Dave Bowers

Dave Bowers was born in Geelong (Victoria, Australia) in 1964. He studied illustration and life drawing at Monash University, Caulfield, and graduated with a degree in graphic design in 1986. From this point on Bowers headed steadily towards a fine art career.

Bowers created art/street label Umgawa with partner Nick Morris in 1992 and his quirky, bold, colourful style quickly caught the eye of Mambo head, Dare Jennings. After selling Umgawa, he became a Mambo regular and thrived in the Mambo environment of wild colour and irreverence.

Growing up in the Outer western suburbs of Melbourne, a combination of rural, industrial and working class suburban, has heavily influenced Bowers works. He ranges freely across media and themes, skipping playfully from rural behemoths – majestic bulls and semi-trailers—to Melbourne streetscapes in close-up, to pop icons and the unexpected poetry of spam. Bowers refuses to be defined by a single style: his gleaning of materials, words and colours from his immediate world leads him down many stylistic paths.

Bowers works with acrylics, enamels and oil sticks. He also uses found objects, signage and collage, including cardboard boxes salvaged from Asian supermarkets, with their striking commercial symbols and bold exotic scripts. Another source of inspiration and materials is street combing, picking through the detritus left by the passing, multicultural human tides of his home suburbs in Melbourne’s inner west.  Bowers has had sell out shows in Melbourne, Sydney and France and has been snapped up bycollectors all over Asia, America and Europe. He was a finalist in the 2010 Moran portraiture prize with his collaborative portrait of elusive Victorian artist Doug Bartlett.