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From the press release:
Bunker’s primary material is the detritus he finds on the streets in and around Stepney, where he lives and works. Torn posters, shattered CDs, abandoned chicken-shop boxes are formed into abstract structures, in which the century-long tradition of collage fuses with the immediacy of gestural painting. A deep engagement with the history of abstract art is given urgency by animplicit acknowledgement of the unreality of the virtual spaces in which we are increasingly enmeshed.
Mounted on MDF panels, the Fugue series is Bunker’s most complex and unashamedly
‘aesthetic’ to date, drawing particularly on the Cubist still-lives of Juan Gris. A de-centered
approach to composition is married to a newly sophisticated colour-sense. His talent for formal invention – for walking the line between refinement and crudity, directness and illusion – is on full display. Though small in size the collages have a generous sense of scale.
Bunker has held solo exhibitions in non-gallery spaces across the East End. In 2013 he curated‘Grit to Gold: Collaging the Abstract’ at Standpoint Gallery, showing a group of his large-scale collages alongside paintings by Frank Bowling and constructions by Scott O’Rourke. Other recent group exhibitions include ‘Bowling’s Cru’ (The Cello Factory, 2012); ‘Intimate Abstraction’ (The Searcher’s, Bristol, 2013); ‘Circus’ (Belmacz, Davies St, 2014).
Without gallery support Bunker’s collages have entered private collections alongside work by artists including Gillian Ayres, Georges Braque, Alan Davie, Robyn Denny, John McLean & John Hoyland.
Six Fugues: New Collages by John Bunker
curated by Sam Cornish
Opening Reception: July 3, 6:30 - 8:30 PM
July 1 - July 15, 2014
35 St. Martin's Street
WC2H &HP
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