Exhibition: Frank Bowling and Sculpture

The new Stephen Lawrence Gallery exhibition Frank Bowling and Sculpture (15 July – 3 September 2022) is the first to focus on the artist’s sculptures and the sculptural aspects of his paintings. Curated by Sam Cornish, the exhibition offers a rare glimpse into Bowling’s experimentation in both two and three dimensions, exploring connections between the two mediums that have previously been overlooked. Sculptures from the late 80s and 90s will be shown in dialogue with paintings and alongside archival and audio-visual material delving into Bowling’s engagement with sculpture and sculptors.

The exhibition centres around a group of sculptures made by the artist in the late 80s and early 90s which make up his only surviving direct, sustained and completed foray into the medium. The welded steel forms of King Crabbé, 1988 and Buibul, 1988 are presented alongside Sentinel, 1976 a ‘pour’ painting with a quasi-monolithic sculptural presence, and the dense, object-encrusted surface of Ancestor Window, 1987. In Lapwingeye (Made In Japan), 2000 and Pendulum 2012, there is a geometry which echoes that found the sculptural work What Else Can You Put in a Judd Box, 2022.

Frank Bowling and Sculpture has been supported by a Paul Mellon Centre Curatorial Research Grant.