The Old Fire Station is the perfect setting for the work of exciting young artist Dar Al Naim Mubarak Carmona, as  SARAH MAYHEW discovers

The Gallery at the Old Fire Station in Oxford was established by Oxford City Council and, with Crisis Skylight Oxford, works to help homeless and vulnerably housed people.

But if being a charity and social enterprise weren’t enough, it is also an exciting new venue for exciting new art.

Indeed, a perfect setting for the novel work of young artist Dar Al Naim Mubarak Carmona.

The Old Fire Station combines a gallery, a theatre, a studio and an art shop. And it’s all about change and breaking patterns. It’s from the local community to the local community. And so is Mubarak’s fusion art. No wonder Emily Alexander, gallery manager at the Old Fire Station, is so excited about her.

“Mubarak was one of the stand-out artists at last year’s Oxford Brookes Degree show,” she said. “I couldn’t wait to invite her to exhibit at the Old Fire Station. Mubarak is one of those special artists, one that doesn’t come along very often, one to watch.”

Mubarak’s first ever solo show in the UK, Impulse opens next Wednesday, and visitors will be welcome to explore her creations until Saturday, September 8, free of charge.

In Impulse Mubarak fuses western messages with African style. She creates new patterns, a new visual language. And this language is heralded as the new global language of art. A language that leaves the artist to be seen as a real human being, while also allowing her to reach out to everyone. Alexander is confident when it comes to Mubarak: an impulsive artist. You can feel her creations fizzing on the picture plane.

Dar Al Naim Mubarak Carmona graduated from Oxford Brookes University in 2012. She wants to approach and communicate with new audiences, and wants those audiences to get bigger and bigger. She says she can’t stop her impulsive need to create. Behind her studio practice, there is a grand yet personal ideal. “With a range of concepts, expressed imaginatively through traditional and contemporary art processes, the viewer will experience scale, colour, pattern, culture, detail and, most importantly, understand the identity of the artist.”

This is an energetic, fiery and eternally optimistic start to an exciting new career. Impulse features paintings, collagraphs, drawings, illustrations and beading work.

Mubarak wants to use this range of artistic expression to offer her viewers an insight into the processes and techniques that form part of her cultural heritage. This makes the exhibition dynamic, and leaves the composition to come to life in front of the viewer’s eyes...