Sculptor and painter Nasser Azam was born in Jhelum, Pakistan in 1963 and moved to London, England with his parents in 1970. Initially, he pursued a career in the financial sector, maintaining his artistic practice in his spare time in a make-shift Birmingham studio. His early works depicted family life, and were more consciously religious rather than political, as he experimented with a number of painting styles ranging from symbolism to abstraction. In 1983 he was interviewed for a BBC documentary. After travelling widely in Japan, Europe and America, Azam became Artist-in-Residence at County Hall Gallery, London (2007–10), holding two exhibitions, ‘Anatomica’, inspired by illustrations in both fashion magazines and medical textbooks (2008) and ‘Life in Space’ (2009). In the same year, his monumental abstract bronze, 'The Dance,' was unveiled on London’s South Bank, opposite the Houses of Parliament. A series of performance paintings, carried out in extremte conditions followed, including in 2010 a visit to the ice deserts of Antarctica resulting in 13 large paintings, displayed in the Tokyo Metro, Japan and London Underground in 2011. In 2012 his 12-metre-high bronze sculpture, ‘Athena’, was unveiled at London City Airport, followed by a six-metre bronze, ‘Evolutionary Loop 517’, outside the Sir Duncan Rice Library, University of Aberdeen, in May 2013. Two years later, his three-metre-high commissioned portrait painting of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani education activist, Nobel prizewinner and refugee, was unveiled at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham (now displayed permanently at Birmingham University). In 2019, London’s Saatchi Gallery hosted Azam’s largest and most comprehensive solo exhibition to date, displaying paintings inspired by his journey to Lake Saiful Malook, near the mountains of Kashmir.
Nasser Azam lives and work in London. His work is held in UK collections including the Ben Uri Collection, Aberdeen University and Birmingham University. He has also carried out commissioned work for the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland, in Dublin.
