FRANK BOWLING

Bowling’s attraction to collage was partly influenced by Henri Matisse’s cut-outs, which he first encountered in the late 1950s and again at the 1992 MoMA retrospective in New York. For an article in the 1999 Winter issue of ‘Modern Painters,’ Bowling was asked to reflect on his career and select a work of art that most shaped or changed his own vision and chose ‘The Snail’ (1953) by Matisse. Paying homage to this work, Bowling has made several collaged pieces directly referencing the spiral pattern, including ‘Back to Snail’ (2000).

Bowling’s first conceptual engagement with collage can be found in his early work in the ‘60s. Stating his material ambitions he has said, ‘I wanted to marry up all these disparate bits like color, mannerism, where you paint, this fandango of all these styles and make up a sort of strong work that has aspects of painting and sculpture and architecture [...] they can hang together like something new.’

The works selected for this exhibition also evidence the development in Bowling’s incorporation of found objects. Since the 1980s, diverse materials have found their way into his paintings, from children’s toys to medical equipment. In ‘Skid,’ for example, there are pieces cut from a medical plastic bag, a protruding medical tube, loose canvas string and strips of canvas. These everyday objects provide the viewer with an entry point and most have some personal meaning to Bowling, acting as a form of autobiography. These items are embedded into the picture plane along with the translucent fluidity of acrylic gel and paint, breaking and erupting from the surface. ‘I’m moved to chuck in detritus, and watch it swim and settle,’ Bowling once said, ‘it makes me feel I can get to a whole vision of what I’ve passed through in life.’