Speaker for the Leading through practice: Make First! Learners First! twilight event
Liaqat Rasul is a gay welsh dyslexic Pakistani male. He was born in Feb 1974 in Wrexham, North Wales. Liaqat studied fashion, gaining a first-class degree, specialising in textiles. He spent a year in industry, working and studying in New Delhi, India. Liberty's in Regent Street, London, bought his graduating collection, and he ran the business Ghulam Sakina for ten years, creating beautiful textile clothing. After Ghulam Sakina was liquidated in 2009, Liaqat decided to explore his life and career choices. He worked at the Roxy Beaujolais -run pub the Seven Stars, in Carey Street, while exploring art exhibitions and public art. A huge, heavy penny dropped in 2017, and Liaqat started making collages for friends. Small but vital art practice was initiated. Liaqat made a few pieces for commission, and in 2019 had his first-ever solo exhibition of eight pieces at the Tracey Neuls shop in Coal Drops Yard, London. The collage works are not a social or political statement; they are abstract and cartographic, made from old envelopes, stamped tickets, wooden coffee stirrers, misplaced printing on cardboard boxes, leftover yarn, swing tags, creased tissue papers, napkins, abandoned receipts, an old t-shirt chopped up, tatty found papers, packaging… marked with biros and felt-tip pens and stuck with PVA glue, sellotape on to card inserts and graphics on cardboard boxes left out in the street. Their bold, odd colours and real-world experiences create unique, buoyant collage tableaux.
Making art is an act of hope. Liaqat invites the viewer to experience his low-tech, textured works, eyes darting about to take in the many elements, in their own time, meditatively, diverted from smartphones and the persistent digital world. Liaqat aims to create bigger and bolder collages and fibre works. His art doesn't have to be in a frame or on a wall. It might be a large kinetic hanging sculpture, a piece of architecture, or a public art installation. Think tactile. Think analogue.
See more of Liaqat's work here:
Instagram - @liaqatrasulart