Siân Bowen has developed drawing-centred projects in transient architectural spaces, archaeological sites, herbaria and museums, across Europe and Asia. Recently her focus has also been on the production of video works and artist’s books.

 

Ongoing interests are in the boundaries between damage and the creative impulse; light and the drawn surface; the potential that drawing has to interrogate materiality and states of flux, and the multi-sensory nature of museum heritage. Recent works engage with concerns regarding the vulnerability and sustainability of plant life and of the natural world.

 

As Professor of Drawing at Arts University Bournemouth, she is developing a series of projects: Collapsible Spaces: Places of Temporary Refuge, Camouflage and Retreat. A recent series of unique artist’s books in response to rare plants in Edinburgh Herbarium (RBGE) and protected natural areas of Southern India, led directly on from her Leverhulme Research Fellowship, Sensing & Presencing Rare Plants through Contemporary Drawing Practice, (2017-20).

 

She is currently Artist-in-Residence at the Economic Botany Collection, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (2022-25) and is participating in the on-going international project, EXTRACTION: Art on the Edge of the Abyss.