Thursday 20th February
6.30pm
All welcome
Workplace FoundationThe Old Post Office
19-21 West Street
Gateshead, NE8 1AD
Artist Parham Ghalamdar will discuss his practice and current exhibition at Workplace Foundation with lecturer, researcher and artist, Jenny Eden.Painted in intense acidic colour, surreal forms and structures inhabit desolate and empty landscapes. Uncanny and strange these objects adhere to rigorous placement, assimilating elements drawn from a diverse range of Western and Middle Eastern Art History such as Caravaggio, Goya, Bouguereau, Soviet Socialist realism, graffiti, pop culture and traditional Persian miniatures. The considered, rational structuring of his paintings stand as a counterpoint to the oppressive weight of dogmatic ideology that Parham experienced in his homeland. (
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Born in Tehran, Iran in 1994, Parham Ghalamdar studied Printing and Media at the Art University in Tehran. Parham was a founding member of ELF Crew, the first graffiti collective in Iran. ELF became known for their transgressive and coded resistance to the regime and their liberal progressive subculture. Arrested multiple times for graffiti Parham was eventually detained indefinitely in the West of Iran in 2014 where interrogations became more forceful and the authorities began to investigate his associations and social networks more thoroughly. Fearing for his life (his sexuality, if exposed, would be punishable by death) Parham managed to escape Iran, travelling through Asia before being granted asylum in the UK. In 2019 he completed his BA in Fine Art, Painting at Manchester School of Art.
Jenny Eden is a painter and researcher based in Salford. She lectures in Fine Art at Manchester School of Art and co-runs Oceans Apart, a gallery in Salford dedicated to contemporary painting.
Jenny is currently studying a PhD in Painting at Manchester School of Art, following an MFA in Fine Art also from Manchester (2017).