Layering her work with mysterious and haunting images, Batool Moazzen Showghi draws deeply on her Persian heritage and European influences for the source of her inspiration.

Born in Iran, and living in England since 1985, Batool's art is sensitive, often colourful, and always a deeply personal fusion of past and present, reflected in her intricate constructions of books, boxes, photo-manipulated art, and mixed-media paintings. An array of materials used in a range of mediums combine to tell the artist's stories: Photographs, prints, fabric, stitching, drawing, painting, and calligraphy.

At the heart of her work, framed by exotic fabrics, we discover photographs merged with beautifully inscribed family letters and delicately stitched into pages of books or encased in boxes. These elements are woven together with masterly use of drawing, painting and prints.

Fragments of the past play hide and seek with us as we journey through layers of texture and colour - windows on the soul of her art, icons of a past rich with culture. Despite a stirring sense of immediacy, Batool's art also evokes a nostalgia for a world and time that seems in some ways more gracious, and perhaps more sensual.

It also invites us to reflect on the fleeting nature of our journey through the world. And it is through such reflection that we come to share in the intrinsic spirit of Batool's art. A place that touches us all.