Duncan Bullen exhibited a series of paintings, prints and an artist book at the Otter Gallery, University of Chichester
15 Aug 2013
From 26 September through to 24 October 2006 Duncan Bullen (School of Arts and Communications) exhibited a series of paintings, prints and an artist book work at the Otter Gallery, University of Chichester. The work collectively titled 'Silence and Light' first emerged while Bullen was artist in residence (artist/scholar) at the Experimental Printmaking Institute (EPI), Lafayette College, Pennsylvania. The residency offered Bullen a unique opportunity to develop an ongoing interest in the architecture and writings of Louis I Kahn and the colour and pattern of Amish quilts. Although both of these interests have different cultural, social and artistic ambitions, they share nevertheless a formal language of light, space, simplicity and order that resonate with his interest between contemporary abstraction and notions of the sacred.
During the residency Bullen made a number of works on pa¬per and an artist book containing eight two-plate colour aquatint etchings. The book is published in an edition of twelve by EPI and is featured in a international touring exhibition 'Celebration of the Book' (Centro Cultural, San Jose, Costa Rica, Universidad Autonomo Metropolitan, Mexico City and Manchester Metropolitan University). Further research and development has led Bullen to investigate not only the scale of his paintings but also their shape. Recent paintings and prints have seen Bullen leave behind the square format that has occupied him for many years and replaced it with shaped wooden panels cut to circles, quatrefoils and crosses. As a result there has occurred a direct move away from a non-referential abstraction to structure’s that are loaded with symbolic associations, that invite con¬sideration of something outside of the work itself. In the publication that accompanies the exhibition Revd Dr. Richard Davey (Nottingham Trent University) writes: "the simple shapes that once formed the focus of the work have moved to the periphery to become the vehicle through which the world of colour he paints is seen, thereby allowing light and silence to be¬come more obviously the real focus of these works... When so much of the contemporary art world declares its allegiance to the illusory glitter of shallow surfaces; when it celebrates shock and ridicules the universal, Bullen travels a different path. His jewel-like paintings are a quiet affirmation of all those things that are currently seen to be unfashionable; a manifesto for beauty, truth, and God. They are beacons of light and silence in a world of darkness and constant noise."
