It has been reported that the American collector and patron William (‘Bill’) Arnett died on 12 August at the age of 81. Beginning in the 1980s, Arnett focused his collecting energies on the work of self-taught African American artists from the Southern United States. In 2010, he founded the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to documenting, preserving and promoting this work. The foundation has holdings of some 1,000 pieces by more than 160 artists, including Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, and the quilt-makers of Gee’s Bend.
At Leila Heller Gallery in Dubai, Indian contemporary artist Manish Nai invites viewers to reconsider the materials that surround them. In In Search of Material within Material, a solo exhibition bringing together works created between 2021 and 2026, discarded objects, industrial surfaces and familiar everyday materials become the starting point for an exploration of form, memory and transformation.