INVITED ARTIST, VILLA ROMANA, FLORENCE 2000
In 2000 Siân Bowen was invited by Joachim Burmeister, the then director of Villa Romana, Florence, to carry out a one month studio residency there. A series of nineteenth century Florentine letters provided both the conceptual framework and material substrate for a new series of works, Pledge.
Pencil, rice starch & stain on paper 40.5 x 56cm, 2000
Ink, pigment & rice starch on paper 43 x 50cm, 2000
Ink, pencil & pins on paper 43 x 56cm, 2000
Pencil, rice starch & stain on paper 40.5 x 56cm, 2000
"Siân Bowen’s art here involves the adoption of drawing not only as a reordered discipline, in which the sequence of events is disrupted and the beginning becomes the end. It undertakes, also, a reinvention of the usual methods of drawing and their rationale. In several ways, she takes the whole thing apart – and it’s sometimes quite literally a dissection. Marks are made, as I’ve described, by cutting into and removing the very fabric of the support. Pencils act not as additive agents but, strangely, as ones which subtract. Smudging (in traditional drawing, considered a mistake) ‘bruises’ the paper and creates a troubling form."
Angela Kingston