Alserkal Avenue Dubai

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Apologies for yet another belated post. Still trying to clear a backlog of posts from our trips during the first quarter of 2012.

Below are pictures from our day at Alserkal Avenue during our (first ever) visit to Dubai for Art Dubai which was held at Madinat Jumeirah in March. Located in Al Quoz, an area of warehouse spaces, Alserkal Avenue is Dubai’s art hub which plays home to 10 art galleries and a private museum, offices for graphic designers, fashion design and photography.

We were very impressed by the way in which each gallery has transformed the warehouse space and made it their own. A number of exhibitions were organised by galleries at Alserkal Avenue to coincide with Art Dubai. We particularly enjoyed the humour and irreverence of “I Put It There, You Name It” by Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hasem Rahmanian at Gallery Isabelle Van Den Eynde’s. For this exhibition, the Haerizadeh brothers and their childhood friend Hasem Rahmanian decided to do away with the typical white cube setting of exhibition spaces and transformed the gallery into replica’s of their Dubai house, studio and garden. Here artworks mingle with astro turf, ordinary functional objects, food, overflowing ashtrays as well as artworks (by other artists) and paraphernalia from the trio’s personal collection, blurring the boundaries between production and authorship, art and its interplay with its surroundings.

The "anteroom" at Isabelle Van Den Eynde

The dining area

Another groovy room with astro turf on the floor!

Detail of the large scale collages on the wall

This was the third Elizabeth Taylor image we saw at Alserkal Avenue. The Arab world clearly has a thing for her!

‘The Samawi Collection II’, an exhibition featuring over 60 photography and new media works from the private collections of Khaled and Hisham Samawi at Ayyam Art Center