Towards the Centre, Once More

This event launches a new partnership between Sadler's Wells and Tate. The new annual commission invites selected artists to create new work for Sadler's Wells exhibition wall in the newly refurbished building. 

Towards the Centre, Once More is Dawood's largest textile piece to date. The artist works across a wide range of mediums, oscillating between painting, film, sculpture and installation. His practice continuously wanders between the real and the surreal, skilfully merging the two worlds into one; where time and space become fluid entities that are not confined by any anchors of history or geography. 

Towards the Centre, Once More 2014 is made up of a nine-panel installation that climbs up the entire three floors of the exhibition space. This multi-layered composition, describing a number of overlapping geometric and organic shapes, is suggestive of an abstract and mystical landscape in which subtle fugitive figures are in movement around its core. While the focal theme of the work is concerned with movement and the articulation of space, the work also draws upon elements found in the set design by the artist Graham Sutherland (1903-1980) for Sir Frederick Ashton's ballet production The Wanderer, which was staged at Sadler's Wells in 1941. Sutherland's distinctive design is echoed in the rock forms and elliptical shapes, but the subdued figures are here painted in reference to contemporary dance within various layers of paint onto the vintage fabrics that form the work's support.

This commission has been curated by Leyla Fakhr.