Exhibitions, Events, Talks, Learning Projects and more – find out what’s happening at Drawing Room!
Find out our opening hours, how to get here and learn more about our space & local area.
Drawing Room/Tannery Arts CIO Unit 1b New Tannery Way Bermondsey London, SE1 5WS
Our Learning projects make drawing relevant and accessible to our community – for schools, teachers, families & local groups. Come and draw!
Free and open to all, our Library is a unique collection of around 4,000 books dedicated to the exploration of contemporary drawing.
Our Supporters help fund all that we do and enjoy exclusive events, talks, tours and studio visits – find out how you can join!
Buy publications related to our exhibitions, as well as unique artworks and limited editions.
Find out more about Drawing Room, what we do, and our relationship with studio provider Tannery Arts.
Tannery Arts is a small, independent charity concerned with supporting the professional development of emerging and established artists through the provision of affordable studios, promoting their practice through opportunities to exhibit work, develop projects, generate partnerships with local authorities, private property owners and social housing organisations as well as engage in learning activities.
£39.99
A collaboration between artist Ali Kazim and curator Hammad Nasar, this book opens up the Urdu alphabet for English and Urdu readers alike, setting it alongside Kazim’s gaze into South Asia – its flora and fauna, histories, legends, and everyday life on its streets. Urdu alphabet books or qaidas sit in the school bags of millions of children in the sub-continent, and among its diaspora. With its attention to design, typography and reprographics, this artist’s book takes the Urdu alphabet on a journey of the imagination, connecting it to the spaces within which it lives, while chronicling an extraordinary art practice over two decades. Designed by London-based Studio LG—HM, with Urdu typography by Birmingham-based designer Abeera Kamran, the book includes a new typeface developed by her for the large Urdu lettering in the book. The book also includes an essay by Hammad Nasar on the gestation of this project, Kazim’s art practice, and the Urdu language-world the artist inhabits.
Known internationally for his enigmatic, tactile paintings, Kazim draws on and adapts a range of techniques from South Asia and beyond – the Mughal miniature to render fine detail in his portraits; East Asian wash techniques, for unusual depth and texture in his watercolour surfaces; and the quasi-scientific style of the East India Company School, which he suffuses with a deeply poetic timbre in his depictions of nature. Kazim’s world is shaped by a culture and language that has been shared across South Asia over centuries.
Ali Kazim lives and works in Lahore. His work is collected by museums around the world including Tate in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Sharjah Art Foundation, Qatar Museums and numerous others.
Authors: Ali Kazim and Hammad Nasar
Designers: Studio LG—HM
Urdu lettering design and typography: Abeera Kamran
Year: 2026
Format: Softcover
Pages: 144pp
Size: 255 × 205 mm
ISBN: 978-1-0682265-0-2
Publisher: Ochre Books