Sara Bowen was born in the UK in 1966 and moved to Australia in 2006. Working mainly using printmaking techniques she investigates concepts of distance and scale, and the visual tricks our eyes play on us.
A current preoccupation in her work is the river as a specific location, a generalised representation of water and as something that can carry various references (as an object of environmental concern and as a metaphor for journey, for example). The recurring motif of a swirl of river comes from an image developed from a grainy black-and-white photograph taken by her father-in-law from a crop-spraying plane in 1960 as he flew over the property that he managed in the ‘Great Juanbung Swamp’ in south-western New South Wales. At the confluence of the Murrumbidgee and the Lachlan rivers, thousands of hectares of reed beds flooded every year and with no fixed landmarks the land was unmapped. Now the landscape has been drained and its fertility is gone, but it remains largely unmapped.
The meandering, un-bound river is a continuing fixture in the work, although sometimes it paradoxically represents one of a series of obstacles, the others – terrain and barbed wire – represented by embossed marks in the image.
Other bodies of work include a series of pieces about an old house in which the artist lived in the UK. Old maps and contemporary papers from the early 1800′s are layered with digital images from modern security camera as the house acts like a lens, capturing the time passing outside its windows.
Current projects include two art exchanges in which Sara is making monthly pieces and mailing them to her artist partners in the UK. One mail exchange consists of a series of artists’ books with slip cases designed to function like children’s building blocks; the other is a series of dry-point and etched aluminium plates that will eventually be assembled into a book. Both projects revolve around the general motif of the bridge.
Sara Bowen’s work and working practices can be viewed in more detail on her art blogs: http://doubleelephant.blogspot.com (a general blog about art, with links in the right hand side bar to ‘Photos of my Work’); http://complicities.blogspot.com (a blog about the two mail exchange projects), and http://thedailydrawing.blogspot.com (a on-going series of small ink drawings)
Born 3rd February 1966, England (moved to Australia October 2006)
Education
1984 – 1987 MA Theology, University of Oxford
1987 – 1988 Postgraduate business studies course, University of Bristol
1998 – 1999 General Printmaking class, Bristol School of Art
1998 – 2000 Life drawing classes, Bristol Grammar School
1999 – 2004 Etching class, Bristol School of Art
2001 Experimental Monotype masterclass with Emma Stibbon
2002 – 2003 HNC Fine Art (Distinction), Bristol School of Art
2003 Photo-etching Summer School, University of the West of England (UWE), UK
2005 Postgraduate Diploma in Multidisciplinary Printmaking at UWE
2006 – Studying part-time for PhD in Fine Art at UWE
Arts Organisations
2003 – Founded Ad Hoc group of artists
2004 – 2006 Chair of Spike Island Printmakers
2004 – Member of PCA
2004 – Member of Exchange Partners in Print group
2006 – Member of NAVA
2007 – Member of Focus arts group, Coffs Harbour
Group and Solo Exhibitions:
May 2003 Bristol School of Art group show, Bristol, UK
November 2003 Quad group show, the Create Centre, Bristol, UK
May 2004 Spike Island Open, Bristol, UK
November 2004 Royal West of England Academy152nd Autumn Exhibition, Bristol, UK
November 2004 Spike Island Printmakers show and Mini-print exhibition, Bristol, UK
December 2004 Ad Hoc group show, the Create Centre, Bristol, UK
April 2005 Ad Hoc group show, ‘The Seed Project’, Bristol Guild of Applied Art, Bristol, UK
October 2005 Exchange Partners in Print ‘Landscape’ portfolio exchange project, Australia
October 2006 Exchange Partners in Print ‘Refugee’ portfolio exchange project, Australia
November 2006 Focus group exhibition, Bunker Cartoon Gallery, Coffs Harbour
January 2007 Codex Event 4, Southern Cross University, Lismore, New South Wales
March 2007 Solo exhibition, Gallery 37, Coffs Harbour, New South Wales
October 2007 Exchange Partners in Print ‘War, Peace, Freedom’ portfolio exchange project, Australia
February 2008 Codex Event 4 exhibition, Tweed Rivers Regional Gallery
Work held in Southern Cross University book arts collection, private collections in the UK, USA and Australia.
