This exhibition catalogue was published on the occasion of Natalie Dower’s Reflections exhibition at the Eagle Gallery, London.



Images © 2015 Natalie Dower

Text © 2015 Laurence Noga

Design/typography: Neil Crawford, typoG, London

Typeset in Linotype Syntax and Gill Sans





Relationships are at the centre of Natalie Dower’s work. They are often coded through rules based on proportion, composed of mathematical puzzles, or phenomenological in terms of a plurality of place. Dower’s approach feels supermodern and constructive. Her ingenuity and innovation are reflected through the use of mathematical systems, such as the ‘Fibonacci Sequence’ or the ‘Dudeney Dissection’, which activate the works’ interwoven surface facture. The awareness of a more terrestrial space synchronises with a systematic field of vision, and allows the parts to function reciprocally

Dower, Natalie

Noga, Laurence

UAL Research Online

Natalie DowerREFLECTIONSNatalie DowerREFLECTIONSEAGLE GALLERYEMH ARTS 3Relationships are at the centre of Natalie Dower’s work. They are often coded through rules based on proportion, composed of mathematical puzzles,or phenomenological in terms of a plurality of place. Dower’s approach feelssupermodern and constructive. Her ingenuity and innovation are reflectedthrough the use of mathematical systems, such as the ‘Fibonacci Sequence’ or the ‘Dudeney Dissection’, which activate the works’ interwoven surfacefacture. The awareness of a more terrestrial space synchronises with asystematic field of vision, and allows the parts to function reciprocally.Dower’s line of enquiry concerning specificity of colour and harmoniousproportion needs to feel precise and highly calculated. This need calls to mindher friend and mentor Malcolm Hughes. Hughes taught in the Life Room with Dower, but it is work like his Four Unit Painting K1–K4 that influencesDower’s handling of space. It seems critical and one of the constant factorsthat contributes to her own constructive idiom.When I spoke to Dower in her studio recently, a conversation about colourand its processes of interaction, focused on her sense of internal logic. It is a logic informed by a wide variety of influences: the chemist and poet PrimoLevi, for example, the composer Stravinsky, or the influential astronomer,Timothy Ferris. Dower’s work, with its cross-fertilisation of ideas, rules anddeterministic complexity, is evidence of the possibilities of which Hughesspoke – of an art derived from a sense of order, with ‘endless variety’. Dowermay initiate a number of works with one linking system as a starting point, but specific choices about colour, scale, or material result in highly individualimages and allow the paintings and reliefs to punctuate space in physical anddynamic ways.Dower’s ability to work at varying speeds on a number of different systems,and to order those systems (and the way in which things happen) according to the speed at which she is working, opens up the possibility for her to callupon more non-deterministic operations. This introduces a demographic inthe paintings and constructions, which connects to past experience throughthe analytically built surface. The rigour of the system, which always employsmathematical diversion, holds us in an equilibrium of the continuouslyunexpected.Natalie Dower : Reflections254In this exhibition the sense of the unexpected is heightened by showing works from different time periods, in new relationships. This brings about aphysiological and chromatic resonance that mirrors a sense of futurity, bothurban and architectural. Dower is able to question her predetermined goals by allowing nature to be seen as an impetus. This manipulation and spatialorganisation allows unpredictable constraints to evolve in a state of flux.Travelling Star 1996, when partnered with Dudeney Circle 1989 for exampleread through a codified experience. We understand that code through theworks’ temporal mobility. The pairing triggers a multiple sense of duration,echoing the objects’ past, present, and future. Links are created to otherimages such as the black and white painting Dudeney Encoded 1987, whereDower dissects an equilateral triangle into four irregular shapes that can bereassembled as a square. In Dudeney Circle Dower has reversed the coloursystem, by creating a white circular sphere where the cut out rectangles castshadows onto the wall. Travelling Star has a liquidity within the groundcolour, which takes some time to notice. The intermittent flashes of green,pink and blue spirals create a visual flaring, oscillating between a retinalimpression and a black hole in deep space.Spin Off 2015 is an exquisitely conceived picture, its dark ground a key to thepainting’s success. It feels like a hybrid in that it seems to be a combinationof two systems. In conversation with Dower, I discover that its ‘spiral track’works clockwise from the top right corner, and travels inward in moves oftwenty-eight. The interior rectangle is formed with the use of spiral trackpoints. The interior square is formed from peripheral points.