Frank Bowling
Colourful exhibition at Tate Britain of work by Frank Bowling from throughout his career.
There was a
wonderful variety of work in this show and yet it all held together and did
feel like the work of one artist. I was impressed that he’s still painting at
85 albeit sitting down. I was surprised that I’d not come across his before as
he’d been at college with Hockney, Derek Boshier and R.B. Kitaj.
I liked the room
of paintings based on photographs which were bright but slightly distorted
images. They reminded me of Sickert works which used a similar idea. There were
interesting works which included a silkscreen print of his childhood home in
Guyana often cut out and sewn onto the main work.
A lot of the
works seemed to be about the method and action of painting rather than the
final work from fields of colour overlaid by stencilled maps, through works
created by pouring paint down a canvas, the addition of turpentine and ammonia
to acrylic paint to give different textures and the addition of found
objects to the surface.
My favourite room
combined two pictures inspired by the Thames with two by the light of Guyana.
In a strange way they reminded me of Monet’s Waterlilies being a wash of shades
of colour.
Closes on 26
August 2019
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