Underground Gallery, Riyadh

Charting the beginnings, the rise, and the eventual heart attack and online lifeline of Riyadh's best art gallery: Underground, the idea and this book were brought to life by Andy Pacino and Faiza Qureshi. The Underground Gallery was the dream that became a reality, bringing Riyadh's finest artists to audiences in an otherwise bereft valley of thought provoking contemporary art. The very nature of Saudi Arabia's society makes life for budding artists extremely difficult, if not entirely stifling. Being one of the strictest and most religious countries in the world, Saudi frowns upon figurative work, and Sharia law actually forbids it! It is the few who push barriers who use their brushes and tools to burrow through the consciousness of a strict society. Those who do can still find gaining reward extremely difficult, as the Saudi art scene is more usually the domain of the rich; those who can afford foreign art degrees, those who can afford to exhibit in one of the few available galleries, which tend to be vanity projects, and those who have friends and families who will buy into the mainly faux, bloated and plastic art scene in the region. Other than the "pay to display" galleries - those which charge the artists to exhibit their work - there is the Diplomatic Quarter and the odd compound held event, which more often than not involves amateur painters who, other than as a time-passing hobby, may never otherwise have picked up their brushes, and while there are plenty of chocolate box works to be found, they rarely provide a properly curated and thought out exhibition. Their purpose is to flog a couple of (generally) overpriced works of patterns, dots, doodles, scrapings and splatter canvasses: and they're not really the art-lover's cup of tea. There are, however, some hidden gems, and if you're willing to trawl the Internet, walk the compound events, advertise and sift through the chaff to find the wheat and ignore the pretentious doodles, you'll find them. This is what Andy and Faiza did when they breathed life into the Underground Gallery. 'From lofty heights above the usual chocolate box flowers, the ubiquitous Sheikhs and Arabian stallions were those who were featured at the Underground Gallery,' says Andy, 'All the artists we exhibited were worthy of the wall space they decorated, and there was plenty of competition for that too. There were also a few artists we wanted to exhibit, but time, space and logistics were against us, and as unfortunate as I found that, I have managed to feature the "best of the rest" in this book.' It is true to say that those who paint other than the typical geometric or calligraphic art are usually - though not exclusively - expatriates. It is the very few genuinely motivated Saudi citizens who prove bold enough to paint figuratively. What I wanted more than anything else, was to introduce Saudis to buying into collecting art. I've made documentaries on artists with that same held belief: that the general public ...