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AS PART OF ITS PUBLIC ART PROJECT
THE NOTTING HILL GATE IMPROVEMENTS GROUP
PRESENTED
AT ITS "NOW SHOWING" GALLERY
AT 99 NOTTING HILL GATE

The CARNIVAL PROCESSION
by
NADIM KARAM

NADIM KARAM WAS IN ATTENDANCE TO DISCUSS HIS WORK ON WEDNESDAY 3rd MAY 2000

Click here for Examples of the "Carnival Procession"

Blurring the edges between art, architecture and the city, Nadim Karam has created giant art installations in places as varied as Beirut museum squares, Prague bridges, the gardens of a temple in Nara, and project proposals for London and Dublin. He moves with the Archaic Procession, his herd of shadow-creatures, who take him from one place to another. They intervene in a site/situation momentarily, creating lapses of fantasy in the urban context.

In Notting Hill Gate he proposes to install a series of sculptures on skylines. Enriching his already innumerable alphabet of Archaic Procession characters, he has introduced a series of new characters created especially for the Notting Hill Gate area: the Observers, the Gatekeeper, the Ballerina, the Head-banger and as well as several "Notting Hill Carnival" characters.

During doctorate studies on Japanese temple architecture, Nadim Karam began creating art performances and exhibitions in Tokyo. He received a PhD in architecture from the University of Tokyo in 1989. Two years later he founded Atelier Hapsitus, and became known for his unique urban projects typically comprising paintings, models, stories and finally giant urban installations. He lectures actively in universities worldwide.

The book of his "VOYAGE" is published by Booth-Clibbon Editions.

"There is a sense of wry, controlled anarchy running through Nadim Karam's work. How else to define the unusual combination of motives that bring together symbolic (but wily) animals, rhetorical (but practical) manoevres with city structuring, theatrical surprises on the skyline (but perfectly consequential placement of related objects, a classic act of the architect?)..
He is a difficult architect-artist to categorise. He is unnervingly original. His work acts as an antidote to the worthy and stuffy world of urbanism"

Peter Cook, Architect
Chairman, The Bartlett School
of Architecture

Postscript: Following a grant of £6,000 from Visiting Arts - The British Council - Nadim Karam has created two figures in pierced metalwork and coloured plastic which are intended to be sited over the top of Waterstones facing Notting Hill Gate with the assistance of Land Securities. A Planning Application has been submitted to the Council and it is hoped that permission will be given for these to be installed shortly (See Artworks ).