Hall Green Art Works

Ort Gallery are pleased to present ‘Beloved (The Somerset House Conference)’ a new commission by British-Pakistani artist Kashif Nadim Chaudry. Chaudry is Nottingham-based and received a BA in Textiles from Goldsmiths College.  For ‘Beloved’ the artist draws inspiration from two places; firstly from the poetry of Rumi, the 13 th  century Sufi mystic and secondly from the 17 th  century painting ‘The Somerset House Conference’. Rumi refers to the beloved frequently within his poetry and there is a lot of debate as to whether this beloved is in fact his male lover Shams or else a term for the Divine or, perhaps, both.  ‘The Somerset House Conference’ is a painting Chaudry has been obsessed with for a long time: “It’s quite an odd composition, populated with a group of very austere looking men, surrounded by a very rich and opulent interior; it’s full of contrast and heavily symbolic, which I love.” The exhibition takes over the gallery through large conical forms reaching from