Many people know of David Bowie through his music and films and his influence transcended music to shape the wider culture of our time. As well as being a talented artist, Bowie loved art and in a way that isn’t possible today, courtesy of social media and camera phones, took an active role in the art world both buying art at auction, meeting artists and sitting on the editorial board of renowned art magazine Modern Painters.
“Art was, seriously, the only thing I’d ever wanted to own. It has always been for me a stable nourishment. I use it. It can change the way I feel in the mornings. The same work can change me in different ways, depending on what I’m going through.” David Bowie – NYTimes 1998
The breadth and scope of Bowie’s personal art collection was revealed with the release of Sotheby’s online auction catalogue earlier this month. It features over 400 pieces including a ‘spin’ painting that Bowie created in collaboration with Damien Hirst, an altarpiece by Renaissance master Tintoretto, as well as works by 20th Century British Masters such as David Bomberg, Stanley Spencer, Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff.
A selection of Bowie’s collected artworks are on display in Hong Kong ahead of next months Sotherby’s auction. For further information: www.sothebys.com/BowieCollector
Bowie/Collector – Hong Kong Preview
Date: 10am-6pm, 12-15 October, 2016
Venue: Sotheby’s Hong Kong Gallery, 5/F, One Pacific Place, Admiralty
Tickets: Free
Abigail Reynolds: based in Cornwall, United Kingdom, Abigail Reynolds studied English Literature at Oxford University before pursuing Fine Art at Goldsmiths University. Her interest in books prompts her collages, sculptures, films and most recently, printmaking. The ideas driving Reynold’s work are based on reportage photography books, her interest in networks of association and how our sense of time is affected by technology. She has exhibited at art institutions and galleries in London, Vienna, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Eindhoven. In her presentation at Art Basel in Hong Kong, Reynolds incorporates a large-scale sculpture which will print her sourced images onto glass for the first time.
Newsha Tavakolian: born in 1981, Newsha is a Tehran based photo-journalist and artist. Early in her career she produced photo documentaries in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Pakistan and Yemen and gained international recognition with work published in magazines and newspapers such as Time, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and the New York Times. Tavakolian’s exhibitions include Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, Aaran Gallery, Tehran, and Otto Gallery, Florence. In her photography installation for Art Basel in Hong Kong 2016 she documents the lives of nine Teheran residents combining wall size scenery with a large video screen and several photographs of varying sizes into an installation drawn from her forthcoming exhibition and book ‘Blank pages of an Iranian photo album’
Alvin Zafra: born in 1978 in Quezon City, Philippines, Alvin graduated from the College of Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines in 2000 and won the Dominador Castaneda Award for Visual Essay. He’s exhibited at West Gallery, Quezon City, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore, and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. In his exhibition at Art Basel in Hong Kong, Zafra explores two different cities and their architectures. The drawings presented are based on photographs he took in the National Capital Region of the Philippines and in Hanover, Germany.
