With Light and Space, a two-part workshop with Bijan Amini-Alavijeh

Please note this is a two-part workshop. By purchasing 1 ticket for Thursday 29 October, you will be booked on for both sessions. The second session is Thursday 12 November.

Join artist Amini-Alavijeh for a two-part workshop exploring light, shadow, nature and space through drawing, collage and sculpture.

Across the two sessions, participants will explore geometry, movement, form and contrasting materials, beginning with a series of atmospheric drawings before developing these ideas into sculptural forms. Working individually and together, the workshops will play with light, refraction and shadow, gradually transforming the gallery space into an installation.

No prior drawing or making experience is needed. The sessions will offer space to experiment freely with materials, techniques, and ideas.

Session One: Drawing with Light and Space

Thursday 29 October 6-8pm

The first session focuses on drawing as an instigator for making and for the sculptural work developed in the second workshop.

Taking influence from light, shadow, and nature, participants will use geometry to create layered, atmospheric landscapes. Through mixed-media drawing and collage, we will explore movement, form, space, and contrasting materials and surfaces.

Working with charcoal, graphite, tissue paper, foil and geometric drawing techniques, participants will learn about balance, composition and framing while having space to explore their own approaches and developments.

The drawings made during this session will become the starting point for the sculptural workshop in Session Two.

No prior drawing skills are needed.

Session Two: Sculpting Light and Shadow

Thursday 12 November 6 – 8.30pm

Building on the drawings and ideas developed during the first session, this workshop moves from the page into three-dimensional space.

Participants will explore materials through cutting, manipulating, layering and transparency, playing with light, refractions, and shadows to create sculptural forms.

Using materials including wire, tracing paper, foil and cardboard alongside handheld torches and projections, we will experiment with moving forms and shadows to create a sculptural still life. Together, these individual experiments will begin to transform the gallery into an installation of light, form and space.

About the Artist

Amini-Alavijeh creates a sense of discovery through encounters with nature, abstracting fragments of his observations. Limited to a single form, light and shadow are explored through a series of works sensitive to weight, volume and space.

Repeated forms become clustered and layered, creating movement that can resemble harsh winds or refracted light. The form currently at the centre of Amini-Alavijeh’s work is the Mandorla, derived from sacred geometry used within medieval art and architecture: an arch, a frame, an opening, and the overlapping of two circles.

The form contrasts soft and hard, continually suggesting alternative directions and resembling forms that are both spiritual and natural. This limitation avoids complexities of line and form, simplifying observations and encouraging slow looking.

Developing from drawing into sculpture, Amini-Alavijeh’s processes and materials follow a similar rhythm, allowing spontaneity and intuition to play a key role.

Recent exhibitions include Something Soft Suspends, GLOAM Gallery, Sheffield (2026); Sharp Edges, Threshold Gallery, Leeds (2025); and a glimmer, The Art House, Wakefield (2024). Amini-Alavijeh was a YSI Sculpture Network artist in 2022 and a member of the PANIC! Steering Group at The Tetley from 2021–2022. In 2019, Amini-Alavijeh was an Engagement Artist with Yorkshire Sculpture International, partnering with the Henry Moore Institute and Meeting Point Leeds.

Description supplied by the event organiser.