Biography

Nadeem Chughtai (b.1973 Epsom,UK)

Lives and works in London

Nadeem Chughtai’s training has been non-traditional. He studied a foundation in fine art at Epsom School of Art and Design before going on to study illustration at Northbrook College, Sussex.

However, feeling uninspired upon completing his illustration course Nadeem decided to explore his passion for film making. In 1997 he gained work experience in the art department of feature film, The Avengers, where he was introduced to scenic art for the very first time. Nadeem fell in love with it immediately and this drove him to seek out and eventually gain an apprenticeship with Steve Mitchell, one of the film industry’s finest scenic artists.

During his time working with Steve, Nadeem received invaluable training and developed the skills and techniques that continue to influence his work to this day. The hands on experience of colour mixing, light and shadow, perspective, scale and contrast were gained from working on the production of realistic scenery backdrops on many feature films including The Bourne Supremacy, Alexander, Love Actually and James Bond - Die Another Day.

After five years working and learning as a scenic artist, Nadeem had a yearning to explore his own creativity and in late 2003 moved into his first art studio in Wimbledon, south west London.

It was then that Nadeem began to explore what he wanted to say with his work and how he could achieve it. He was interested in deep and complex themes relating to the human condition and thus created his faceless, anonymous character, realising that it could be used as the central tool to convey what he wished to share and one that everyone could relate to. This character featured in all of Nadeem’s work since its inception in 2004 up until January 2020, when quietly, suddenly and without fuss, ‘the nowhere’ left us.

Nadeem is now working on a new body of work that opens just after the nowhere man’s departure with, ‘There’s This Place On The Edge Of Town’ (2020)