In the late 1980s, one of Britain’s most acclaimed painters, Sir Frank Bowling, made his only foray into sculpture: welded steel abstractions were fashioned from stumpy steel bars, free-ranging metal curlicues and spirals of mesh left in his studio yard by the engineering firm next door. Originally conceived to be shown alongside his paintings, they are now the centrepiece of the first exhibition highlighting his canvases’ less-considered sculptural dimensions. For the past 30 years, though, these pieces were strangers to public view, arranged companionably around the flat in Pimlico, central London, he shares with his wife, the textile artist Rachel Scott.
“[My sculpture] King Crabbé was halfway up the stairs,” Bowling says. “Bulbul was next to the TV and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat was in the living room, capped with a pith helmet and a hand-knitted sock. They always seemed to gather things: postcards, woolly animals and drawings. One has a jemmy and a hacksaw.” Unfortunately, some works from the series no longer exist: left outside the studio, they were stolen and probably sold as scrap.
