The Great Supper: Sara Shakeel Unveiled as NOW Gallery's Young Artist Commission

NOW Gallery, Greenwich Peninsula’s cultural platform showcasing cutting edge design, art and fashion exhibitors, announces award-winning Pakistani visual artist Sara Shakeel as this year’s Young Artist Commission. Available to view for free from 15th May – 23rd June, this annual commission from NOW Gallery celebrates the best rising talent in the fields of visual arts and illustration, with previous commissions including Hattie Stewart, the popular London illustrator.

The Great Supper will be Shakeel’s most ambitious project to date and her first UK exhibition. Having gained notoriety for ‘breaking the internet’ multiple times on Instagram via her works, the dentist-turned-artist is renowned for conveying human emotions through striking and stylish collage works, rendering landscapes and portraits, to create alluring digital, and more currently, three-dimensional crystal works. For this particular piece, commissioned by NOW Gallery cultural curator Kaia Charles, The Great Supper will see Shakeel transform the gallery space into a three-dimensional theatrical banqueting scene saturated with glass crystals.
The elaborate dining room will express a subversive, witty dialogue through sculptural form and will explore and celebrate the significance of the family table through the decorative use of crystals.

For the first time, NOW Gallery will be in darkness with restricted daylight, with a largescale spotlight shining down upon a raised platform displaying the long dining table adorned with crystal embellishments. On the table will sit the perfect family meal, with the traditional Sunday roast coated in the same gems.