Siân Bowen was Drawing Resident at the V&A, 2006–2008.
Now that my residency, co-hosted by Word and Image Department and Paper Conservation, has come to an end, I wanted to write one last entry. The experience has been an...
Guest posting by Frances Rankine, Curator, Word & Image Department‘I was fortunate enough to be in the Daiwa Foundation gallery on my own when I went to see Sian’s...
Below are some of the works resulting from the second phase of my residency and which are currently on show at the Daiwa Foundation, London. Of Dust: No 9, 2008. Powdered gold,...
Works from the second phase of my residency opened recently at the Daiwa Foundation, London – the exhibition entitled, “Of Dust”, comprised small-scale pieces...
I first heard about “okoshi-ezu” when I visited an elderly book-seller close to the Heian Shrine in Kyoto. That was over three years ago now when I was making a large-scale...
Back in Japan again... I stepped into the workshop of one of the country’s most respected lacquer artists, National Living Treasure, Shosai Kitamura. The walls were lined with...
A translucent material - but innumerable layers create a surface of seemingly impenetrable darkness.The tiniest speck on the skin capable of causing violent physical reactions -...
The stacks of Renaissance prints that were held in the Arctic ice for three hundred years (see previous posting), led me to think about the possibility of using of Japanese...
Amongst the thousands of books and albums held by the V&A, I have discovered that there is one in particular that I have been searching for. “The True and Perfect...
The temporary refuge as a metaphor for the fragility of the human condition. I seem to keep returning to this idea in my work – during the 1990s I explored cocoon and hive forms...
Another outcome of the residency so far is that three works from my installation in Gallery 102 earlier this year are now held by the Word and Image...
A pause, not a full stop – the residency period was due to end after my last posting. However following a number of discussions and meetings, I received an invitation from the...
“The book is a beautiful production. I’ve just seen Gaze at the V&A:...
Time has passed by since my last posting. The weeks have been filled with activities of a different kind – with a different focus. A move from private to public domain. In the...
Some thoughts and responses to the installation of residency drawings and selected objects:As part of the 'stepping back' process in order consider the installed works, I thought...
With the installation of my new work and the objects that I had selected from the collections now completed, I can take a step back.The series of drawings, 'Gaze', that I have...
There is a certain deceit in a reflected image – a reflection in a mirror gives us the idea that we are seeing a truthful likeness. But of course we are party to this conspiracy...
Touch and time. Everything seems to take on a different timescale when one is drawing, thinking, touching the surface of the drawing again. Sitting and looking. Waiting.Looking...
Cut, incise, prick, singe, burn – I have been revisiting ways in which the surface of a sheet of paper can be pierced and how this itself can be integral to the drawing process....
'Polarities of dark and light. Eye of the ocean, the light we see….' – These words were written to introduce a series of my works shown at Inverleith House, Edinburgh in 1995...
Boarding a train bound for Shiroko, I was thinking about Harry Parkes. It was late April and this was one of several journeys that I made to different parts of rural Japan earlier...
I have realised that being lost is not always such a bad...
When I wrote that I began this weblog halfway through my residency, this was officially true. However, during the six months that I waited for the formal approval and funding...
If you were on a journey and asked to describe it, where might you begin? Maybe by stating your destination or would it be your point of departure? On the other hand would you...
