"Amma Baad" continues Nasser Al Salem’s expansive approach to the practice of Arabic calligraphy, testing the formal possibilities of the tradition to enfold and enact complex conceptual experiments. In this new series, Al Salem contemplates the Arabic phrase ‘amma baad’, an expression that has no entirely satisfactory equivalent in the English language. Often found in formal written correspondence, the phrase gains meaning through function, following initial salutations and greetings, while preceding – and perhaps anticipating – the main subject or story to follow. Meaning, loosely, ‘henceforth’ or ‘as to what comes after’, it is dense with expectations. Through calligraphic manipulations, Al Salem explores the potential of the phrase’s peculiar space-time; the idiom synthesises timeframes, pivoting thought from one moment, one place, to the next. A formal flourish, it implies deferral, creating a liminal place of pause. In experimental meditations in sculpture and on paper, Al Salem expands and collapses conceptions of spatial and temporal order, imagining new dimensions where possible alternatives to the here and now exist.