“I have counterpointed systems, but I didn’t with Spin Off. The unusualthing here is that it is a section of a larger painting, (hence the title). It happens sometimes – a work being ‘found’ during the course ofmaterialising a plan. Only when I am scaling up something ‘found’ that I have already got to grips with, can the work be guaranteed not to havechanged from exactly what I was expecting. The developments could affect areas but it is usually the colours that need changing because they are not right in terms of the ‘gestalt’.” – Natalie DowerIn this intimate painting, Dower has an angled square opening made by four small turquoise squares. The space feels like a mapped location, at the edge of an environment. It echoes modern life, and its transientcontemporary existence. Three Triangle Series: Three Colours 2015 also has atension achieved through the scale and proportionally related composition,with adjacent forms held in perfect equilibrium. During Dower’s time inMorocco, she noticed the fluctuation of light that produced a feeling thatthings far away were as sharply defined as things nearby, and this feels key to the juxtapositions in the painting.To some, the idea of working within systems presents a sense of limitation, but for Dower it is a kind of liberation. This emerges discussing the series of reliefs Spiral Track no.s 1,2,3 1984 in which the system is the dissection of a square into four different shapes that even hinged together, can beassembled as an equilateral triangle.“I remember where I was, and the excitement of the exact moment when I realised the enormous range of possibilities that it offered. For the nextdecade every drawing, relief, sculpture and painting, ranging in scale fromcentimetres to metres, was generated from that. What I had seen was that I could use the squares, with their divisions, to compose a grid, which would offer a huge range of configurations, either complex or simple, fromwhich I could choose what I wanted, and which would serve for all of theabove purposes.”Seen together the rhythmic combination of Jungle Sphere 1988 (a circular relief on three levels) and Square Root Two Spirals, Nine Moves 2015 couldreflect the endless syncopation of the city. The duality of these two worksopens up space and time, transporting you in one moment to a parallelencounter of the personal, and a global mechanisation. The feeling of theartificial and manufactured in Jungle Sphere is offset by  the symbolized sense of anthropological place in Square Root Two Spirals, Nine Moves. There seems a manipulation of nature, which has been completed by anarchitectural interface.Within the Tracks 2015 uses a Square Root Two Spirals system, in which therectangles are designed to be halved and halved endlessly, still with the same proportions. Dower employs a sulfurous, scumbled surface in thetriangles that rotate and spiral in the largest rectangle. The painting has ahypnotic atmosphere and the repeatedly halved rectangles or triangles push against its borders in an attempt to escape the frame.Natalie Dower has created poetic precision in new alignments andcombinations. The paintings and constructions have infinite intensities of geometric and existential space. Each work is internally coherent, itsidentity anchored in an industrial sense of order and the systematic idea. Her process of exploration through structure and colour is a reflection of her intention to create, as Dower says, a “stimulus to the imaginationengendered by discovery.”Laurence Noga 201576981110List of WorksCoverTwo Spirals with Rectangle 2015oil on canvas, 35  50cm2Travelling Star 1996oil on panel, 21.2  21.2cmDudeney Circle 1989avonite, 31  31  4.5cm6Three Triangle Series, One Sixth Offset: Four Colours 2014oil on panel, 30  35cmThree Colour Spiral Track no.2 1984oil on wood, 35.5  38  2.5cm7Spin Off 2015oil on board, 13.25  18.9cmThree Triangle Series: Three Colours 2015oil on canvas, 43.5  43.5cm8Spiral Track no.s 2, 3,1 1984oil on wood, 27  30.5  5cm9Jungle Sphere 1988oil on wood, 46  46  3.8cmSquare Root Two Spirals, Nine Moves 2015oil on canvas, 60  85cm10Within the Tracks 2015oil on canvas, 24  30cm12NATALIE DOWER1931 Born in London1948–49 St Martins School of Art, London1949–52 Camberwell School of Art and Crafts, London1952–54 Slade School of Fine Art, London1954–66 Taught at St Albans School of Art; Bath Academy of Art,Corsham; Byam Shaw School of Art; Camberwell School of Art and Crafts; Chelsea School of Art, London1966 Moved to Morocco; taught at The American School of Tangier1973– Works in Portugal and LondonSOLO EXHIBITIONS1976 Concourse Gallery, Polytechnic of London1981 Foyer Gallery, Riverside Studios, London1983 Air Gallery, London1986 Gummesons Konstgalleri, Stockholm, Sweden1987 Transformations Curwen Gallery, London1990 Transformations 2 Curwen Gallery, London1992 The Secret Life of the Grid Curwen Gallery, London1995 Out of the Arc Curwen Gallery, London1996 Mathematics and Visual Art Rewley House, University of Oxford1997 Within Measure Francis Graham Dixon Gallery, London2007 The Music of Systems Jonathan Clark Fine Art, London2012 Line of Enquiry Eagle Gallery, London2015 Reflections Eagle Gallery, LondonSELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS1986 Colour and Systems Arts Council Touring ExhibitionSystemic Constructive Drawings Wentworth Gallery,University of York1992–93 Countervail Mappin Gallery, Sheffield; Mead Gallery, University of Warwick, Coventry; King’s Manor Gallery, York2000 Mondiale Echo’s Mondriaanhuis, HollandEstablished, Undervalued and Young ArtistsCrane Kalman Gallery, London2014 Chance and Order Eagle Gallery, London2015 From Centre Slate Projects & Saturation Point, LondonDower’s work is held in collections including Arts Council England; Arthur Andersen & Co; Government Art Collection; Mondriaanhuis,Holland; and Warwick University.Published on the occasion of Natalie Dower’sReflections exhibition at the Eagle Gallery, London Images © 2015 Natalie DowerText © 2015 Laurence NogaDesign/typography: Neil Crawford, typoG, LondonTypeset in Linotype Syntax and Gill SansEAGLEGALLERYEMH ARTS159 Farringdon RoadLondon EC1R 3ALT 020 7833 2674E emmahilleagle@aol.comW www.emmahilleagle.com

Natalie Dower: Reflections

http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/9581/1/Natalie%20Dower%20Reflections%202015.pdf

Natalie Dower: Reflections

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