17 June 2023 – 26 August 2023
Music To My Eyes
Simon Bowman Jnr.
‘Music To My Eyes’ challenges us to reconsider our notions of photography and encourages us to reimagine what is possible within a medium we engage with almost everyday.
Simon Bowman ‘Jnr’, is an artist living and working in Accra, Ghana. He received his Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi. Bowman’s interest in the medium of photography underlies his experiments with Analogue Photography which involves him manipulating chemicals, processes, materials, devices and techniques of this primitive technology - to see what possibilities lie outside of it; often pushing photography past documentation into abstraction. His works have featured at several exhibitions including - ‘In Dialogue’, Alliance francais, Accra [2021], ‘Evolution of Science exhibition’, Museum of science and technology, Accra. [2018], ‘Orderly Disorderly’, Museum of Science and technology, Accra [2017] and ‘Cornfields in Accra’, Museum of Science and Technology, Accra [2016] - two large scale exhibitions organized by blaxTARLINES KUMASI in Accra, Ghana. He was a finalist in the ‘Kuenyehia Art Prize for Contemporary Ghanaian Art’ [2018] and the 2022 ‘CFAO Young Talent Competition’.
Extrapolated from analogue interventions through to the final digital composition, Simon’s works occupy ephemeral spaces until his experiments which begin with 35mm photographic film in the darkroom assume forms, universes, shapes and scapes.
Working with tropical fruit juices, his reagents of choice for this exhibition, we are drawn into worlds of abstraction with luminous, cumulus, ghostly, neon, deep pitch shapes and forms.
The emotional responses that are evoked are uncontrollable and in the case of Simon, he finds himself immersed in another world of musical composition.
The body of works presented in this exhibition continue the endless journey that began, months ago, in his darkroom, making visible the invisible, transcending known and unknown boundaries—an open field of imagination and complexity.
The artist is teasing, dancing, shaping, straddling and eventually releasing.
He invites us to do the same, to let go of preconceived ideas, to allow our imaginations free rein, to reconsider our notion of photography and to welcome new modes of employing our senses and emotions to experience and interpret art.
Working with tropical fruit juices, his reagents of choice for this exhibition, we are drawn into worlds of abstraction with luminous, cumulus, ghostly, neon, deep pitch shapes and forms.
The emotional responses that are evoked are uncontrollable and in the case of Simon, he finds himself immersed in another world of musical composition.
The body of works presented in this exhibition continue the endless journey that began, months ago, in his darkroom, making visible the invisible, transcending known and unknown boundaries—an open field of imagination and complexity.
The artist is teasing, dancing, shaping, straddling and eventually releasing.
He invites us to do the same, to let go of preconceived ideas, to allow our imaginations free rein, to reconsider our notion of photography and to welcome new modes of employing our senses and emotions to experience and interpret art.
