What matters in Qureshi’s practice is this act of looking closely. Fleeting encounters, fragments of feeling and the afterlife of experience are given weight when they can so easily be overlooked. “For me, inspiration is ever-present, it simply asks that we look a little closer,” the artist tells The Wick.

Historical architecture and the moon recur throughout his practice, each offering a different route into the ideas that preoccupy him. Of architecture, Qureshi says, “I see it as a vessel for human experience, a way of holding memory, time, and emotion within form.” The moon, meanwhile, occupies “a central place” in his thinking, evoking “a sense of wonder and stillness” and inviting reflection on our place within something far larger than ourselves. One expression of this celestial thread appears in a new moon sculpture and monumental drawing for The Sun and The Moon: Art Inspired by the Celestial at Saatchi Gallery this spring – a fitting context for an artist whose work so often turns towards what exceeds language without losing sight of human presence.

This interplay between intimacy and monument is perhaps nowhere clearer than in Tower of Now, his largest public commission to date, created for Bradford City of Culture 2025. Rising 15 metres into the skyline, the sculpture transforms the city’s horizon while inviting reflection on time and collective memory. For Qureshi, the commission also hit close to home. “Bradford is where I grew up, so returning twenty years later with a work of this scale felt deeply personal, both a homecoming and an act of acknowledgement,” he says. “There was something profoundly moving in placing this sculpture within a landscape that shaped me, allowing past and present to meet in a single, shared space.”

His champion, Dr Alka Bagri, Trustee of the Bagri Foundation, is interested in this balance of beauty and depth. “Saad Qureshi is an artist I feel deeply drawn to champion because his work speaks to me on both an aesthetic and emotional level,” she tells The Wick. Bagri points in particular to the Tanabana series and the Gate sculptures, where, as she puts it, “there is an undeniable elegance, but also a depth that reveals itself slowly.” What stays with her most, however, is the intimacy within the work: Qureshi’s connection to his South Asian roots, family and the memory of his mother weaving textiles. She also highlights the materials in the Gate sculptures, especially wood and plaster, which she says convey “both strength and fragility at once.” “Above all,” she adds, “Saad’s warmth, humility and sensitivity feel inseparable from the art he makes.”