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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Anonymous said…
You stated this really well!
09 September, 2019
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