Dean Bowen: Currawong

Dean Bowen’s new body of work, 'Currawong', continues his ongoing fascination with the conceptual currency of birds. In the artist’s earlier works, he was inspired by the tic tack sound of birds running and dancing across his metal studio roof. The bird thence became a classic theme in the artist’s oeuvre, alongside the iconography of urban and country life, comets and the starry night, childhood memories, animals and the human figure.

Recently, Bowen moved to a larger, light filled studio space, which formed the backdrop to the evolution of his new bird-based works. For the first time, small oil painting studies of Magpies and Currawongs have developed into larger works painted on board. In part inspired by Outsider Art and Naïve Art – and in recent times by the bird paintings of some of the Australia’s First Fleet Artists such as George Raper and the anonymous Sydney Bird Painter – Bowen’s anthropomorphised birds explore the idiosyncratic interplay between mankind and the animal kingdom through a prism of humour and optimism. In doing so, the artist hints at relational intersections that exist between the monumental and the miniature. The exhibition also includes new sculptures and paintings extending Bowen’s continued exploration of themes including the ‘Echidna’ and ‘The House of Love’. In the excitement of his new studio space, the artist’s focus remains both the same and different as he experimentally searches for undiscovered subjects and pathways.