CURRENT EXHIBITION.

YERING STATION GALLERY

38 Melba Highway  Yering VIC 3770

3 FEB -18 MARCH 2012

'HEARTBREAKERS'

PAINTINGS AND PHOTOGRAPHS.

Road Repair Study. 1. Acrylic on canvas 40cm x 200cm.

 'Yellow and Black. Crane Wrecker series. Giclee print. 50cm x 35cm.  

                                                                         picture by John Wright.

Dave Bowers 

David Bowers was born in Geelong (Victoria, Australia) in 1964. He studied illustration and life drawing at Monash University, Caulfield, and graduated with a degree in Graphic Design in 1986. 

From this point on Bowers headed steadily towards a fine art career.

I always felt like a fake as a graphic designer because I could never put a brochure together, and basically all the work I've ever done has been by hand with a paintbrush or pencils.

He created art/ street label Umgawa with partner Nick Morris in 1992 and his quirky, bold, colourful style quickly caught the eye of Mambo head, Dare Jennings. After selling Umgawa, Bowers became a Mambo regular and thrived in the Mambo environment of wild colour and irreverence.

He has had sell out shows in Melbourne, Sydney and France and has been snapped up by collectors all over Asia, America and Europe. 

Bowers works with acrylics, enamels and oil sticks. He also uses found objects, signage and collage, including cardboard boxes salvaged from Asian supermarkets, with their striking commercial symbols and bold exotic scripts. Another source of inspiration and materials is street combing, picking through the detritus left by the passing, multicultural human tides of his home suburbs in Melbourne's inner west. 

Bowers ranges freely across media and themes, skipping playfully from rural behemoths - majestic bulls and semi-trailers - to Melbourne streetscapes in close-up, to pop icons and the unexpected poetry of spam. A strong feature of his work are cartoon or graffiti-style characters - a legacy of his Mambo years - which challenge the saccharine ‘Walt Disney' view of the world. Bowers refuses to be defined by a single style: his gleaning of materials, words and colours from his immediate world leads him down many stylistic paths.

Aesthetically I find inspiration comes from anywhere any time. I am mesmerized by what I call incidental urban micro landscapes, like the patterns of road repairs, or chewing gum on the footpath; symbols, numbers and letters on power poles; the accidental tracks and patterns we leave as a species. I find the process of decay quite beautiful-rust, peeling paint etc. I'm drawn to the fine line between beauty and ugliness. The Unintentional Poetry of Everyday Life.

His work is featured in King Brown Magazine (issue one), Desktop magazine (issue 223) and We Are The Image Makers online magazine (www.watim.com/issue12/).

He collaborates regularly with long-time friend and colleague, Torquay-based pop artist Nick Morris, under the joint pseudonym Doug Bartlett: 

I get a huge kick out of sharing canvases because of the chaotic momentum. Working alone you can sometimes labour over a detail for hours, but with a shared canvas, someone else (Doug) will just boldly paint right over it and I'll think what a bloody relief.

Purchase Contemporary Pop Art from David Bowers or Doug Bartlett now

To purchase work by David Bowers or Doug Bartlett you can call David direct on 0423 663 569 or please fill in the online request form.