricity wires as he images the everyday spaces, in which Palestinians live and have, made their homes. While disasters, such as demolished homes, inevitably become part of the landscape as the eye accommodates to living with effects of destruction. The architecture in some of the paintings appear like burning ambers at the hour of dusk, all which impart a sense of an environment scared by war enhanced by the bold brushwork and the artist’s choice of colours.

Sohail Salem’s other paintings were inspired by the divergent landscapes of Amman and Gaza for the workshop was the first time the artist had the opportunity to travel from a coastal plain to a hill terrain. Bright, lively colours and confident brushstrokes represent his experience of the new landscape in which he depicts the people and places that he encountered. The exhibition presents a contrasting body of work in which Sohail Salem demonstrates his response to a various places and subject matter with a spectrum of colours that impart the different moods they evoked for the artist.